a psychiatrist, you're a detective of the subconscious – you go and try to figure out what's unresolved or dissonant between their emotional world and their situational world, what's missing, what's longed for and refused, and so on. And when you identify that issue, you help patients resolve it in a way that lets them get on with their lives.'
He chewed on that for a moment. 'If you're that sensitive, don't you also pick up on the experiences of living people? Doesn't a living person generate a powerful field?'
'Oh, yeah.' Ruefully.
That troubled him, 'So… what's the difference between a ghost and a living person?'
Cree felt suddenly jarred. She glanced up to see that the landscape had dimmed around them, the sun now partly eclipsed by distant buildings and trees, the light beginning to drain out of the sky. She looked at her hands and found them knotted on her lap.
'I'm still working on that one,' she said.
'Seems like a kind of lonesome perspective,' he said quietly. Very serious now, he watched her closely. 'And all this connects back to your own, personal paranormal experience, doesn't it?'
Cree bit her lips and nodded.
'I read in one of your bios on the Internet that your husband died some years ago… Did that influence your – '
'It's not something I'd like to discuss right now.' Strangely, though the pain was there, she didn't recoil that hard from his probing.
He nodded, aware that he'd pushed it too far. But he didn't labor through apologies, just let it go easily, gracefully. And Cree had to admit he must be a damned good shrink. Maybe even a decent human being. Throughout their conversation, his presence had seemed to her as open and clear as the breezy day. Now, appropriately, it became somber, the same hue as the band of blue-black deepening at the horizon.
They sat for a while longer, watching darkness infiltrate water and sky. Cree felt her melancholy grow, but it was a serene moment, and she let it take her. She thought it spoke well of Fitzpatrick that he could sit and share silence with a virtual stranger, as if they'd both found the same state of mind. The sense was reaffirmed when, without either saying anything, they got up simultaneously and started back the way they'd come. The park was quieter now, the crawfishers mostly gone from the bridge.
'You've given me an enormous amount to think about,' Fitzpatrick said. 'But there's a lot we haven't discussed, and we should meet again to compare notes on Lila. And to figure out where this goes from here. For my part, I'd like to hear your tape of her narrative, and then tomorrow I've got to see if I can move up the schedule for her cranial diagnostics. How about you – what's your next step?'
'I'm going to spend some time at the house. Probably go over there at around ten tonight.'
'Huh,' he grunted. 'Want company?'
That surprised her, and it took her a moment to sort through it. 'Dr. Fitzpatrick, I can't rationally defend everything I do or think or experience. My job requires just as much method, and just as much empathy, intuition, and guesswork as yours does. What I'm saying is, I don't mind company, but I have no need of distracting or dogmatically skeptical company.'
He mulled that over as they climbed the levee again and headed back along its top toward the Warrens' house. The breeze was chilly now, and lights had come on in most of the houses. Cree wondered what Lila was doing. Talking to Jack? Cooking dinner for the two of them? Washing the dishes? How would she be girding herself to face another night in a world turned so deceptive and uncertain?
They shuffled down the landward slope onto the street, where Fitzpatrick stopped to find his key ring and beep his car doors open. Cree went to her car, found the audiotape of Lila's narrative, and came back to where he stood flipping his keys into the air and catching them.
'How about relatively open-minded, very curious company?' he asked.
Cree looked at him as he waited for her reply. In the mixed streetlight and sunset glow, he looked amiable, gently irrepressible, and, yes, relatively open-minded. Face it, a cute guy.
But she shook her head. 'Some other time, I think. Tonight, I'd better go alone.' She tossed the tape to him and he caught it easily. She started to walk away and then found herself turning back toward him. 'Hey,' she called, 'thanks for showing me the lake and the levee. It really is lovely.'
He nodded, waved, and dipped into his car. When he drove past her, he gave her a little good-bye beep on his horn.
11
By the time Cree Black and Paul Fitzpatrick left the house, Lila w7as too furious with Ro-Ro and Jack to stay in the same room with them, and too uncertain she could keep up the facade of defiance. So she went into the kitchen and made up a marinade, then boned and skinned the dinner chicken and put the meat in to soak. Something useful to do with her hands, that always helped. The men sat together drinking whiskey in the living room, leaving her some time to be alone, to try to think.
Her thoughts scurried like panicked mice trying to find shelter. Wherever they went, it was scary and troubling. The only place of some reassurance was Cree Black.
The ghost hunter was not at all what Lila had anticipated. Somehow, she'd expected a smaller woman who'd exude the self-dramatizing, snake-oil-scented aura of mystery Lila had seen all her life in the palm readers, Cajun fortune-tellers, and self-proclaimed voodoo queens at the street stalls around Jackson Square. Instead, Cree Black was disconcertingly straightforward. She was tallish, with brown hair worn in a simple, loose ponytail, and a face that would probably be very pretty if she accented her features with some makeup. She had green-hazel eyes and a level, direct gaze that was sympathetic without condescension, appraising without judgment. Her clothes were comfortable looking, tasteful but not flashy. She had a steady, quiet voice, and though there was definitely something vulnerable about her, she also came across as unflappable.
More than anything else, it was clear she believed.
Lila hadn't felt that supported or affirmed since… forever, practically. Not since Josephine. She had been unflappable, too. Where had Josephine gotten her strength? 'Our Lord Jesus Christ,' she would say. She had always been so devoted, so active in her church. Her long, serious face, the color of dark, aged mahogany, was full of piety and moral resolve and that fierce unswerving loyalty and love for Lila. So much more certain than Momma's love, so unqualified. She'd know how to fix this. She had always known.
Lila hadn't seen Josephine Dupree for almost thirty years, and yet she could remember her face well enough to realize that the old nanny and Cree Black had something in common. You could see it in their eyes: They had both stared hard into the unfathomable. The infinite.
It was Cree's belief that had given Lila the strength to be so assertive when Ro-Ro and Jack and Paul had called their little powwow. It also helped that there was something of a science or a vocabulary for this kind of thing, that there was known precedent and maybe a method for dealing with it. It wasn't just herself alone in an uncharted wilderness.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a knock at the kitchen door frame, and there was Ro-Ro, who must have had his fill of whiskey.
'Hey, little sister,' he said, trying to look nonchalant.
'Go home, Ronald. I'm busy, you're just about potted, and I don't need whatever it is you're selling.'
He grinned appreciatively. 'My God, you do sound just like Momma when you talk like that!'
Lila just reached up to the array of copper-bottomed cookware that hung above the island, selected one of the three-quart pots, and measured in water for rice.
He watched her, frowning at being ignored. 'Except I don't believe Momma's hands ever shook like that in her whole life.'
'I guess that makes two of us missed out on the good genes. Because you don't exactly measure up to Daddy, either.'
Ron twitched his head as if dodging something she'd thrown. He came into the room to stand beside her at the counter. 'Listen, Lila, can't we just make some kind of a deal here?' His voice was quieter and though she could
