Page 14 of Rowe

“No. The two elderly women at the daycare said they could hear spirts, sometimes see them. They said things about my sister that no one would know. I don’t question things just because I don’t understand them.”

“But you do,” said Julia softly. Mara frowned at the beautiful woman as she and the huge Viking walked into her room. “You’re questioning whether you have the right to be happy because of your niece’s death. She says you are wrong.”

“Sh-she’s here,” she whispered, shaking. Rowe immediately gripped her hand between his two huge, rough paws.

“She’s always been here,” said Julia. “She’s said that you’re not taking care of yourself.”

“I don’t believe you,” said Mara. “You’re just trying to make me eat.”

“She said to tell you that she was right. You shouldn’t have left the job as a dispatcher. She said that Miss Elma was willing to watch her at night.”

“H-how could you know that?” she gasped.

“You said you believed,” smiled Julia. “She also says that you were a good mother to her. The only one she ever knew. She’s okay. She’s moving on now. You should too.”

Mara just stared at the two, then Noah spoke again.

“She said to tell you the secret word. Beignets.” Mara gasped and started to cry. This time not out of fear or pain. Out of relief and a sense of happiness she hadn’t felt before. Her niece was okay. Okay beyond her reach but she was now with her mother. Mara nodded.

“Thank you. Thank you all for telling me.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

The air conditioner above Mara’s hospital bed maintained a steady, cool hush against the oppressive heat outside. The room smelled faintly of antiseptic and clean linen, with the sweet medicinal trace of the salve spread across the burns on her wrists left by the chains. Afternoon light pressed against the blinds in narrow white bars. Each bar seemed hot enough to cut.

Mara lay propped against two pillows, her left hand wrapped, her right arm bruised from wrist to elbow. A slim monitor beside her kept counting with small green flashes, tracing the rhythm of her heart in light. Clear tubing ran through a humming pump mounted to a chrome pole. A sensor glowed red against her fingertip, a pressure cuff tightened by itself around her arm, and a panel above the bed held ports, gauges, buttons, and coiled cords whose purposes she could not guess.

Nearly everything in the bright, spotless room was strange to her. She had slept for eleven minutes, woken at the nearly silent roll of a cart in the corridor, and spent the next half hour pretending she had not.

Rowe sat beside the bed in a chair designed to punish relatives. He had dragged it close enough that one knee touched the mattress. A paperback rested open in his lap, upside down.

“You’ve been on the same page since lunch,” Mara said. Rowe looked at the book, one of Charlie’s.

“It’s a complicated page.”

“It’s the copyright notice,” she smirked.

“Very litigious.”

Her mouth moved into the beginning of a smile. It cost her something. Rowe saw the cost and wished he had not.

Outside the closed door, two Robicheaux cousins occupied the corridor with the patient stillness of men waiting beside a trap. Beaux leaned against the wall with his arms folded. Tucker sat in a molded plastic chair that complained beneath him. They wore clean work shirts, dark jeans, and boots scrubbed free of marsh mud. Neither was armed in any way the hospital nor its patients needed to know about.

A nurse pushing a medication cart slowed when she reached them.

“You gentlemen planning to be here all day?” Beaux checked the clock.

“Depends what happens in the next ten minutes.”

“What happens in ten minutes?” she asked.

“Tucker finishes breaking that chair.” Tucker shifted. The plastic gave a sharp pop.

“Nine minutes,” Beaux amended.

The nurse rolled her eyes and continued down the hall, but she was smiling when she turned the corner.

Belle Fleur’s hospital was modern, compact, and relentlessly clean, built to give those closest to the Robicheauxs in their parish, immediate care without sending every emergency an hour down the highway.