He was leaning against the hood of the Jaguar. The cream 1956 Jaguar that everybody in St. Francisville knew on sight, which meant that anybody glancing out the inn's front window for the past however long had seen it sitting in the lot. He had his arms crossed and his sunglasses on and he was looking at me with an expression I'd never seen on him before.
Not the smile. Not the easy charm. Not the croissants.
Something that was working very hard to look relaxed and wasn't quite getting there.
“Doll face,” he said. “What are you doing here?”
I stopped at the bottom of the steps.
My heart was going fast. I made sure none of that was in my face. I was learning this — the St. Francisville way of carrying things. Level eyes, still hands, a voice that gave nothing.
“Errands,” I said.
He looked at me over the top of his sunglasses. The Jaguar ticked in the heat behind him.
“The Prosperity Inn,” he said. “Specific errand.”
“I was returning something.” I held his gaze. “To a guest.”
Billy was quiet for a moment. A car passed on the street behind him. Somewhere down the block a teenager shouted an expletive.
He took his sunglasses off. And there it was — without them, without the easy grin, without the bourbon and the wit — just Billy Arceneaux looking at me with caution I hadn’t seen before.
“Mercy.” First time he'd used my name without something attached to it. Nodoll face, nosweetheart, nodarling. Just my name, flat and careful in his mouth. “There are things in this town that are not your business.”
“I know that.”
“Do you?” He turned the sunglasses over in his hands. “Because a girl who knows that doesn't have errands at the only inn in town where a private investigator has been staying for three months.”
I said nothing.
“He's not going to find what he's looking for,” Billy said. “He's going to keep looking, and he's not going to find it, and eventually he's going to run out of money and go back to wherever he came from. That's how this works.” He looked at me steadily. “That's how this has always worked.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay.” He put his sunglasses back on. The smile came back — dimmer than usual, like a light on a failing battery. “Good.”
He pushed off the hood. Came toward me. Stopped close enough that his voice could stay low.
“I like you,” he said. “I want you to know that's true.” It sounded like the truth. “Judah—” he stopped. Started again. “There are things that were decided before either of you were born. You understand? The way it runs. What it is.” He looked down at me. “You can't love a man out of his inheritance, doll face. It doesn't work that way.”
He patted my shoulder once, the way you patted someone before a long journey.
Then he walked to the driver's side of the Jaguar, got in and pulled out of the lot. Simple.
I stood in the parking lot and watched him go.
Nothing about this wassimple.
My hand went to my pocket. The card was there. Still there.
I left it there.
I got in my car and drove home and made dinner. When Judah came in from the study at seven, I smiled at him over the stove and told him the errands had gonefine.
He kissed my temple and set the table.
I stirred the pot and thought about inheritance. About the things decided before you were born. About a girl in a city far enough to mean something, close enough to have been reachable on a single night's drive.
