She left the house hurriedly, returning to the hotel after two in the morning, feeling bruised and ragged.
And of course Charmian was sure to see her state and exploit it in some sadistic way.
"I've been thinking about you," Charmian said. She walked straight-backed ahead of Cree to the living room, mastering her limp almost completely. Today she wore a tailored beige pants suit, a yellow silk scarf knotted stylishly at her wizened throat, pearl earrings, a tasteful blush of makeup.
"I'm flattered. Why?"
"Paul Fitzpatrick tells me that you saved my daughter's life. I'm grateful."
"Really, I just happened to go to the house while she was there. I was lucky."
"And did you see the ghost?" Charmian sat herself in a wingback chair, poised and regal, crossing her good leg over the other at the knee. The tightening of her face gave way to a hard little smile that flickered at the corners of her lips, showing that she intended the question rhetorically, condescendingly.
"As a matter of fact, I did."
"Did it reveal its terrible secrets?"
Cree tossed her purse onto the couch and threw herself beside it. "You know what I think? I think you're the one with the secrets, Charmian. I can't make you tell me, but I'm not going to sit here and play straight man for your sarcastic wit. If you want entertainment, go watch another slide show with your geriatric buddies. I've got a job to do. Are you going to help me or not?"
"Why are you so out of sorts?" Charmian countered. "I hope this doesn't mean your budding romance with Dr. Fitzpatrick is going awry?"
Cree gaped.
"It doesn't take extrasensory perception to notice the way you two speak of each other. Your excessive 'professional' respect and consideration, the way your voices modulate when you pronounce each other's names. I'm pleased for you, really I am."
"Tell me what happened to Lila when she was fourteen. What changed her."
Charmian didn't gape; Cree thought she was probably incapable of it. But her lower eyelids ticced before her face stiffened into its inscrutable mask. "Her father died. They'd been very close. She went off to school. It was a very difficult time for – "
"Worse than that."
"She had something of a nervous breakdown during her first term. A battle with depression and anxiety. It was completely understandable. Two family deaths within one year, going away from home… I was a wreck and had nothing to offer her. Her world was coming apart."
" Before she went to school. Something that made her hate herself so much that now she breaks mirrors so she won't have to look at herself!"
Charmian held herself absolutely motionless. "I haven't any earthly idea. Why don't you ask your ghost?"
Cree returned the implacable stare. Then the telephone on the table next to Charmian rang, startling both women and breaking their locked gazes. Charmian answered it, spoke briefly, and hung up.
"I am going on an outing today," Charmian said drily, "a jaunt with some of my 'geriatric buddies' of the Garden Society. The van will be here in fifteen minutes."
"Why did you schedule – "
"I'm so sorry. We had planned a garden tour in Baton Rouge, but I'd assumed it would be canceled due to the weather. Now they say the rain is letting up and it's on again. I'm sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused you." Charmian stood, limped into the kitchen. Cree followed her. With her back to Cree, she began packing a large leather handbag: a pill bottle, a pack of facial tissues, an apple, a pair of fine calfskin gloves.
Cree spoke to her back. "Do you have any idea where Josephine Dupree went after she left your employ?"
"None."
"Have you any idea who would put hoodoo hexes at Beauforte House? Or why?"
That seemed to bring a stiffening to the squared shoulders, but Charmian just said, "Of course not."
Charmian had clearly decided not to give anything, and Cree's frustration spiked. "There's something you should know, Charmian. Bad ghosts kill and maim people. Some do it directly, most do it by driving people to suicide. Or to incurable psychosis. Are you aware that this situation could kill your daughter? That information you give me could save her life? Do you even care?"
That brought Charmian around fast. "Don't you ever impugn my concern for my children! Don't you dare presume to educate me about my familial responsibilities! You know nothing about my feelings toward my children!"
The old woman was breathing hard now, and with the tendons on her corded neck standing forward, her brows arched and eyes blazing, she was physically intimidating despite her age and size. Cree felt the radiation of her emotion, a fierce, enormous, invisible energy like heat from a smelter.
"I think there are two ghosts," Cree persisted. "Do you know who they are?"
A flicker of the eyelids, something hitting the target, but no other response.
"A little girl in a swing," Cree blurted desperately. "A sunny day. One of the ghosts, that's his… his homing impulse, that's what he yearns for, that's the big unresolved thing for him."
Charmian's shoulders hunched suddenly as if Cree had punched her in the stomach, and she lurched forward a half step to keep her balance. It lasted only an instant; she drew herself back up with implacable will. Still she said nothing.
"Who are they, Charmian?" Cree asked, trying to tame her urgency. "Could the girl be Lila? Could the ghost be Richard?"
That didn't completely make sense, not with the beating motion, the other figure there, the affect of wrath and regret, but it was the only possibility Cree could think of. Two ghosts – one being Richard, dying of his heart attack and overcome with love for his daughter, and the other one the boar-headed man? But no, the figure dying on the floor was not having a heart attack: The pain had been too low, gut-deep.
Charmian's face changed. The angry blaze had given way to a look of shock and, for the first time in Cree's memory, uncertainty. But by degrees that faded, mastered with difficulty, to be replaced by the ancient, wise, hard look. She turned and limped away to the windows, where she stared sightlessly out at her garden. The rain had not fully stopped, but the overcast was broken now with brighter spots.
"Life is not a simple proposition, is it Ms. Black? It is mysterious, as you well know. It surprises us and confounds us continually. And all we can do is make the best judgments we can at the time and hope we've made the right choices and done the right things. But we are wrong at least half the time, aren't we? And then our mistakes compound our quandary tenfold. You of all people must know what it is to be something of a prisoner to one's own past. To one's own stubborn predilections." She gestured at the garden, where petals strewn by last night's winds spotted the glistening leaves.
"We're only prisoner to things we've left unresolved. Those haunt us until we deal with them." Cree wanted to press Charmian for specifics but stopped herself: better to see where the old woman took it.
"You're very talented," Charmian went on. "I can see now that I underestimated you."
She seemed about to say more, but the housemaid appeared in the doorway. "The van is here, ma'am. They waitin' out front."
Charmian flipped a hand and the maid vanished again. Still facing the garden, Charmian bit her lips and appeared deep in thought.
At last she turned, limped toward Cree, stopped in front of her, and gave her a penetratingly candid, curious look. "You're like a mirror, aren't you? You change around me – you become like me. I must admit it's quite remarkable, even if the reflection you offer is most unflattering!" The raying wrinkles revealed a flash of sardonic humor as she said that, but the expression passed and she became serious again. "And you do it for each person you meet, don't you? At moments I see Lila in you so strongly! Look at you now, the way you wring your wrists, that's one of her gestures! It's not really something you can control, is it?"