Page 99 of Curse in the Quarter
He let the sound of the fountain fill the space where an explanation might have gone. The blade at his side—quiet tonight, content to be only a presence—rested like a promise, not a tool. He took a breath.
“You told me once,” she said, “that sometimes meaning arrives before understanding. I didn’t realize you meant it literally.”
“I’m occasionally literal.”
“Occasionally,” she echoed, amused. “Do you ever get the sense that you’re… overlapping with yourself? That youcan feel more than one version of who you are at the same time?”
The question landed close to bone. “Sometimes,” he said, and left it there. A line between honesty and confession that he could hold without lying.
They resumed walking. A second line drifted along Royal, a small one—just a snare, a tenor sax, and a handful of locals who couldn’t help themselves. Delphine’s step found the beat. He matched it, and for a block they let the music set their cadence.
“I had one dream that felt less like a dream,” she said. “A river. Evening. I could smell mud and magnolia. There was a steamboat, and—” Her mouth tilted. “A man who kept asking me whether I believed in anything beyond the horizon.”
“Did you?”
“In the dream?” She nodded. “Absolutely. Awake, I’m not sure why I was so confident.”
“Confidence often arrives with evidence,” he said. “Even if the evidence is felt rather than cataloged.”
She studied him sidelong. “You’re very gentle with this.”
“With you,” he said before he could stop himself, and kept walking as if he hadn’t said anything at all. “What else?”
If she noticed, she let him keep the dignity of pretending. “It’s not always pleasant. Sometimes I’m… angry when I wake up. Or grieving something I can’t name. Or I catch myself reaching for someone who isn’t there.” She huffed out a breath. “And then I realize I’m doing it in the middle of Rouses and people are staring because I’m singing to the produce.”
“The produce has heard worse,” he said, deadpan. Itwon her laugh—quick, surprised, grateful. He found he wanted it again.
“I’m serious,” she said, but the sharp edge had rounded. “I don’t want to read too much into it. I don’t want to become the kind of person who sees ghosts in laundry and omens in coffee grounds.”
“You’re not that person.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you don’t want to be,” he said. “And because you’ve spent your life asking better questions than most people dare. You don’t chase shadows. You wait until they stand still long enough to introduce themselves.”
She considered that, then nodded once, slow. “What if the shadows are mine?”
“Then they’ll be patient,” he said. “And if they aren’t, I will be.”
Silence, but not the empty kind. The Quarter opened its hands: a door swung wide to release a swell of saxophone, a couple bickered affectionately over directions, somewhere a cook shouted for more oysters. They passed a bookshop, lights low; Delphine’s gaze paused on a display of vintage maps. He could almost see the paths arranging themselves behind her eyes.
“Do you ever wish for instructions?” she asked. “Some kind of—cosmic user manual?”
“Frequently,” he said. “I’ve never received one.”
“Me neither.” She smiled, small and rueful. “It would make this easier.”
“It might make it smaller,” he said. “I’m not convinced that would be better.”
Another block. The air cooled a fraction, enough to raise the hairs along his forearms. He noticed the way she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear when she wasdeciding whether to trust a thought out loud. He didn’t look at her while she decided.
“What if,” she said finally, “what I’m dreaming isn’t… metaphor. What if some memories arrive as stories first because it’s the only way I’ll accept them? What if I’m remembering things that never happened to me, except they did?”
He didn’t let himself move. “Then you’re already farther along than most people ever get.”
“And that’s… okay?”
“It’s not a diagnosis,” he said. “It’s a direction. You can follow it or not. Either way, it’s yours.”
