Chapter 2
The following morning I awoke to a song playing on my iPhone.
I never used music as an alarm, because it wasn’t enough to wake me, and the music now playing made my sleeping brain cells tumble around one another, trying to name the song.
It took me a moment to identify “Rolling in the Deep” by Adele, and another moment to recall that I didn’t have any Adele songs on my playlist. It wasn’t that I didn’t like her music; it was just that her songs were overplayed enough that I heard them whether or not I wanted to. Like now.
My eyes popped open, my brain registering the absence of the scent of brewing coffee.
I sat up and sprang from my bed, dislodging Mardi from where he lay spooning next to me.
He snuffled once, then nestled back into the covers.
I stared at him enviously, and not just because I wished I could go back to sleep.
I crept toward my door and placed my hand on the knob as I succumbed to a sense of dread.
The last time this had happened, Jolene had packed her bags—and Mardi—and headed home to Mississippi, leaving behind only a note saying she’d return soon.
I’d later learned that she’d left because Jaxson had kissed her.
I couldn’t imagine how long she thought she needed to recuperate after yesterday’s seismic blow.
My heart hurt for her, but I hadn’t had a chance to speak with her yet.
Cooper had driven me back to the apartment, and Jolene’s bedroom door was already closed when I came in.
After taking a deep breath in preparation for whatever I needed to do to be the kind of friend she’d been to me, I opened the door and peered out.
At the round dining table Jolene sat in front of her open laptop, surrounded by neat stacks of her signature Crane linen stationery with what appeared to be numbered lists in her crisp and precise handwriting covering the pages.
Her hair wasn’t as poofy as she liked it, but it was sprayed neatly in place, and I would have sworn that she was wearing the same outfit she’d worn the previous day.
Of course, I hadn’t had my coffee yet, and the lack of caffeine could have been impairing my memory.
She looked up in surprise, then glanced at her Wizard of Oz watch.
“Good gracious! I was so lost in party planning that I lost track of the time.” She jumped out of her chair and pulled an adjacent one out for me. “Just have a seat and I’ll get your coffee and warm up some of the blueberry muffins I made yesterday—”
“Please don’t. Really, I can do it—”
“Sit down, Nola. Or, better yet, go run a brush through that rat’s nest on top of your head while I go pour you a cup and reheat those muffins.” She dashed into the kitchen, the movement followed by the clanging of dishes a moment later.
“Okay,” I said, pretending I hadn’t heard her mention a hairbrush as I slowly lowered myself into a chair.
Jolene’s ordering me around was nothing new, nor was her ability to operate on very little sleep.
What was new, however, was that her feet were bare.
Normal for the rest of us, but for Jolene it was a clear sign that she was having an existential crisis.
As I listened to her rushing around the kitchen, I eyed the quantity of lists and notes littering the table.
If Jolene had slept at all, it hadn’t been for long.
I imagined the desks of the D-Day planners would have been similar—but their notes would have been less complicated and definitely not on Crane stationery.
Jolene returned and placed a Wizard of Oz mug on the table without a coaster—the eighth deadly sin, according to Jolene—the absence of tapping from her heels now glaringly obvious. “So, Jolene…”
She slid her laptop across the table toward me. “Have you been following our YouTube channel? We have twenty thousand more subscribers now than we had last month. Isn’t that great?”
Jolene had been hired by the Ryans’ historical reconstruction and renovation company, JR Properties, as its social media and marketing guru.
Her current focus was the renovation of my house, which she was using to attract clients to the company while also saving me lots of money with donations of building materials and fixtures.
Beau donated his time and expertise, as well as the time and expertise of handymen Thibaut and Jorge, as a marketing expense.
Jaxson, an amateur photographer and a childhood friend of Beau’s, also worked pro bono on the project.
Despite feeling as if Beau had forced me yet again into the position of needing saving from myself, I had to admit that I was in an enviable situation.
I was using my graduate degree in historic preservation while gaining the expertise to renovate my own house—all this while contributing to the architectural character of my new city and creating a new family and community, both necessary in my ongoing battle with my personal demons.
And now, with the popularity of the YouTube channel and other social media outlets, JR Properties was hoping to expand in a brand-new direction: murder-house flipping—meaning renovating and selling houses that would normally be unsalable because of unsavory deaths having happened under their roofs.
I should have been excited that Beau had chosen me to spearhead the first project, the house on Esplanade that Cooper was interested in seeing, with an eye to purchase.
And it would have been exciting—if only it didn’t mean having to see more of Beau Ryan.
There was something between us, something neither of us could or wanted to name—an invisible thread born of shared childhood-abandonment issues and of Beau’s need to be someone’s savior, which was as strong as my need to rely only on myself.
And although I would admit it to no one, a physical spark manifested itself between us whenever we shared the same space.
At least we were both equally committed to ignoring it: I because I didn’t need any more complications in my life; Beau because being with me opened up his psychic gift, leading restless spirits to him, even those he didn’t want—including his own mother.
“We have sponsors lining up,” Jolene continued, “and lots of promised freebies for your house just for the mentions. And Mimi says she’ll offer a beautiful antique bed and dresser of your choosing from the Past Is Never Past in return for featuring it and the store in an upcoming episode.”
“That’s wonderful,” I said. “Just no antiques for the guest room, for when Melanie or Sarah come to visit.” My twelve-year-old half sister, Sarah, had inherited Melanie’s psychic gift, and neither one would appreciate an old bed that came with previous occupants.
I took a sip from my mug and nearly choked on ice-cold coffee.
I looked at Jolene to see if it might be a prank, but she was busily scrolling through the comments left under a recent video showing Thibaut and Jorge doing their wildly popular tool-juggling act on-site at the never-ending renovation of my Creole cottage in the Marigny.
They had begun to include Mardi in some of the videos, which I was convinced was the reason for the sudden upswing in followers.
“Mardi is getting so much love from our viewers,” she said. “I think he needs his own account on Instagram, to increase our exposure. He might even become a home-remodeling influencer! Sort of like the Kardashians, but less tacky and with more tools.”
I blinked, still hoping I was being punked. When she didn’t say anything, I said, “But we already have an Instagram account.”
“You mean JR Properties has an account. I’m talking about Mardi having his very own account. And, by the way, they’re now calling it ‘the ’Gram,’ so make sure you get it right when you’re creating reels or captions. We don’t want to lose our younger audience.”
I stared at her for a moment, beginning to feel very concerned. “Um, right. Just one thing, though. Mardi’s a dog—remember? He can’t type.”
She looked at me as if I’d just set my hair on fire. “Of course he can’t type. He doesn’t have opposable thumbs.”
Before I could say anything else, acrid smoke began billowing from the kitchen. “Do you need to check the muffins?” I asked.
Jolene regarded me briefly before wrinkling her nose. “I think something’s burning. Let me go check the oven.”
When she returned, it was with a plate filled with decapitated muffins.
“Someone forgot to remove the plastic wrap before putting them in the oven, so it melted all over the tops. Luckily, I was able to salvage the bottom halves.” She plopped next to the plate a carton of spreadable butter straight from the fridge, a steak knife protruding from the middle of it.
For as long as I’d known Jolene, she had never once put on the dining table anything that wasn’t on a serving dish.
Including butter. And she definitely had never served butter with a steak knife.
“Who are you and what have you done with Jolene?” I’d intended it as a joke, but its meaning flew straight over her head.
“I’m right here, Nola. Maybe you need to see your eye doctor.
” She returned to her seat and began to flip through the pages scattered in front of her.
“Do you think Mimi Ryan would let us use her house on Prytania for the party? I’d make the food, of course, but we don’t have the room here, and going to a restaurant seems so impersonal, although the Court of Two Sisters does have that large courtyard that’s perfect for entertaining.
” She frowned. “Then again, if it rains we’ll be forced to go inside, which would defeat the purpose of choosing a unique space.
” She reached across the table to a hand-drawn list and used her pencil to draw a line through one of the items.
“Or why don’t we ask the Sabatiers if we could use their beach house in Ocean Springs?”