M Sellars - Miranda

“Exit’s gonna be comin’ up soon. Looks like we’re gonna be about an hour or so early,” Ben called over his shoulder.

“Good,” I replied.

“I know this is prob’ly a stupid question, but do ya’ still wanna go straight there?”

“You’re right,” I replied. “Stupid question.”

“Uh-huh,” he grunted. “Just figured I should ask anyway.”

We had been on the road since before sunup, and the travel weariness was starting to take hold. My doctor wasn’t happy with me making this trip in the first place, but I told him I would take his opinion under advisement, which lasted about ten seconds. I’d been discharged from the hospital for less than a week, and the standing order was for me to take it easy. Even though Ben was doing all the driving, eleven hours in a vehicle was exhausting in its own way. At least we were in his van, so there was plenty of room to stretch out.

I looked over at Felicity. She was belted into the seat next to me, head resting on a pillow as she stared into nothingness. Occasionally she would blink, and earlier when we had stopped for lunch, she had eaten out of reflex and even changed position of her own accord. But that was it. Nothing more. I reached out and took hold of her hand then simply held it in mine.

My wife’s parents were as dead set against this trip as my doctor. Shamus more so than Maggie, but neither of them was happy about it. So far, they hadn’t given up their attempts to assume legal control of her care, but our attorney had stonewalled them pretty well. Now that I was out of the hospital, they were fighting a losing battle for the most part. And if things worked out as I hoped, an unnecessary one as well.

“How is she doing, Rowan?” Helen Storm asked, turning in the passenger seat to glance back at me.

“The same,” I said.

“What about you?” she asked. The tenor of her voice told me she held even more concern for my personal well-being.

“I’m fine, Helen… I’ll be okay…”

She twisted a bit more to look at Felicity then smiled and turned back around in her seat.

The hospital had recommended an in-home nursing service. Someone to look after my wife until such time as my strength returned, and then they could train me in the finer points of indigent care. They told me I was in denial when I explained that she wouldn’t be in need of it for much longer. Of course, they were always sure to add that if I continued refusing to allow treatment with the anti-psychotic meds, she might never recover at all.

Fortunately, Helen was her doctor of record, and she was no stranger to how things worked in my world. That was why she had come along on this excursion to help with Felicity instead of a stranger who simply wouldn’t understand.

A bright chirrup blipped through the interior of the vehicle, low at first then gaining in volume. Ben dug out his cell phone, glanced at it, flipped it open, and then tucked it up against his ear.

“Yeah, what’s up?” he said. He paused and listened for a second then spoke again. “We’re about twenty minutes out, prob’ly. Depends on traffic. Yeah… Yeah… I’ll tell ‘im… Yeah, I’ll call ya’… Bye.”

He closed the device and dropped it back into the console. “That was Constance,” he said over his shoulder. “Just checkin’ in. Wanted you ta’ know the dogs and cats are fine.”

“That’s great,” I replied then looked back over at Felicity.

Glancing out the windows, I could see that on our left, the choppy waters of Lake Pontchartrain were slipping past. On the right was a marshy landscape of the shoreline. I pressed my head back against the seat and closed my eyes. We continued the rest of the trip in silence, save for Ben’s occasional grumble about other drivers. I ignored him and simply kept holding Felicity’s hand.

Just over two hours later, we were on the deck of a riverboat and pulling away from the dock to head upstream.

We watched the New Orleans skyline slide slowly by as the engines beneath us thrummed and churned the brown waters of the Mississippi, kicking up a foamy wake. Ahead of us, looming in the distance was the Crescent City Connection Bridge, where the Pontchartrain Expressway spanned the muddy river.

“So what now?” Ben asked.

I sighed and looked around. Most of the passengers were inside for the Jazz Dinner Cruise. While there were still a few other tourists on the deck, fortunately we were standing in a pocket of isolation. My guess was that it most likely was a product of the socially repelling effect of a catatonic woman in a wheelchair. I wasn’t happy about that societal norm, but for our purposes it was actually useful. We didn’t really need an audience for what we were about to do.

Turning back to Ben, I recited a better than one hundred-fifty year old notice from the New Orleans Bee that had become etched in my memory over the last two weeks. “Found Drowned. The coroner held an inquest yesterday on the body of a woman named, Miranda Blanque, sister of Delphine Lalaurie, aged forty-three years, who was found floating in the Mississippi opposite the third municipality. It appears that on Sunday night last, she was seen to have jumped into the river. Verdict accordingly.”

“Yeah,” my friend replied, although I hadn’t really answered his question, and his tone more than betrayed that fact.

I wandered closer to the rail and pointed at the shore on the opposite side of the river, which was slowly receding behind us. “Over there is Algiers,” I said. “In eighteen fifty-one, that was pretty much directly across from the third municipality, so she likely went into the water somewhere upstream, and her body eventually surfaced around that area.”

“But ya’ don’t know where she went in,” Ben replied.

“It doesn’t really matter,” I said. “This is where she died. This is where she has to die again if Felicity is ever going to be free of her.”

I reached into my pocket and withdrew two small glass bottles. Inside each rested one half of the cursed jewelry that had sent us down this path. Each was swimming in salt and could only be seen whenever I slowly twisted the containers and watched for the glint of light from metal.

“How’s your arm?” I asked my friend.

“I got ya’ covered,” he said with a nod.

I carefully uncapped the first vial and poured the necklace and salt into my palm. A tingle began rolling through my body as the metal came into contact with the still healing burn that scarred my flesh. I handed Ben the other vial then nodded toward my outstretched hand. He twisted the cap from the glass container and then hesitantly began to pour it into my palm.

“Go ahead,” I urged.

He turned it up, and the second necklace fell on top of the first, riding in a cascade of white crystals.

Now my hand began to prickle as if it had been asleep. The hair on the back of my neck danced, and an explosion of pain arced through my skull.

“NO!” I hear a woman scream.

“Row?” Ben asked. “You goin’ Twilight Zone?”

“Just a little,” I breathed. “But I’m okay… Let’s do this.”

My friend held out his hand. “This gonna burn me like it did you?”

“It shouldn’t,” I told him.

“Doesn’t matter if it does,” he replied. “I just wanna know what ta’ expect, so I don’t drop ‘em and all.”

“Thanks, Ben.”

“No prob, white man.”

I dumped the contents of my own hand into his large palm. He stepped to the railing and then glanced at me. “Just anywhere?”

I nodded. “Yeah, just anywhere.”

He drew his arm back and with a heavy grunt he launched the necklaces into the thick air.

I see the roiling waters as they rush toward her.