The answer was clear: no. But there were bodies in the narrow back yard. There were three of them, all babies. I didn’t know what that meant. They’d died so soon after birth that they hadn’t had much consciousness for me to tap into, so I hadn’t been able to name the cause of death, which is usually quite clear. But the Charleston homeowners had been thrilled with the results, especially after an archaeologist dug up the meager remains of the tiny bodies. They would dine out on the dead babies for the next decade. They’d handed me a check without hesitation.

That’s not always the case.

Tolliver said, “Where you want to stop to eat?”

I glanced over. He wasn’t fully awake. He reached over to pat my shoulder. “You tired?” he asked.

“I’m okay. We’re about thirty miles outside Spartanburg. Too far?”

“Sounds good. Cracker Barrel?”

“You must want some vegetables.”

“Yeah. You know what I look forward to, if we really do buy that house we talk about? Cooking for ourselves.”

“We do okay when we’re at home,” I agreed. We had bought a few cookbooks at secondhand bookstores. We picked very simple recipes.

Our apartment in St. Louis was hanging in the balance right now. We spent so much time on the road that it was very nearly a waste of money. But we needed a home base, somewhere to collect our mail, a place to call home when we weren’t driving around the United States. We’d been saving up to buy a house, probably somewhere in the Dallas area so we’d be close to our aunt and her husband. They had custody of our two little sisters.

We spotted the restaurant sign we’d been looking for after about twenty miles, and I pulled off the interstate. Though it was about two o’clock in the afternoon, the parking lot was crowded. I tried not to grimace. Tolliver just loved Cracker Barrel. He didn’t mind wading through all the kitsch in the store part of the building. So after we parked (about a half mile away) we slogged through the slush past the rocking chairs on the porch, stamping our feet on the mat so we wouldn’t track the icy mess inside.

The restrooms were clean, and the place was warm. We were seated almost immediately, and the waitress, a very young woman with hair as straight as a horse’s tail, was delighted to serve us. Well, Tolliver. Waitresses, barmaids, maids in hotels: serving women love Tolliver. We ordered, and while I was simply enjoying not being in a moving vehicle, Tolliver was thinking about the next job.

“It’s a law enforcement invitation,” he warned me.