I had no reason to lie. I’d already decided I was leaving, anyway. I was glad I’d found Marion, but she had only told me that there was nothing for me to learn there in the valley. It had taken me a couple of days to come to terms with it, but once that difficult truth had settled in, the rest of my course was as clear as it was peculiar.

“I was out with Jamie and Drew,” I said, “but that’s not half as interesting as what I was up to this weekend. I went to Pine Breeze. It wasn’t that hard to find.” I took a hard breath and stepped past her. I went down the hall to my room without looking back, then gathered an overnight bag and started packing it with clean underwear. Socks followed suit, and a clean pair of jeans. Lulu trailed behind me and stood in the doorway, one arm lightly hanging on the frame in a gesture that had become very familiar to me.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“Macon,” I responded without looking up from my bag. “Now are you gonna ask what I think I’m gonna find?”

“No. You’re looking for Tatie.” She spit the last work out, adding contempt to the pronunciation. Tah-tee, she says it, and even though that’s the way it’s supposed to be, it sounds like a curse, or something like despair. “You don’t really want to find her. You don’t really want to go to Macon.”

“Okay,” I agreed. “Then maybe I’ll go to Highlands Hammock.”

I would almost swear that the blank stare Lulu gave me was genuine. She’s a good liar—maybe a better one than I am, but I don’t think she’s that good. “Where?” she asked, and my confidence faltered. I’ve been wrong before and bluffed my way free, but if you’re wrong with Lulu, you might as well fold. She’ll have won before the next words are out of your mouth.

“Highlands—Highlands Hammock. It’s in Florida.”

Her forehead did not uncrinkle to hint at enlightenment. “Where in Florida?”

I was forced to confess that I didn’t know. “But I’ve got a map in the car. It can’t be that hard to find.”

“Who’s in Florida that you think you need to talk to?” Again, I didn’t think she was messing with me. If she really knew something about the place that I didn’t, she should have gone into politics with that poker face.

Shit. All right, then, it was time to bluff; but once again I didn’t know the answer. “Tatie could tell you, if you’d bother to ask her.” Like Mr. Spock used to say, “Never lie when you can misdirect.”

“Tatie would as soon see us dead as tell us anything useful.”

“Sort of like you?” It flew out before I could stop it. Old patterns die so hard. I’ll be eighty and she’ll be one hundred, and I’ll still regress to a wiseass six-year-old when she confronts me.