Once, a long time ago, Lulu had said that I should ask my questions of the ghosts, so there on the southbound side of I-75, I did. “What’s madness? Me doing this?”

All of it. Time, over and over changing nothing—repeating the same lives again and again, each time expecting things will come out different. They never do. It’s like riding a horse in a big circle, just out front of a boneyard. You keep thinking you’ve gone past all those angry dead folks, but then you come up on ’em again, right where you left them, and they’re still just as mad as hell to see you.

“All I’m doing is taking a trip to go ask an old woman some questions.”

’Sthat all? I guess I’m crazy too, then. See, I look at you, all grown up and a woman now, and I think this time—yes, this time it has to be different. I look at you and I can’t imagine how you could be the same person, there on the inside. Malachi sees it—or maybe he doesn’t. I think he knows it so sure he doesn’t have to see it anymore. That’s faith for you, right there. It’s faith when you hear the Lord talk so loud that you can’t hear regular people and regular reason anymore.

An I wish you had faith a little more. I wish your auntie’s words could hold you, but I know they can’t, and I know mine can’t either because I know better than anyone who you really are. Your aunt said Tatie knew, and she’s right—all us old folks, nearly dead but not quiet yet, we all know. And I know you’ll not be stopped by us. But your auntie’s right. You’re not even asking the right questions. The things you think you want to know don’t matter for nothing. The old woman will answer you, and she’ll speak true because you’re asking her nothing of value. Not yet.

Mae can call you her baby if she likes, but you and I both know you’re no sweet innocent. Mae is blinded by who you are, but I’m not, and I want to see things different this time. But damned if you don’t make it hard on us, going off into the lion’s den like this. Damned if you don’t make us wonder. Damned if you don’t make us doubt what we know.

Damned if you do.

“But I—I’m not Avery, am I?” I took a second to glance in the mirror then but she was gone, vanished as surely as if she’d never been there. “That’s not fair,” I grumbled aloud, whapping my hands on the steering wheel. “You oughta at least stick around long enough for me to respond.”

Right at the height of my indignation, I suddenly realized that my car was no longer on the road.