I want to ask a dozen more questions, but my mind is tripping over her words, spinning in sickly circles as I try to understand. And Daniel is already at the gate, following his grandmother home.

I don’t know if I actually believe all this hoodoo bullshit. But a few months ago, I wouldn’t have believed in coins falling from the sky or that my mother had another baby or that my grandmother had frittered away my college money. I’m in no position to argue. Instead, I just nod and run out into the sun, a jar of herbs and brandy sloshing in my hand.

XXII.

I CAN HEAR THEIR VOICES BEFORE I EVEN FINISH unlocking the door. Izora Jo’s jar is tucked into the sticky skin of the crook of my elbow, but I doubt it works on my mother’s kooky clients. I pause a moment at the threshold, listening. One of the voices is excitable, high-pitched and talking much too fast. Surprisingly, it’s not my mother’s. By contrast, her voice is low and soothing, her tones even as she tries to settle the woman who’s come to see her.

I swing the door wide and stride in. My mother’s client is sitting with her at the little card table. Her curly, peanut-colored hair is frizzed around her face from the humidity, and her nose is red and puffy, her cheeks streaked wet. She toys with a wad of tissues in her lap. They both glance my way, and the woman seems nervous, but my mother reassures her. “That’s just Cat, my youngest. She won’t interfere.”

My breath hitches at her use of the term youngest, but I turn my face so she won’t notice. I flop my sketchbook on the sofa bed and rack my memory. Have I ever heard her call me that before? I mentally shuffle through the handful of visits at Moony’s and what I can recall of the years before. I come up blank. Is this confirmation that the picture I found is exactly what I think it is? Is it coincidence or a Freudian slip? I settle myself in one corner of pillows and grab my sketchbook and pencils, pretending to draw even though I’m really just going back over the lines of an earlier piece.

“It’ll be just like before,” the woman confesses, a hiccup breaking her voice. “And then he’ll leave me. I know he will.”

My mother leans in, stroking her arm. “Don’t panic, Nan. You don’t know that.”