“I hate to think that, but I have to say there’s something to it,” Rain said.

“Mom, you’re just barely over forty, so you can have a long and happy marriage with Gary. Go for it.” Rain had been unmarried and in her teens when she’d had Manfred, and she would never talk about his father. If his grandmother, Xylda, had known, she hadn’t said a word. Manfred thought she didn’t know who her daughter had been sleeping with, or she’d have found a way to let him know without actually telling him. Xylda had loved him, maybe more than she’d loved her own daughter, Rain, but she’d loved drama most of all.

“I do deserve to be happy,” Rain said now, as if she’d been told that but was just now believing it. “I am going to marry Gary. And if we decide not to tell his kids in advance, we may not tell you, either. We’ll just go do it.”

Since he’d already told her that was what he wanted, Manfred could only repeat that he agreed and wished her luck. “Tell me when it’s done,” he said. “I love you, Mom. If Gary’s the guy you want, go for it.”

When he hung up, after having the whole conversation with Rain several times, Manfred sat back in his chair and worried for a minute or two. Gary and his mother had been dating six years, but those were years that Manfred had not been around much, since he’d been living mostly with his grandmother. He realized that he didn’t know Gary very well. Presumably his mother did, and that was what was important. Should he check Gary out? But Rain had dated the man for a long time. If she hadn’t found out if he had a criminal record in that length of time, she didn’t want to know.

Manfred decided to leave well enough alone.

It would be strange when his mother had a last name that was different from his.

Once he had thought of that, he realized he couldn’t, for the life of him, remember Gary’s last name. He laughed out loud. The great psychic couldn’t remember his mom’s future name. Redding. That was it.

Having settled that, Manfred gave the subject no more thought. Instead, energized by his interest in the new guy, Rick (or Barry) Horowitz, he settled in to work for over an hour before knocking off to watch some television. He figured he’d made back what he’d had to pay Magdalena Orta Powell . . . but he’d thought of something else he needed from her. And he knew he couldn’t get it in a straightforward way.

He found the bill and cover letter he’d received from Powell’s office. He examined it carefully.

Then he started comparing fonts in his Word program.

—

“I sent a letter to Rachel’s house,” he told Olivia the next morning, after he’d been to the Davy post office. He knew he sounded smug, but he was feeling pretty optimistic. Ever since Fiji had laid the “confidence” spell on him, he’d had these moments of sheer . . . rightness. Like he couldn’t do the wrong thing and every idea he had was a good one. “It’ll be delivered tomorrow, and Lewis will have to sign for it.”

Should he be worrying about this? He didn’t know, and he only realized theoretically that he should care.

“Why?” she said blankly.

“I duplicated Magdalena’s letterhead. Her letter tells Lewis that the old folks are coming and they should be allowed access to search for possessions of theirs in the library.”

“Show me,” she said.

So he did, smiling all the while. “Pretty damn official, huh?”

Olivia looked at the “letter” very carefully. “You idiot,” she said, but she didn’t sound furious, which Manfred took as a compliment.

“Sounds good, doesn’t it?”

“When did you get the idea that lawyers talked like this?”

“What, you know a lot about lawyer talk?”

“I know more than you do, apparently.” She reread the letter. “However, this isn’t bad, and Lewis may swallow it. It gives us a kind of layer of credibility. Unless he calls Ms. Powell. Didn’t think of that, did you?”

Manfred felt that he should be crestfallen, but he wasn’t. “He won’t. He’ll be so angry he’ll be getting ready to repel the boarders. So he’ll get the letter tomorrow. And we should plan on going to the house the next day, or tomorrow afternoon, even. What do you think would suit the old folks best?”

Olivia said, “Say we leave here day after tomorrow at nine. We’ll have to stop at least once, because they’ll have to pee. We get to Dallas, take them to a Golden Corral or an Outback or something, and then go to Bonnet Park. We’ll get to the Goldthorpe house between one and two, give or take. And we’ll spend about an hour there. We should be able to have them back by dinner.”

Manfred had been confident she’d end up being glad about his taking the initiative. “Now we have to enlist Barry. We’ll have to take two cars. He can ride with one of us, and the other will drive the old people.”

“I’ll go talk to him,” she said.

“I’ll go over to Fiji’s,” Manfred said, to his own surprise. “I haven’t seen her today.”

As Olivia set off for the hotel, Manfred crossed Witch Light Road to see Midnight’s own witch.

As soon as he saw her, he felt completely sober.

20

Fiji was crying. It made something inside Manfred twist and cringe. For a second he stood, shocked, and then he said, “That Travis! Last night! Did he hurt you?”

Fiji looked as surprised as a weeping woman could. “No! Are you kidding? I would have killed him if he had.”