Not Dead Enough

by J. M. Redmann

  “Money usually does it,” Joanne had said.

  “Or it being proof that Halley really was using her,” I’d replied.

  With that damning knowledge, Karen had listened to the other side of the story, that Halley was sending her as a decoy into a dangerous situation, while she and Sabrina made their escape. Halley had said she’d stay at Karen’s house with her “newly arrived Aunt Sabrina” and start supper while Karen went to the showing. Cordelia was going to tag along with Karen because she’d always wanted to see the inside of the house—and she didn’t feel comfortable alone with Halley and an aunt she’d never met. Of course, the minute they left, Halley and Sabrina would have taken off. If no one showed, Karen would still be gone for close to an hour, plenty of time for them to be well out of the city. But they were planning for Karen to be caught in the crossfire. When/if anyone thought or even knew enough to look for them, they would have disappeared into the places money can buy.

  The letter was from Cordelia. I left it unopened and took a shower and changed into a comfortable pair of jeans and a soft, deep purple V-neck T-shirt.

  I looked again at the letter. Was it about the house? Demanding her share as her girlfriend had?

  You could find out if you read it. I dropped it, then quickly picked it up again and tore the flap. It was on her personal stationery, small initials at the top, a thick vellum.

  Dear Micky,

  I looked up from the page. Those two words. Even if it was just a standard greeting, I never thought I’d hear those two words from her again. I looked down at the letter, the words blurring before I could focus again.

  I don’t know what to say. But I have to say something, don’t I?

  We need to talk, but I understand you might be angry. Nancy should never have approached you. The house is between the two of us, our names on the title. We do need to work that out somehow.

  I should have written this sooner, but for so long I didn’t know what to think. It became easier to put it off for another day, let things settle and sort themselves out. Who to believe. One story from Karen, Holly (or Halley) backing her up. It’s only in the last few days, finally finding the time, finally talking at length to Joanne and Danny, that I know what you did. Maybe we would have been okay, although that didn’t seem to be in their plans. And maybe you saved our lives.

  I still can’t wrap my head around it; how Karen got involved—and involved you—with such a heinous family. How easily it could have been different. I could be leaving flowers at her grave. Or in one myself.

  There are no words to express how grateful I am, a grace I’m not sure Karen or I deserve. I won’t even try.

  Danny had to point it out, but if I had been killed, that would have solved the house issue. It would be yours and no one else could claim it. I can’t look at the ways this cost you, putting yourself in danger when you were safe, taking the risk you were wrong, the hours of work to understand what they were doing. I would be beyond churlish to make you sell or move or anything impossible or even difficult. Sabrina killed her own sister. That is the evil they were capable of. You stopped them.

  You were and always will be a big part of my life. I hope we can be friends,

  CJ

  The initials she always signed notes to me with. Not Dr. James, as Nancy would have her be. Or even Cordelia.

  I folded it and put it under papers on my desk, so I wouldn’t see the familiar handwriting as I passed.

  I went out the back door to the small yard and sat, looking at the horizon, the sun behind clouds.

  After Katrina, the destruction, the heartbreak, I watched the choices I made and others made and realized for some of us there was no road back, not enough time in a life to regain what had been lost. The house gone to the floodwaters, every memory, every stick of furniture gone, thirty, forty years, some from birth to the levees failing. All gone. And not enough years left to recover, to move on to a new life. Either coming back here or Houston, Atlanta, the end of the refugee road trip.

  Some of us would recover and did. The years allowed us that mercy, the time to begin anew.

  I now saw the world that way—who can come back? And who only have a short road left?

  Sharon and Margaret might be okay, if they could resist the undertow of addiction, the damned genetic chemical demands that took so many into a shadow world of need and desperation. They were young enough to regain the road they had lost in their missteps.

  Anna-Marie and Andrea would be okay. Late thirties. Enough money to never feel want or the worry, the trickling fear of not being able to pay the bills. Or the need to be someone you aren’t and don’t want to be to survive.

  Karen would be okay, although bruised. Halley was probably a sociopath, confident, glib, smart (although with the fatal blind spot of not considering she might be wrong), and attractive. Willing to say all the words, like “love” and “forever,” that would bind Karen to trust her, believe her. Enough to be used by her. Just from Joanne’s and Danny’s reports, Karen had fallen hard and was still dazed that her world had so fallen apart. Poor little rich girl. She had so much wanted someone to want her for more than just her money. She thought she had found it.

  Cordelia? I’d left her holding a gun on her cousin’s girlfriend and aunt. Left her to pick up the shattered pieces. But I hadn’t broken those pieces. She was unhurt, alive. That might be all I knew. I’d call it okay and leave it there.

  The clouds scudded by, letting a golden shaft of light through. It fell first on my arm, then on my face. One perfect golden ray. I let it warm me until it slipped away again.

  The seasons change.

  And me? Where did I put myself?

  I would be okay.

  About the Author

  J.M. Redmann has published ten novels featuring New Orleans PI Micky Knight. Her first book was published in 1990, one of the early hard-boiled lesbian detectives. Her books have won three Lambda Literary awards, with seven nominations. Her third book, The Intersection of Law & Desire, was an Editor’s Choice for the year of the San Francisco Chronicle, which called Micky Knight, “One of the most hard-boiled and complex female detectives in print today,” and was a recommended book by Maureen Corrigan of NPR’s Fresh Air. Writing as R. Jean Reid, she has published two books in the Nell McGraw series. She lives in New Orleans.

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