Page 29 of January

“Can we walk around, like you said?” Kyle turned to look at her.

Melinda nodded and asked, “Do you want the full tour-guide mode activated or just a mild one, where I give you a few facts every couple of blocks?”

“Oh. No tour-guide mode,” Kyle said. “Can we just be two people walking around, getting to know each other?”

“Yes, we can,” Melinda replied, smiling at her.

CHAPTER 9

“You didn’t even go in?” Jolie asked.

“I don’t know what happened. We walked all the way over there, and I–”

“Wait.We?”

“Yeah, Melinda and I.”

“Melinda? The tour guide?”

“Yes. Do I know another Melinda in New Orleans or at all?” Kyle asked sarcastically as the car made its way along the street.

“I didn’t know you were asking her to go with you.”

“You didn’t want to, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to go alone. Turns out, I didn’t even go in with her there, so…”

“It’s just a house, Ky.”

“I know. But it’s kind of weird, isn’t it? Grandma had two houses. One is pretty modest. Then, there’s this mansion in the middle of a rich part of town, and she’s just renting it out to vacationers.”

“Itisweird, but maybe she didn’t want to have to deal with it. Shedidlive alone all these years.”

“Why did Mom make it sound like they had nothing when she was growing up? Her room looked like a typical teenage room from back then. She had a lot more thanwedid growing up.”

“Mom is a liar. You know that,” Jolie replied.

“I just have a lot of questions.”

“Do you think you’re going to ask her?”

“Why would I waste my time? She’ll only come up with a new lie.”

When the car pulled over outside of the office building, Jolie and Kyle thanked the shared-ride driver and got out, standing on the sidewalk for a moment, looking up at it.

“Now or never, huh?” Jolie said.

“Let’s go and find out what we can,” she replied.

Inside, the lobby was expansive, with a round security desk and one of those screens where they could check on the location of the suite number and the elevator they should take to get there because there were, apparently, certain elevators that took people to floors two through six and others that went to floors seven through eleven. Finding the right one, Kyle hit the button and waited with Jolie at her side.

“So, Melinda?”

“What about her?”

“Was she mad that you basically dragged her along for nothing?”

“No. She was great. We ended up walking around for a while.”

“What did you talk about?”

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