Page 36 of Crossroads Magic
Olivia didn’t take her eyes off the road. She did take one hand off the massive steering wheel and wave it languidly. Even the skin on the back of her hands was a soft, pure white that looked like it had never seen the sun. “You’re not the first to misunderstand the Crossing.”
“That probably explains why you know your way around Syracuse so well. You’ve had to bail out a lot of visitors.”
“I am quite familiar with the route, yes.” Her perfect cupid’s bow mouth curved into a smile. She was wearing pink lipstick today, that went with the brown coat and beret.
“Your husband doesn’t drive, then?”
“Cars and mechanical things aren’t Wim’s forte.”
I recalled him bending over trays of seedlings. “He’s a gardener?”
Her smile grew even warmer. “Yes.”
A small silence lengthened while I tried to think of something else to say. “Do you come to Syracuse to shop, then?”
“Something like that.”
I pressed my lips together, trying to come up with a response to that. Nope. I got nothing. So I found another line, instead. This time, the weather. “Will it snow any more before Christmas, do you think?”
“Possibly.”
“It’s already more snow than I’ve ever seen in L.A.”
“You get snow in Los Angeles?” Oliva was startled.
“A couple of times that I remember as a kid. An inch, which was gone by nightfall. That was when I was just out of high school. Then in 2007. And they’re saying we’ll have snow this year, too, but I’m not holding my breath. Does Haigton Crossing get a lot of snow?”
“It depends on the year,” Olivia said unhelpfully.
I gave another mental sigh. I’d been paid very good money to keep pleasant conversations going with reluctant clients, but Olivia was clearly going to be a challenge.
Over the next ninety minutes, I tried to put her at ease and open up the conversation. She resisted every effort.
She wasn’t rude about it. She didn’t refuse to speak. She responded to every question. Her replies were warm, and sometimes delivered with a little laugh, but they were all effectively dead ends.
Was she doing it deliberately? I couldn’t tell. She didn’t seem to be thinking her answers through at all. Yet they emerged, heavy anchors that drowned the conversation.
Finally, I tried a direct enquiry that would, hopefully, give me more to build a response upon. “Does Wim like coming to the city? Or does he love his garden too much to stir out of Haigton Crossing?”
“Wim has never seen a city,” Olivia said, her tone distant. She was turning off one of the minor highways onto the route that would take us to Edwards, concentrating on steering the big car cleanly onto the new route. “Certainly not with me.”
“Why not with you?”
“It’s not permitted.” She straightened up the car, driving more slowly along the narrower route, then glanced at me. “I mean, he won’t permit it. Wim loves the Crossing too much.”
She’s lying. The silent voice spoke with flat certainty in my mind.
I grappled with the odd statements. Wim wasn’t permitted to see the city while in Olivia’s company? Who got to dictatethatstrange rule, then?
I was still thinking it over when we reached the turnoff for Haigton Crossing.
“You must think I’m a little strange,” Olivia said, speaking over the shushing noise the snow was making around the tires of the Continental. “I myself haven’t lived in a big city for many years. We’ve got used to our own ways.”
She wasn’t exactly lying, but there were vast unspoken truths behind her words, casting shadows.
Olivia spoke again. “Of course, you probably won’t be taking Ghaliya to the city, either.”
I stared at her, utterly unnerved. “What?”
