Dead in the Family (Sookie Stackhouse #10)(53)
Author: Charlaine Harris

"Sookie," Andy said. I hadn’t realized he’d noticed me.

"Andy," I said cautiously. I wasn’t sure where this conversation would go, and I had to leave for work soon. "You still have relatives in town? Or have they left?"

"They’re leaving after lunch," he said. "Halleigh had to work on some class preparations this morning, and Glen had to run into his office to catch up on paperwork. This has been hardest on Portia."

"I guess she’ll be glad when things get back to normal." That seemed safe enough.

"Yeah. She’s got a law practice to run."

"Did the lady who was taking care of Miss Caroline have another job to go to?" Reliable caregivers were as scarce as hens’ teeth and far more valuable.

"Doreen? Yeah, she moved right across the garden to Mr. DeWitt’s." After an uncomfortable pause, he said, "She kind of got on to me that night, after you-all left. I know I wasn’t polite to … Bill."

"It’s been a hard time for you-all."

"I just … It makes me mad that we were getting charity."

"You weren’t, Andy. Bill is your family. I know it must feel weird, and I know you don’t think much of vampires in general, but he’s your great-great-great-grandfather, and he wanted to help out his people. It wouldn’t make you feel funny if he’d left you money and he was out here with Miss Caroline under the ground, would it? It’s just that Bill’s still walking around."

Andy shook his head, as if flies were buzzing around it. His hair was thinning, I noticed. "You know what my grandmother’s last request was?"

I couldn’t imagine. "No," I said.

"She left her chocolate cake recipe to the town," he said, and he smiled. "A damn recipe. And you know what, they were as excited at the newspaper when I took that recipe in as if it were Christmas and I’d brought them a map to Jimmy Hoffa’s body."

"It’s going to be in the paper?" I sounded as thrilled as I felt. I bet there would be at least a hundred chocolate cakes in the oven the day the paper came out.

"See, you’re all excited, too," Andy said, sounding five years younger.

"Andy, that’s big news," I assured him. "Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go return something." And I hurried through the rest of the cemetery to Bill’s house. I put the CD, complete with its little sticky note, on top of the pile from which I’d taken it, and I skedaddled.

I second-guessed myself, and third-, fourth-, and fi fth-guessed, too. At Merlotte’s I worked in a kind of haze, concentrating fiercely on getting lunch orders right, being quick, and responding instantly to any request. My other sense told me that despite my efficiency, people weren’t glad to see me coming, and really I couldn’t blame them.

Tips were low. People were ready to forgive inefficiency, as long as you smiled while you were sloppy. They didn’t like the unsmiling, quick-handed me.

I could tell (simply because he thought it so often) that Sam was assuming I’d had a fight with Eric. Holly thought that I was having my period.

And Antoine was an informant.

Our cook had been lost in his own broody mood. I realized how resistant he normally was to my telepathy only when he forgot to be. I was waiting on an order to be up at the hatch, and I was looking at Antoine while he flipped a burger, and I heard directly from him, Not getting off work to meet that ass**le again, he can just stuff it up his butt. I’m not telling him nothing else. Then Antoine, whom I’d come to respect and admire, flipped the burger onto its waiting bun and turned to the hatch with the plate in his hand. He met my eyes squarely.

Oh shit, he thought.

"Let me talk to you before you do anything," he said, and I knew for sure that he was a traitor.

"No," I said, and turned away, going right to Sam, who was behind the bar washing glasses. "Sam, Antoine is some kind of agent for the government," I said, very quietly.

Sam didn’t ask me how I knew, and he didn’t question my statement. His mouth pressed into a hard line. "We’ll talk to him later," he said. "Thanks, Sook." I regretted now that I hadn’t told Sam about the Were buried on my land. I was always sorry when I didn’t tell Sam something, it seemed.

I got the plate and took it to the right table without meeting Antoine’s eyes.

Some days I hated my ability more than others. Today was one of those days. I had been much happier (though in retrospect, it had been a foolish happiness) when I’d assumed Antoine was a new friend. I wondered if any of the stories he’d told about going through Katrina in the Superdome had been true, or if those had been lies, too. I’d felt such sympathy for him. And I’d never had a hint until now that his persona was false. How could that be?

First, I don’t monitor every single thought of every person. I block a lot of it out, in general, and I try especially hard to stay out of the heads of my co-workers. Second, people don’t always think about critical stuff in explicit terms. A guy might not think, I believe I’ll get the pistol from under the seat of my truck and shoot Jerry in the head for screwing my wife. I was much more likely to get an impression of sullen anger, with overtones of violence. Or even a projection of how it might feel to shoot Jerry. But the shooting of Jerry might not have reached the specific planning stage at the moment the shooter was in the bar, when I was privy to his thoughts.

And mostly people didn’t act on their violent impulses, something I didn’t learn until after some very painful incidents as I grew up.

If I spent my life trying to figure out the background of every single thought I heard, I wouldn’t have my own life.

At least I had something to think about besides wondering what the hell was happening with Eric and the Long Tooth pack. At the end of my shift, I found myself in Sam’s office with Sam and Antoine.

Sam shut the door behind me. He was furious. I didn’t blame him. Antoine was mad at himself, mad at me, and defensive with Sam. The atmosphere in the room was choking with anger and frustration and fear.

"Listen, man," Antoine said. He was standing facing Sam. He made Sam look small. "Just listen, okay? After Katrina, I didn’t have no place to live and nothing to do. I was trying to find work and keep myself going. I couldn’t even get a damn FEMA trailer. Things were going bad. So I … I borrowed a car, to get to Texas to some relatives. I was gonna dump it where the cops could find it, get it back to the owner. I know it was stupid. I know I shouldn’ta done it. But I was desperate, and I did something dumb."

"Yet you’re not in jail," Sam observed. His words were like a whip that barely flicked Antoine, drew a little bit of blood.