Taltos by Anne Rice

Mary Jane had cried.
    But Bea had disappeared already, conveniently enough. Mary Jane popped her gum again, and then again in a whole side-mouth series of little pops.
    “Awesome,” said Mona.
    “Like I said, there’s a story to it all. I could tell you some terrible things about my time in Florida. Yeah, I been there, and in Alabama for a while, too. I had to sort of work my way back down here.”
    “No lie,” said Mona.
    “Mona, don’t be sarcastic.”
    “I seen you before,” Mary Jane had said, going on as if nothing at all had happened. “I remembered you when you and Gifford Mayfair came out to L.A. to go to Hawaii. That’s the first time I was ever in an airport. You were sleeping right there by the table, stretched out on two chairs, under Gifford’s coat, and Gifford Mayfair bought us the best meal???”
    Don’t describe it, Mona had thought. But Mona did have some hazy memory of that trip, and waking up with a crick in her neck in the Los Angeles airport, known by the snappy name of LAX, and Gifford saying to Alicia that they had to bring “Mary Jane” back home someday.
    Only thing, Mona had no memory of any other little girl there. So this was Mary Jane. And now she was back home. Gifford must be working miracles from heaven.
    Bea had returned with the iced tea. “Here it is, precious, lots of lemon and sugar, the way you like it, isn’t that right? Yes, darling.”
    “I don’t remember seeing you at Michael and Rowan’s wedding,” said Mona.
    “That’s ’cause I never came in,” said Mary Jane, who took the iced tea from Bea as soon as it entered the nearest orbit, and drank half of it, slurping it and wiping it off her chin with the back of her hand. Chipped nail polish, but what a gorgeous shade of crape myrtle purple.
    “I told you to come,” said Bea. “I called you. I left a message for you three times at the drugstore.”
    “I know you did, Aunt Beatrice, ain’t nobody who could say that you didn’t do your level best to get us to that wedding. But, Aunt Beatrice, I didn’t have shoes! I didn’t have a dress? I didn’t have a hat? See these shoes? I found these shoes. These are the first shoes that are not tennis shoes that I have worn in a decade! Besides, I could see perfect from across the street. And hear the music. That was fine music you had at your wedding, Michael Curry. Are you sure you aren’t a Mayfair? You look like a Mayfair to me; I could make let’s say seven different points about your appearance that’s Mayfair.”
    “Thank you, sweetheart. I’m not a Mayfair.”
    “Oh, you are in your heart,” said Celia.
    “Well, of course,” said Michael, never taking his eyes off the girl even once, no matter who spoke to him. And what do men see when they look at bundles of charm like this?
    “You know when we were little,” Mary Jane had gone on, “we didn’t have anything out there, we just had an oil lamp and a cooler with some ice in it and a lot of mosquito netting hung all over the porch and Granny would light the lamp every evening and …”
    “You didn’t have electricity?” Michael had asked. “How long ago was this? How long ago could it have been?”
    “Michael, you’ve never been in the Bayou Country,” said Celia. And Bea gave a knowing nod.
    “Michael Curry, we were squatters, that’s what we were,” said Mary Jane. “We were just hiding out in Fontevrault. Aunt Beatrice could tell you. Sheriff would come to throw us out periodically. We’d pack and he’d take us into Napoleonville and then we would go back and he’d give up on us, and we’d be in peace for a while, till some goody-two-shoes passed by in a boat, some game warden, somebody like that, and called in on us. We had bees, you know, on the porch for honey? We could fish right off the back steps? We had fruit trees all around the landing then, before the wisteria got them like a giant boa constrictor, you know, and blackberries? Why, I’d just pick all I wanted right