Where The Numinous Awaits

Ch. 4: Nixie's Inheritance

August 10 | Day

"You have to understand." Mr. Walker couldn't contain his amusement. "Your mother was a practical joker to the end!"

We sat at a roundtable in a high rise office building. The rest of the board members entrusted to oversee my mother's considerable wealth erupted with laughter. When I looked to my left, Fitz was laughing, too. I felt the confusion on my face as I tried to laugh along, but my stilted braying turned hysterical as the faces around me expressed hilarity that I couldn't feel.

"You have to understand," said Mr. Walker in reality. "Hurricane Katrina was an unprecedented natural disaster amplified by man-made errors or, or neglect, really. I imagine when Mrs. Murphy discovered you in a flat bottom boat in the flood waters, she—well, she didn't know what else to do with you."

The high rise building overlooking the corporate splendor of New Orleans downsized, and I was back in his cramped, store-front office in a seedier part of the city. Mr. Anthony Walker avoided eye contact and seemed like he would rather be anywhere else than meeting with me on a Saturday afternoon, even though he had set it up. There was no inheritance to speak of, other than the sad truth that the woman I had called mother was a fugitive child-stealer.

Fitz covered my hands with his. He sat beside me in the other scratchy tweed-covered chair. Without him present, I was positive I would have attacked the mousy attorney fiddling with a fountain pen while trying to make excuses for my kidnapping.

Diplomas hung askew on the faded wallpaper behind the man, propping up his questionable reputation. The cluttered desk and twentieth-century computer monitor did little to dispel the feeling that Edwina Murphy's lawyer was a quack. Clearly, she had chosen him for that reason.

"She could have taken me to the authorities." Rubbing my temples, I froze as a thought occurred to me. "Don't tell me she knew who my real parents were?" Mr. Walker's carrot hair flopped forward as he lowered his gaze. His mustache twitched above pursed lips. "Did she?" I pressed.

"She left a name," he said.

I raised an eyebrow in shock that he hadn't led with that information.

He tossed aside the pen and nodded, straightening in his chair. "Along with the book and the letter that she left for you, she gave me a name: Zyr Ravani. I have no idea of the relation, but she said it might be of some relevance to you in the event of her demise."

"How in the entire fuck could you keep such a life-shattering secret?" Fitz demanded to know. But I was more concerned with how Edwina had guessed she would die soon. She had only been fifty-seven years old. Why had she been getting her affairs in order? The coroner had ruled her death of natural causes, though they hadn't found anything wrong with her.

Mr. Walker spread his hands helplessly. "If I can speak plainly in my defense, Mrs. Murphy only revealed these things to me about a month ago. Had minors been involved, I would have reported it immediately! I think, I think she intentionally waited until Ms. Murphy was old enough..."

"Not to go to the cops," I finished for him grimly.

***

Edwina had underestimated me. Five days after the meeting with Mr. Walker, I did go to the cops. I needed to know who I was.

Leaving Fitz at an All You Can Eat crawfish buffet, I took a bus to see Detective Zyr Ravani, the man whose card the lawyer had given me. The ride across the metropolitan area gave me time to think. According to Mr. Walker, Edwina had kidnapped me when I was six or seven years old. Strange that I couldn't remember a time without her. Nothing in New Orleans looked familiar to me, either, and maybe it should have. Why couldn't I recall my real family?