cat all day. Definitely, you can feel safe going down and around to Main. You’re good. You know what? I’ll even make sure you can back up safely.”
She hadn’t forgotten what it was like to direct traffic. She could do it. The last thing she needed was Karen Travers to take up residence right here on the middle of Elm Street because she was too worried about where that damn cat had been.
“Are you sure?” Karen asked.
An SUV pulled up alongside Karen and Janice Herbert rolled her window down. “Karen, is everything okay? Deputy, whatever she did, it was probably because her husband is a dumbass.”
Roxie shook her head. “She’s not in trouble.”
“That cat walked right across the road in front of me.” Karen pointed to the end of the road, where the cat had gotten up and twitched her tail.
Would there be a voice of reason? Roxie wasn’t holding any hope. Janice was known for her strongly worded opinions and her strongly brewed tea. She wasn’t known for reason.
“Oh, no,” Janice said in a totally unreasonable tone. “I got my grandbaby in the car. I can’t go through that. She just got over the crud, and honestly her hair isn’t coming in the way I want it to. I think she got Johnny’s family hair. This baby doesn’t need any more bad luck.”
“Deputy pointed out that we don’t know where the cat’s been,” Karen said, anxiety in her voice.
“Mom, it only works if you see the cat and then purposefully cross the path.” Ashlyn leaned over to look Roxie’s way. “I don’t believe this crap. It’s a cat. It’s a kitty who is only trying to live its life. But I do study up on urban legends and superstitions. They make good horror films. Kind of like my family. Hey, could you give me a ride? I’ll sit in the back and everything. You could turn the lights on and I might make it in time.”
Roxie wasn’t going to set that precedent. If she did, every kid in the parish would treat her like Uber but without the tips. Besides, she now had two cars that wouldn’t drive the direction they should. If she let them, they might set up a camp here so Janice’s grandbaby got better hair or something. It was a typical day in Papillon. “Nope, I’m going to get you all on the right path. There’s no way to make a U-turn so we’re going to do this your way. Just go slow. I’m going to make sure no one plows into you.”
She jogged down to the intersection and motioned for Karen to back up first. After all, her daughter needed somewhere to put all that teen angst, and the AV Club was better than partying. She held out her other hand to stop a truck coming down the intersecting road.
The man behind the wheel stopped and hung his head out. Jerry Nichols. He ran a business on the other side of the square. “Everything all right? Is there an accident?”
Normally she would think this was an example of rubbernecking, but not here. People here knew everyone, so she viewed the question the way Jerry likely intended it—does someone need help?
What if that had been what most people in New York were really asking? It was the way her grandfather had viewed people. It was odd how being down here had made her question all the assumptions she’d made about her life in the city. She’d learned that the people here weren’t so different despite their accents and food and weird superstitions. What if, despite their fast-paced lives, the people she’d known then had cared every bit as much?
“A black cat crossed Karen’s path and Janice is worried about her granddaughter’s hair coming from her son-in-law.” It sounded ridiculous even to her own ears, but it was apparently a big problem. Her job was to help fix problems. Oh, she’d thought it was combatting crime, but she’d learned. Sometimes it was all about containing the crazy.
Jerry nodded sagely. “Oh, I get it. That black cat is everywhere these days. Nobody’s claiming it. I was hoping the rougarou would eat the sucker. Bad luck. You’re doing a good job, Deputy.”
“Thanks.” She watched as Karen and then Janice made their way around the path to bad luck and got on their way. Jerry nodded as he, too, avoided the cat.
She walked back to her SUV under the watchful gaze of her father.