“Louis?” he called, sitting up. “Louis!”
He spotted Louis sitting under a weeping willow in the wide field of morning glories up on the hill.
“There you are,” Henry said, coming to sit beside him. “Been looking all over for you.”
“Looks like you found me,” Louis said, and his voice sounded hollow.
“What should we do—go out in the boat? Take Gaspard for a walk? Fish?”
“I want to tell you about the morning glories, Henri. I remembered about them. Why I don’t like them,” Louis said quietly, and Henry felt a warning deep in his gut that the dream was turning.
“It doesn’t matter,” Henry said. He didn’t want to have this conversation. All he wanted to do was float down the river, just the two of them under a portion of sun that was all theirs. “Come on. Fish are biting.”
He offered his hand, but Louis didn’t take it. “I have to tell you now, while I’m brave enough to do it.”
Henry saw that Louis wouldn’t be moved, so he sat and waited.
Louis’s words were slow, as if each one cost him. “’Member when I told you I stopped by Bonne Chance that one night, askin’ after you? Your daddy sent some men to see me. They told me to let you go. But I couldn’t do that. So they roughed me up some. It’s not like I hadn’t taken plenty o’ blows before, for bein’ different.” Louis scooped up handfuls of dirt, rubbing the grit of it between the pads of his fingertips. “But one of ’em, he hit my head mighty hard. Always thought I had a hard head, but…” Louis offered a ghost of a smile for his joke. It flickered on his lips for a second and then vanished. He looked up to the cruel blue of the sky. “I remember now, I remember…” he said, and it was with equal parts wonder and sorrow.
Inside Henry, some truth was descending like an avenging angel.
“I don’t want to be here. Let’s go down to the river, baby.” Henry pulled desperately on Louis’s arm, but Louis resisted.
“I need to tell you, cher. And you need to hear it. My head hurt something fierce. A real mal de tête. So I lay down right there on the ground to rest.” Louis plucked a purple blossom from the lush patch of flowers and twirled it in his fingers. “It was a bleed on the brain. Nothin’ to be done about it. The men come back and they found me on the ground, cold and still. And they buried me right there, under the morning glories. And that’s where I am still, cher. Where I been since you left New Orleans, a long time gone.”
“That can’t be true.”
“It is true, cher.”
“You’re here! You’re right here.”
“Where is here, Henri?” Louis insisted. “Remember, Henri. Remember.”
Henry closed his eyes and shut out the world. It was astonishingly simple to do, a birthright, passed down to him from parents who never wanted to see the truth of anything, including their son. But just because someone refused to see the truth didn’t mean it ceased to exist. Henry didn’t want to remember, but it was too late. Already, he was surfacing.
“I waited for you. At Grand Central. But you never got off the train. Just like you never got my letters or my telegrams.”
He remembered. The piano fund. Theta. When he opened his eyes, the tops of the trees were losing color. Dull pain throbbed in his body. His face was wet. “I want to stay with you.”
“Can’t, cher. You got all those songs to write.”
Henry shook his head. “No. No.”
“I don’t know how I got here, or why I got to have this last time with you. I’m mighty grateful for it. But it’s time for me to go now. You, too. You gotta wake up, Henry.”
Henry looked at Louis. His lover was achingly beautiful. In Henry’s memories, Louis would look like this always: young and full of possibility, shimmering around the edges. Something about that triggered other memories. Who had told him about the dead shimmering? He could see a girl with bright green eyes trained on him, weighing.
Ling. Brusque, honest Ling.
She’d told him from the beginning: She could only find the dead.
Ling. And Theta. Evie and Sam.
With each stroke of waking, the pain sharpened. Gaspard whimpered and licked Henry’s hand. The hound looked up at him as if waiting for an answer to a question. Henry leaned his head back and blinked up at the indistinct leaves of an elm until he could find his words.
“I know. I know,” Henry said. He cried out as the pain sliced through him.
“Gonna need some strength,” Louis said. “Kiss me, cher.”