Julia adjusted her estimate of the number of glasses of whiskey that had sat in front of this woman this evening. Her smile was sympathetic, if half-full. She believed in ghosts when she was young. In ghosts, and in pirates and in men who whisked you off your feet. Now Julia saw things in shadows and anything as simple as ghosts she envied. The phone in Nish's pocket died slowly and by degrees.
"I don't think everything relies on you believing in it to be true," she said now, running her forefinger along the leather strap of her wrist. The bruising had faded, plum-colored marks marbled into nothing on cream. And the woman with the whiskey laughed as if the woods were something to laugh at. Julia's smile rolled on its edges, flickered briefly. A Langdale's spine would straighten. A Langdale's smile would chill like ice, Langdales weren't laughed at. But she shrugged, rolling the blades of her shoulders together in a squeeze of pressure.
"I stay in a trailer. It's quiet. I like quiet," she said with the faint amusement of the conversation turning ribald. "What's your name?"