“Ain’t nothin’ sound so old and weary as a trumpet in the night,” Tante Juliette used to say.

She could almost hear Tante’s voice now as she lounged in a tub full of bubbles and sipped a very dry martini, while randomly selected blues music echoed down the long hallway from the living room. Instead of relaxing and energizing her, the music just seemed to reinforce the fact that she was tired and alone, like every other night.

Not for any particular reason. She had no AI’s scheduled for the next two weeks, and no deliveries expected until the end of the month. She still went to the office every day to shuffle papers and do busy work, but it wasn’t enough to make her feel like she’d accomplished anything. She’d leave mid-afternoon, come home, drop her keys on the table, her valise on the chair, run a bath with lots of bubbles—magnolia scented—fix a drink and put on the music. Day by day by day, it seemed to drag on forever sometimes.

She sighed, took another sip from her glass. It only came on her like this when she was a particular kind of tired, bone tired, from the inside out. Not from work or stress, and certainly not romance troubles. Dr. D.P. Wilson, M.D., was far too busy for romance. She dealt with female problems of one kind or another all day long, and sometimes well into the night; she didn’t need to come home to any.

That’s what she told herself, in times like this, when the accent came creeping back into her voice, lengthening her vowels and rounding off consonants, and she had to consciously avoid salting her words with a little patois. “French!” Granmere always yelled at her, pounding her cane on the floor, “Real French! Not gutter slang!” She cringed at the memory.

A fiery sunset was casting its burnt red light down the hall, reminding her that there were a lot of long hours between now and next morning. She was tired, a little blue, and she was hungry for a taste of home, a little taste of something Creole.

It was cool enough for an evening drive with a top down, casual in crew neck and jeans, hair secured by a colorful headscarf, sunglasses on the dash just in case she decided to head west instead of east. No particular place to go, she just drove until she found herself in an unfamiliar section of town, the street lined with small shops and bars. One caught her eye, with its luminous blue neon sign announcing “Kit’s Place” and a large sign in the window that said, “Creole Cookout and Katrina Fundraiser Tonight.”