The Devil's Punchbowl by Greg Iles

baskets feel themselves lifted bodily from the ground. The ceremony is a perfect prologue for tomorrow’s opening race, when the balloons will leap from the dewy morning grass and fill the skies over the city, pulling every attentive soul upward with them.
     
“I’m glad ya’ll decided to go ahead with it,” Annie says, grabbing my arm as we hurry to join the people streaming among the balloons. “This will help the refugee kids forget about the hurricane.”
     
She tugs me toward the nearest balloon, and I use her momentary inattention to check my cell phone for further text messages. I don’t know if I’m hoping Tim will cancel the meeting or move it forward. All I know for sure is that I want the truth about Golden Parachute. But there’s no message.
     
I spend the first forty-five minutes with Annie, looking at everything she instructs me to and buttonholing pilots so she can ask them all kinds of questions about the flight parameters of hot-air balloons. I get buttonholed myself a few times, by citizens with questions or complaints about their pet interest, but Annie has become adept at extricating me from such conversations. TV crews roam the grounds of Rosalie with their cameras: one from Baton Rouge, ninety miles to the south; another from Jackson, a hundred miles to the north. I promise a producer from the Baton Rouge station that I’ll give her five minutes at the gate of Rosalie, where they’re interviewing pilots and Katrina refugees. I plan to take Annie with me, but two minutes after I make the promise, we walk right into Libby Jensen, and something goes tight in my chest.
     
“Libby! Libby!” Annie cries, running forward and giving her a hug. “Aren’t the balloons awesome ?”
     
“Yes, they are,” Libby agrees, smiling cautiously at me above Annie’s head.
     
Libby is a Natchez native who went to law school in Texas, married a partner at her Dallas firm, had a child by him, then divorced him after discovering that he’d kept a series of mistresses during the first decade of their marriage. She liked practicing law about as much as she liked being cheated on, so she brought her son back home and used her settlement to open a bookstore. Her charisma and sharp business sense have made the shop a success, and several author friends of mine stop to sign books there when making the literary pilgrimage from Oxford to New Orleans. After Caitlin left town, Libby and I found that our friendship quickly evolved into something that eased the loneliness we both felt, and that mutual comfort carried us through most of a year. But her son, Soren, has some serious anger issues—not to mention a drug problem—and Libby and I disagreed about how best to handle that. In the end, that disagreement drove us apart.
     
Tonight is the first time we’ve found ourselves together since ending our relationship, and I’ve worried it would be awkward. But Libby’s soft brown eyes shine as she hugs Annie, and in them I see an acknowledgment that the sadness she feels is in part her own choice.
     
“Where’s Soren?” Annie asks, reminding me that Tim said he’d seen Libby’s son down on the Magnolia Queen, looking high as a kite.
     
Libby rolls her eyes to disguise the anxiety that’s her constant companion. “Oh, running around with his friends, complainingabout the bands they booked this year. Where are you guys headed?”
     
“Daddy has an interview, ” Annie says, obviously not enthused by the idea of standing by while I play talking head.
     
“Well, you can just come with me while he acts like a big shot for the cameras.” Libby gives me a wink. “I just saw some of your friends diving into the Space Walk.”
     
“Can I, Dad?”
     
I question Libby with a raised eyebrow, and she nods that she meant the invitation sincerely.
     
“Okay. I’ll catch up in a half hour or so. We’re not staying long, though. I have some work to do tonight, and I want to be rested for that balloon flight tomorrow.”
     
“I’d like to see that,”