of the night, that would be Gia, the woman haunted by her gifts.
“I’m okay,” Stella told her, all too soon pushing Gia away. “It was just a nightmare—a real nightmare,” she assured her mother. “The normal kind.”
The normal kind.
Not a vision, Gia thought with some relief.
Her daughter crawled back under the covers, pulling the quilt up to her chin. Tucked in her bed, her inky curls and vibrant blue eyes contrasted dramatically with her flawless white skin. Lying there, Stella presented a virtual Renaissance painting. Gia’s artistic sensibilities appended the dewy full lips and cheeks, heightened in color from the nightmare. The antique sleigh bed with its starburst-pattern quilt in shades of blue was a fitting background. It wasn’t quite chiaroscuro in the glow of the nightlight, but close.
Gia brushed back a curl from Stella’s face. There was this perceived resemblance between mother and daughter. Goodness, Gia, she’s a mirror image. A clone.
But Gia knew better. The dramatic coloring—black hair, blue eyes, translucent skin—deceived. Those curls, that delicate nose and dimpled chin, these were all Stella…Stella and Gia’s mother, Estelle.
“Geez, Mom, you’re freaking out for no reason, okay?” Stella added.
Gia hesitated, knowing when she was being dismissed. Suspicious of just that.
Sealing it, Stella closed her eyes and turned onto her side, giving her mother her back. “Don’t be weird. I’m fine.”
Which meant she was hiding something.
It happened more and more often these days: Stella shutting her out. Gia knew it was a normal part of growing up. She’d read all the books; teenagers needed space.
But tonight felt different. Secretive. And not in a good way.
She glanced back at the empty stool in front of the vanity. Only Gia and her daughter atop the sleigh bed reflected back in the mirror.
There wasn’t even a glimmer of a presence.
Gia nodded toward the opened door and the hallway beyond. “Sure you don’t want to crawl into bed with me? I could use the company.”
Stella rolled her eyes, giving her a mental puhleeze! She settled deeper under the covers. “I just want to go back to sleep, okay?”
Once again, Stella gave her mother her back, but not before Gia caught her daughter’s nervous glance toward the vanity and the empty stool.
Gia took a breath and held it. But in the end, she rose to her feet and stepped away from the bed. “All right, sweetie.”
Out in the hall, Gia felt torn between her desire to run back into Stella’s room or allow her daughter to set the pace for her revelations.
She knew Stella was lying. The question was why?
She froze at the entrance to the living room, her hand on the light switch, trying to shake off her fears. That look Stella had given the empty stool…there’d been a presence there. A presence Gia couldn’t see.
Gia Moon, psychic artist and mother to one very precocious teenager, hadn’t seen a damn thing.
She hit the light switch. The floor lamp glowed to life, spotlighting the Scrabble tiles scattered across the Navajo rug under the coffee table and the oak floor boards beyond.
The living room showcased her eclectic tastes. The top of the coffee table, a mosaic of broken pieces of china, served as a foil to the green papier-mâché leaves sprouting from the arms of the burgundy cloth sofa. The leaves crept up the wall behind as if some wayward philodendron had managed to take root and thrive in the darkened room.
Opposite the sofa stood a love seat covered in Mexican serape cloth. There was quite a bit of religious art—a hand-painted crucifix with the bleeding heart, a Greek icon of the virgin, a statue of the elephant-headed Ganesha, the wise and gentle Hindu god known for removing obstacles.
But to Gia’s eye, the focus as always was on her daughter. There were drawings, from stick figures to watercolors, matted and framed like great works of art. And photographs, each documenting cherished moments, snapshots of the tiny miracle that was Stella.
On her hands and knees, Gia picked up the lettered tiles and tossed them back into their box. She told herself she’d talk to Stella first thing in the morning. She’d learned the dangers of keeping secrets and she’d remind her daughter of just that. Gia suspected she knew what was bothering her daughter—Stella was just the right age. Gia needed to convince her that whatever changes Stella faced, they’d face them together.
That’s what she’d been thinking—tomorrow, I’ll lay down the law, no secrets—when she stopped herself in the act of scooping up the game pieces.
On the rug under the coffee table she saw five tiles from the Scrabble set. The game pieces formed a perfect half circle. She stared, realizing the letters spelled a word.
Seven. Just like the number.
Gia frowned. She reached for the S.
As her hand reached for the tiles, a static charge like the snap of a rubber band shocked her fingers. She sat back on her heels, stunned.
Seven.
“Don’t,” she told herself, grabbing the Scrabble pieces in a sweep of her hand and throwing them into the game box with the others.
Back in her room, she dropped onto the bed and stared at the phone on the nightstand. The last two months, the desire to call him had been a dull ache inside her. Like a toothache, she’d learned to ignore the pain—part and parcel of a past that had trained her well to deal with regrets.
But now, that desire burned in her chest. She rubbed her hand, recalling the shock of static electricity.
She glanced at the clock: 3:17 a.m.
When she’d first heard Stella screaming, she’d checked the hour, as well. The time had been 3:07.
Seven, Seven, Seven.
She shut her eyes. “No,” she said out loud.
She shoved aside the covers and massaged her pillow into a ball before settling in. She told herself her gift didn’t work like that, cute little signs that could easily be mistaken for coincidence. That’s how the heart worked; it looked for meaning where there was none.
She’d had a scare tonight. Of course, she’d think of the man who had once saved her life.
Gia woke up three more times that night. Each and every time—by coincidence—the digital clock showed the number seven.
When the door shut behind her mother, Stella threw back her bedcovers and sat up in bed.
“Go away,” she hissed at the boy sitting on the vanity stool.
She recognized him from her dream. She’d seen him so clearly during that horrible nightmare that waking up had been this weird business:
