feel.”
“Memory coming and going?” Tanninger did not follow her inside and Gemma turned back to him.
“Pretty much.”
“It’s only been a few days since your accident.”
“Yeah.”
Gemma nodded and worried there was something else, something more, at work here. She wondered whether she was obligated to ask him in, but he took the decision away from her by pressing a card in her hand and telling her to call him if she remembered anything. He glanced at the battered white truck parked near the outbuilding, then said good-bye and headed back around the front of the house to his car.
She hurried through the house to the windows, looking out past the front porch to see him climb into the vehicle, turn it nose-out, and then leave splattered mud as he drove up the gravel drive.
Alone, Gemma slowly turned around and exhaled. She was glad Detective Tanninger was gone so she could think. Absorb. Plan.
She examined the decor in the living room/parlor. Her mother’s. Lots of quilts and florals and stuff. She felt suddenly claustrophobic. Jean had been a hoarder. Keeping items way past their pull date, in Gemma’s opinion.
“How long ago did you die?” Gemma asked her, her voice hanging in the empty room. It felt to Gemma like eons, and yet she sensed it was within the last few years, like her father. She could remember Peter’s death clearly. Could see the casket at Murch’s Funeral Home and the smattering of people, small groups that moved through the viewing room and on to the gravesite. Could remember her own sadness and a sense of apprehension that filled her. The apprehension, she realized, was because she’d been left to take care of her mother, who had always had a strong opinion on what Gemma should do with her life: stay in Quarry and help in her mother’s business as a psychic.
Her mother the psychic.
Gemma sat down hard on a needlepoint-upholstered foot-stool.
Charlatan. Flim-flam artist. Crook. Liar. That’s what her mother had been. Gemma had left home at eighteen, following after an army man who’d been stationed at Fort Lewis in Washington State. He’d moved all around and she’d followed, but their relationship had dwindled as her headaches and memory loss increased when she’d scornfully thrown away her medication, believing the drugs to be the work of her parents, whom she’d deemed at the time to be self-serving and harmful to her health.
Not completely true. Her boyfriend…his name escaped her now. So frustrating! Her boyfriend had been the pernicious one. Eroding her self-esteem. Overpowering her and claiming her sexually. Enjoying a sadistic streak that manifested itself in a myriad of ways that Gemma, too young and inexperienced, had chosen to either ignore or absolve.
But she’d always had an incredibly accurate ability to predict the future. Something her mother had seen early and grasped onto and found a way to make a buck from. Of course, Jean’s clientele believed her to be the psychic, but it was Gemma who could suddenly pop up with some future scenario or path the seeker should take. Gemma the under-appreciated, and unseen.
The boyfriend…was…dead…She couldn’t recall how, but she was pretty sure he was gone. Maybe as a result of the war in Iraq? Somehow that didn’t feel right but she felt she was on the right track.
After his death, and a period of bumming around, working at diners and restaurants, Gemma had returned home, and that’s when Jean’s Psychic Readings had really taken off. Jean had opened shop in this very house, using the first floor bedroom as a kind of office.
Now, Gemma walked to that office and realized someone—herself, she suspected—had completely redone the space. There was no couch, no beaded shades, no knickknacks of moons, stars and other astral images. Instead there was a simple, hand-hewn fir desk—courtesy of Peter LaPorte—and two rather modern club chairs. Beside the desk stood a file cabinet, a lamp with a caramel-colored glass shade, and bookshelves filled with hardbacks. Gemma went directly to the file cabinet, which was locked. Her attention was momentarily drawn to the lamp, which was plugged into a floor socket embedded in the fir planks. Spying the cord, she tugged on it gently, thinking there was a reason it seemed out of place. Maybe she should move the lamp to the other side of the desk.
Before that, though, she wanted to see what was inside the file cabinet, and spent a fruitless twenty minutes searching every drawer and cubbyhole in the office looking for a key. Foiled, Gemma sank into the wooden, swivel desk chair. She was certain the file cabinet held the information she sought: bills, identification papers, bank accounts, all the accoutrements needed to prove one’s existence in this day and age.
If she sat still and let her mind go blank, perhaps more memories would come. She’d made it this far.
With that thought, she then considered her medication. Scrambling to her feet, she hurried as fast as she could up the stairs to the second floor and the bedroom at the far end of the hall. Her bedroom. She’d not moved into her parents’ room after their deaths, though it was closest to the only upstairs bathroom. She couldn’t make herself.
Entering her bedroom she stopped short. The walls were a soft, rose red with white paneled wainscoting. The bed was white. All white. The books stacked neatly in a pile on the white nightstand had to do with tapping into unused parts of the brain. Gemma picked one up carefully and leafed through it. Passages were underlined and she suddenly, sharply remembered placing the pen to the page and making those marks.
There was another book on psychological abnormalities. She picked it up and scanned the bold headings inside: Borderline personalities. Multiple personalities. Sociopaths. Pedophiles…
The book slipped from her fingers and fell with a clunk on the fir planks. She picked it up immediately and leafed through it some more. In this one she’d made no notes, apparently, but this is what she’d been reading about. This and accessing inaccessible parts of the brain.
She was becoming more and more convinced that she’d been chasing Edward Letton. Her pulse started a slow, hard, deliberate pounding. She’d run him down, known he was going to hurt someone. A young girl.
And then she heard her own voice inside her head:
Red’s your color. It helps you learn things, know things. The medication keeps you from having the headaches but it interferes with your ability. Red helps you access the inaccessible…
Gemma gazed wild-eyed around the room. She could almost feel her mind expand and she forcefully shut it down, terrified of what might enter into it. Hurriedly, she raced to the bathroom, found the pills, shook some into her palm and swallowed them dry.
The rain had ruined his plans.
His head pounded. Rage beat at his temples. He’d meant to burn the witch at her home but couldn’t and now the other one was gone. Gone from the hospital.
But he knew where she haunted. He knew he would find her scent again.
Now he looked over the fields behind his house. Far across, in the dying light, he could see the fir trees sway. He stepped outside and stood in the feel of the wind. There was no moon tonight. It was hidden by the clouds.
He needed the rain to stop. He needed dry weather to feed the flames.
Across the field, lights switched on in the main house. Fury licked through him. They were spying on him, feeding information about his family to everyone
