Page 22 of The Psychic

Ronnie hung her raincoat on a hanger in the employee break room’s closet.

At least the coat wasn’t soaked this morning, as the rain had taken a small break during her drive to work.

She returned to her office in time to catch Dawn walking back to the reception desk with a glass of ice water, a lemon slice floating inside.

Jonas frowned on anyone at reception eating or drinking at the front desk during business hours.

Only water was allowed, so Dawn would practically chug a half cup of coffee during her breaks.

“Coffee’s made,” she said now to Ronnie. “The one with the gummy smile made it.”

Dawn knew perfectly well that their latest intern was named Moira, but she was dismissive of the pretty young women hired by Albert Tormelle in a never-ending parade.

Albert was an old-fashioned gentleman who was unfailingly polite, so it was hard to fault him, but she understood how Dawn felt.

Her own father had no interest in the interns.

His mind was always on business, money, keeping clients happy, and seeking to push Ronnie onto the only career path he deemed suitable, the law.

“You’re meeting with Dame Langdorf today?” Dawn asked, lingering at the door to Ronnie’s office.

“Took care of that last night,” Ronnie said back.

“Oh. Did you give her what she wanted?”

“Am I moving in with her and becoming her personal psychic?”

“Nice house?” Dawn smothered a smile.

“Very nice house. Think I should consider it?”

“And crush your father’s dream for you?” she asked, dropping her voice in case anyone should be listening.

“He’s already warned me against it. If I was into torturing him, I’d pretend I took the job.”

“You’re not into torturing him?” She lifted a brow.

“Not that much.” Not yet anyway.

Apart from Aunt Kat—and when she was younger, Patrice, her therapist—Dawn was the only person to whom Ronnie had really tried to explain about her visions.

Even then it was over enough vodka martinis to later make her head pound as if it were being squeezed in a vise.

She wasn’t sure Dawn really believed her, but at least Dawn didn’t treat her like she was an alternate life form, so that was something.

Ronnie had confessed to Dawn that Jonas acted like she had some fissure in her brain that led to her lapses, or that she was maybe “making it all up.” She’d laid out her predictions, the winners and the failures.

Ronnie had even told Dawn about Sloan and Evan Caldwell, which she later regretted.

At that point Ronnie had determined she was never going to let down her guard again, even though Dawn had never used any of the information against her.

Now she said, “In all seriousness, I’ve just got to figure out how to turn Marian Langdorf off.”

“Good luck with that.” Dawn took a sip of her water and kept one eye on the hallway leading to reception.

“You might find it interesting that I ran into Sloan Hart last night.”

“ The Sloan Hart? Your fiancé?” Dawn teased, her attention swinging back to Ronnie.

“Ha ha. He’s a police detective, with the River Glen P.D.,” and Ronnie went on to explain that her meeting with Sloan was about her latest vision.

Dawn lifted her brows at Ronnie’s description of the woman in the clearing as she sipped her lemon water. “This one of your tsunamis?”

Ronnie made a face. Another thing she’d revealed to Dawn was that her visions ranged from small, lapping waves to massive walls of water that sometimes made her feel like she was drowning beneath their weight.

It was still sometimes difficult to discern what was important.

“Feels like it. It hit a couple of times yesterday, but then …” She shrugged.

“You went to the police,” Dawn said in a tone that suggested, That’s a surprise.

“I went to Sloan Hart. ”

“Did you say anything about that day at The Pond?”

“I thanked him for saving me. Better late than never, I guess.”

“Think he remembers what you said?”

“God, I hope not, but maybe … probably …” Ronnie didn’t want to go there.

“It’s bound to be a funny joke, by this time.”

“Yeah, ha ha. A real riot. Did I also mention I was served divorce papers by Sloan’s ex-girlfriend?”

“ Wha-at? ”

“I know. It’s been weird how many River Glen alums from back then that I’ve run into.

” She then explained about Shana serving Ronnie the divorce papers from Galen, and by the time she was finished Dawn was cradling her head like she couldn’t take in any more information while doing a poor job of holding back further laughter.

“What the hell, Ronnie? That’s more than coincidence! ”

“Exactly! That’s what happens when you’re a lunatic like me. People want to look at you like you’re a monkey at the zoo. Also, let me tell you about Galen and his boss’s wife …”

Dawn was holding her stomach in between howls of laughter by the time Ronnie finished with that story. “You don’t know that! You’re making it up!”

“He practically admitted it. See?” Ronnie said with a roll of her eyes. “You see? Everyone thinks I’m batshit crazy, including me.”

They both heard the rising elevator and Ronnie put a finger to her lips and slipped into her office as Dawn, water glass in hand, hurried back to her desk before whoever was coming into the firm showed themselves.

What Ronnie had purposely omitted from her narrative was seeing Evan’s ghost and the sense of foreboding that particular memory could still evoke.

Still, it helped to make light of her “condition,” and she felt better than she had in weeks.

But then she thought of the woman lying on the cold, wet ground, her bloody wrists, the shed and the trees, and fervently wished she knew if that was a true vision—it felt so real, it had to be. Or was it another red herring?

You were supposed to die, not me.

Evan’s ghost had said that, too, hadn’t it? Or, had she just made that up inside her ten-year-old head because she’d been scared?

Ronnie was deep into the Benton file, ready to take notes for when she and Martin Calgheny met with the heirs, when a chill swept over her, her skin breaking out in gooseflesh.

She looked at her pimpled arms, then closed her eyes.

This was it, then? Another vision concerning the woman in the clearing?

She waited but nothing happened. She’d read somewhere that gooseflesh was a reaction to cold temperatures or danger, a primal response leftover from the time when humans were covered in fur, the body triggered to make hair stand on end either to add warmth or increase the person’s size, the latter a means to scare off predators.

Ronnie started to relax, but then … in her mind’s eye she saw Sloan Hart as he’d been, bare chest starred with water drops, more water dripping off his dark hair onto her blue one-piece, strong hands turning her so that she could vomit ignominiously into the pebbles surrounding the spread blanket.

Her heart was thundering in her ears. She saw his concerned gaze through a watery haze.

Felt his hands pressing on her chest. Sensed his fear for her.

She shook her head violently, blasting his image away.

She wanted to slap her hand to her forehead.

“What good are you?” she said through gritted teeth, calling out to her psychic awareness as if it were a flesh and blood being.

The woman, Gracie, made a cup of coffee strong enough to put hair on your chest, a phrase Cooper had heard from his Uncle Rodney, the police detective who’d influenced him to seek a career in law enforcement.

Gracie didn’t know the Kirshners well. And it didn’t appear she liked them much, but then Gracie was an opinionated woman who didn’t seem to like anyone much. Or anything, for that matter.

She truly didn’t like Atticus Symons, leader of the Heart of Sunshine Church, her voice dripping with sarcasm when she spoke its name.

“He’s a pious prick,” she said of Symons.

“Wraps all his bullshit in gobbledygook words like ‘eternal’ and ‘purism’ and ‘rapture.’ I spent one afternoon there. Sammy’s idea, rest his muddled soul.

The man found religion a nanosecond before he died, and that’s how we ended up there.

Didn’t take, I guess you can tell.” She lifted an eyebrow at him over her cup.

“Where is ‘there’?”

They were sitting in her living room. Cooper was trying hard to quell his desire to cut to the chase. Gracie might be entertaining but his inner clock kept ticking out its warning of time speeding by.

“Is it near here?”

“The church is more like a compound. You know the kind? It’s about ten miles thataway.” She waved toward the west.

Oh, he knew the kind. Apart from himself, his whole family had attended a camp of sorts for varying amounts of time the previous summer, the place where Mary Jo had spent a good portion of her youth.

Now it looked like her current vision quest was happening at the same kind of commune …

maybe cult, depending on the group’s practices and your own outlook.

“You said you recognized the van.”

“You can’t miss that rattletrap. Not that I have any room to talk, what with what’s out in my drive.

” She snorted. “Sammy didn’t know shit about car engines, either, so it’s dying just like he did.

Atticus’s van is white with a big yellow sun with all these lines.

” She used one hand to sketch a series of lines in the air as if spokes from a central point.

“Says something like …” She hesitated a moment, then nodded once.

“‘God’s love is found here.’” She snorted.

“And it’s got children’s handprints on it. ”

“Do you have an address?”

“I can tell you how to get there.” She wagged a finger at him. “Bein’ a cop ain’t gonna do you any good, though. Atticus will just beam at you and say how great it is to be protected blah, blah, blah. He talks a lot of nothin’.”