44: Book Six Read online

He didn’t ask for any details and I let it go. Maybe that was enough, me telling him. It didn’t have to become his life too. I could live with that.

  “Listen, Abby, I just wanted to let you know that I’ll be back in Bend tomorrow.”

  The embers of hope inside me, almost burned out, blew back to life.

  CHAPTER 20

  “You can still stay with Erin, you know,” Kate said to David. “She wouldn’t mind.”

  We were all sitting in the living room, watching TV. David was on the leather sofa with an almost empty martini glass in his hand, eyeing the bottle of Absolut vodka sitting on the coffee table in front of him. He swirled the dirty martini around in his glass, and then gulped it back. The rank smell of olive juice filled the air.

  David had brought over the cocktail supplies earlier, and had tried to get Kate and me to join in, but we knew better. The drink, a mix of olive juice, vermouth, and vodka, smelled awful and tasted worse. I wasn’t sure if David even really liked them. I think he just drank them because he thought they were something Detective Slocum would drink.

  “Hey, how do you think I would look with those gray wings in my hair?” he asked, pointing when the character named Paulie came on the screen. The odd contrast of light against dark hair made him look like he was related to the Bride of Frankenstein.

  “I don’t know,” Kate said. “Like a lunatic?”

  We were watching the final episode of The Sopranos. I’d never seen the show before, but David had wanted to see it before his audition because one of the producers on the show had worked on The Sopranos.

  “Aw, c’mon, fashion diva Craig,” he said to Kate. “I could totally pull that look off and you know it.”

  “Well, if you want to try, go ahead,” she said. “Just don’t do it before tomorrow. You want to stand out, but not in that way, if you know what I mean.”

  David poured more vodka in his glass. I held out my Mirror Pond beer to him for a toast. Kate joined in with her glass of white wine.

  “To your audition tomorrow,” I said. “You’re going to kill it. I just know it.”

  “Yeah,” Kate said. “Go get ‘em, David.”

  “Aw, Thanks, Sista Craigs. That just makes me feel all warm and cozy inside. Thanks guys, too, for the good luck dinner. Girlfriend can cook, right, Katie Craig?”

  Kate glared at him.

  “Okay, Kate Craig. Sorry.”

  “He’s right,” she said, looking at me. “That’s why I had to change into sweats. Something to do with how delicious it was and my two huge servings. Awesome flavors.”

  I had made a version of a chicken pot pie, Thai style, making it with a green curry sauce and a rich, buttery pastry. David loved Thai food, so I made it especially for him.

  “And I’m so happy you guys are willing to watch the ending of one of my favorite shows,” he said. “Come on, really. This episode is amazing.”

  Kate sighed. Unlike me, she’d seen all six seasons of the show.

  “I liked the show, but I hate this last episode. I hate endings like that. If you’re going to go to the trouble of putting out a show for that many years, then finish it, damn it. You know what I mean? Don’t just leave me hanging in a diner with Journey playing on the jukebox.”

  “Hey,” David said. “Don’t knock Journey.”

  He started singing the intro to Don’t Stop Believing.

  “Nothing against Steve Perry or anyone in yellow leopard shirts,” Kate said. “But I just expect more from a show like that.”

  I smiled, not sure what they were getting so worked up over.

  “I love the good cliffhanger,” David said. “You go to work the next day and talk about all the possibilities of what happened. It’s fun. It makes the audience think.”

  “But not in a series,” Kate said, putting down her empty wine glass. “You put hours and hours into a watching a show, and then they just don’t write an ending for it? That’s just dumb.”

  He shrugged.

  “Okay, Mama Kate, maybe it’s an age thing.”

  He took another sip from his drink, smiling and raising his eyebrows and then looking at me.

  “What are you talking about?” Kate said. “I’m not that much older than you.”

  “Ha! Maybe you aren’t, but even you gotta admit that you’re pretty serious. It’s not a bad thing, but I’m just saying you don’t like, you know, relax about things. You’re a little uptight.”

  He laughed, trying to make it a light-hearted comment. But judging from Kate’s expression, she didn’t take it that way. David noticed too.

  “Come on, don’t be mad at me now or all I’ll think about on the way over to Portland tomorrow is that Sista Kate has put a hex on me. I meant that uptight thing as a compliment. Somebody has to be the adult here, right?”

  “Yeah, sure, David,” she said.

  When he offered her a sip of his dirty martini, she took his glass, and finished it off.

  “See, I’m not so uptight, David Norton,” she said, her face twisting into a look of disgust. “Ugh, how do you drink these things? They’re sick.”

  David just laughed as he poured himself another.

  “I’ll have to get used to them if I’m going to be Detective Slocum. He’s a real man, and this is a real man’s drink right here.”

  “Yeah,” Kate said. “A real drunk man.”

  I laughed and shook my head.

  We were quiet for a little while, watching the show. I was in the chair leaning sideways, my feet up on the arm. Even though I wanted to pull the blanket over me, I thought the better of it with David in the house. His spinster comment was still fresh in my mind.

  A nice fire was crackling in the fireplace. Drops of rain were splattering across the window. I tried to focus on the show, but I ended up staring outside into the dark rainy night a while, my thoughts turning to Ty.

  And how he was getting back, just about now.

  Coming off the airplane. Home again, in Bend.

  “So, do you feel ready?” Kate asked, yawning and stretching.

  “As ready as I’ll ever be, I guess,” David said, letting out a rare nervous sigh. “I just worry that I’ll freeze up or something. You know, draw a complete blank while I’m up there.”

  “You wouldn’t do that,” I said. “I’ve got a good feeling about it. I’m excited for you, David. I really, really am.”

  “Yeah, yeah, but tell me what you see for my future, Psychic Abby Craig. Do I get the part?”

  He rubbed his hands together and looked at me expectantly.

  “I wish I could say,” I said. “I mean, I could tell you about the ghost that keeps bothering me, but I’m afraid that’s about it in terms of that kind of thing. Unless you’re dead, I can’t seem to help.”

  He sighed.

  “Oh well. I wish you’d just see the future instead. That way it would be of some use.”

  His words lingered for a moment.

  The future.

  Suddenly, I was struck by a thought.

  Something I hadn’t realized before.

  David, drunk on the sofa.

  Helping me understand.

  Helping me realize exactly what was going on.

  CHAPTER 21

  I was trying to finalize my menu for Christmas dinner. I had a biscotti recipe in mind for dessert but I wanted to practice making it one more time to cut down on the possibility of a last-minute meltdown. We had made it in cooking class. The chef had told us how Italians like to dip their biscotti in wine, when it was served as a dessert.

  I figured I better try the wine as well. I poured a small glass and got down to business.

  I took out all the ingredients and put them on the counter in front of me. Flour, salt, sugar, butter. I began mixing everything together. If this batch turned out, I was going to give them to Jesse’s dad. I had already bought a remastered copy of an early ZZ Top album for him and planned to drop them off at his garage after work tomorrow. Now all there was to do was to make th
e cookies and place them in the snowman tin I had bought.

  I mixed the dough, adding cranberries and dark chocolate. When it was all together, I rolled the mixture into a ball and put it in the fridge for half an hour. The wine was a little too sweet but it would probably go well with the biscotti.

  I thought about what David had said. How he wished I could see the future.

  I had convinced myself that that was exactly what I was seeing in the vision. Something that hadn’t happened yet. It made sense. That’s why Kate and I hadn’t found any information about a body in that alley. Because there was no body. Not yet.

  I jumped when the phone rang.

  It was Kate.

  “Hey, Abby,” she said. “I’ll be here late again.”

  “Wow,” I said, pulling myself together. “You’ve really been putting in the hours lately.”

  “Well, things are a little weird here. I’ll tell you about it later. But anyway, I wanted to let you know and also ask about what Dr. Krowe said.”

  I was supposed to see him earlier, but he had called to cancel our appointment. He gave me a condensed version over the phone of what he had found out.

  “He said that it’s possible,” I said. “He found two other cases of people who were color blind and then started dreaming in color first and were eventually able to see colors.”

  “Oh, my God, Abby. That sounds like great news.”

  “Sure,” I said, leaning on the counter.

  “Well, you don’t sound too excited.”

  “I don’t know. For one patient it took almost 10 years to fully get there, and for the other one it was 22 years. And neither had lost it in an accident, they were just born that way. My case doesn’t seem to fit into the pattern.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Well, you never know. Maybe you’ll be a freak in a good way and yours will come back in a year. I still think it might be good news. Stay positive. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  After we hung up I had a few more sips of the wine while I waited for the timer to go off. I preheated the oven and watched the temperature rise.

  When it was time I sliced the dough like the recipe said. Biscotti meant twice baked. So I would bake them again.

  I brought them out of the oven after the second go around. I took a bite of one too soon, burning the roof of my mouth. I remembered the wine and dipped the next bite. Better. Much better. In fact it was close to perfection. I would have to pick up a bottle of the wine for Jesse’s dad as well.

  My mind wandered as I placed the biscotti in the tin. It had been a few days since Ty had gotten back to Bend and I hadn’t heard from him. I checked the charge on my phone. It was still going strong.

  Suddenly my knees went weak. I was struck down by the thought that this was how it was going to be. Ty was back in Bend.

  Starting a new life.

  Without me.

  CHAPTER 22

  It was only 10:15, but I was tired. I decided to turn in early.

  It didn’t take long before I was back in the alley. It was snowing again. She was dead again, her blood flowing as red as ever.

  As my legs dragged me toward her, I tried to pay attention to my surroundings, to every detail.

  But all I could see were the bricks and the row of old seats and the snow and the blood. But there was something new, something I hadn’t noticed before. Christmas lights strung over the door of the small wine shop. And something written in large white handwriting on the window. “All bottles of Syrah half off until 12/24.”

  Suddenly I could feel the eyes on me again. I looked around, but no one was there.

  I walked up to the dying young woman on the ground, her legs and long light hair spread out around her. The familiar church bell rang in the distance. I tried to keep count. One, two, three. I watched as her eyes stared up. Her chest barely moving. I dropped down beside her.

  “You’ll be okay,” I said, knowing it was a lie.

  No one could lose that much blood and live.

  Four.Five. Six.

  The eyes were still on me. If it was her killer, I had to be strong. I had to turn and see who it was. I forced myself to look behind me.

  And I saw.

  It was the ghost, coming toward me. I could feel the cold coming off of her.

  At that moment I heard the bells, still ringing one right after the other with barely a pause in between. Too fast, too loud. I lost count. But I felt a strange calmness.

  I stood up and looked at the ghost and the body on the ground. And then I understood. I saw the obvious similarities. But for the first time, I saw the differences.

  They weren’t the same.

  They weren’t the same at all.

  “Save her,” the ghost whispered through the snowflakes falling between us.

  “Save her.”

  ***

  I couldn’t get back to sleep after that.

  While I waited up for Kate in the living room, I turned on the TV. I stopped at an old favorite, The Third Man. Harry Lime was smiling slyly over at Holly Martins, trying to decide whether to push his old friend out of the cage as they rode high above Vienna in a Ferris wheel.

  When Kate got home just past one, I could tell she had been crying.

  She was too upset to pretend everything was all right.

  There had been some layoffs at the paper.

  “But they didn’t fire you, right?” was all I could say.

  She shook her head slowly.

  “No,” she said, her voice cracking. “I think I’m safe, for now. But they cut six people, including Tony and Daniel, that photographer who helped us that time. I don’t know why but we didn’t see it coming. It was a real bloodbath.”

  I made her some tea, mixing a long sigh of relief with the steam. I couldn’t imagine Kate not working at The Bugler. It was more than what she did. It was who she was.

  I took the tea out to her in the living room and squeezed her hand.

  “It’ll be all right,” I said. “You’ll see. They can’t fire you. You’re their best reporter.”

  “Thanks,” she said, blowing in her cup. “But it’s not about that. Who knows, maybe the whole paper will go under. They used to count on the real estate revenue to support it, but with the economy, that’s all dried up.”

  I hadn’t ever given that a thought.

  “Whatever happens, you’ll be okay,” I said. “I’m not the only survivor in this family.”

  She smiled, but looked away.

  “Anything new on the ghost front?” she said, her eyes small and streaked with veins.

  “Not really,” I said. “You should get to bed.”

  “That’s the best idea I’ve heard all day.”

  ***

  I stared up at the ceiling, thinking about how selfish I’d been. I had sensed something was going on with Kate recently, but I was too consumed with my own little life to ask about her problems.

  I decided I would do my best from now on to ease Kate’s burden. I’d hold back on the ghost stuff. I knew she wanted to know, but it was wrong. It was my problem. Kate had the newspaper. I had ghosts. We could talk about our days in the superficial way that normal people do, but that would be all.

  I also decided I needed to push Kate out the door. She would resist the idea. But I needed to win this fight. She needed to follow her dream of working for a big city newspaper or a major television network. I was holding her back. She had stayed in Bend all this time because of me. She had been ready to move on, had even gone to New York for an interview, when Nathaniel kidnapped me. But he was dead now. I needed to take care of myself. I would miss her. But it was time for her to get on with her life.

  I was still awake when the weak light of dawn peeked in my window.

  CHAPTER 23

  I still had huge gaping holes regarding what it all meant and what my part in it was supposed to be, but I was finally making progress.

  I knew that someone was going to die in that alley. And I knew now that the ghost
and the young woman in the vision were two separate people.

  They were both about the same age and body type. They both had light-colored hair. And they both had the same gruesome slash across their necks. But there were important differences.

  The ghost had thin lips, almost pencil thin, while the dying woman’s were fuller and chapped, leaning more toward an Angelina Jolie look. Their noses were also different. The ghost’s was slightly longer and narrower. Finally, they were dressed differently. The specter always wore a dark track suit. The girl in the snow was wearing black jeans and a dark long-sleeved shirt.

  I was almost certain of the location. And I had a few clues regarding the time. It was night. It was snowing. It was around Christmas. The church bells led me to believe it was somewhere between seven and midnight.

  I was supposed to save her. But I didn’t know how. In the vision she was beyond saving. She had lost too much blood. What was I supposed to do? Call the paramedics? Sew her back up? Pray for a miracle?

  But perhaps most importantly, I didn’t know who I was supposed to save. A young attractive woman in her early 20s with blonde hair. That narrowed it down some but nowhere near enough.

  I decided to confirm what I thought I knew. I headed over to Tin Pan Alley. I parked in front of a jewelry store and crossed the street.

  My salt and pepper world had gone all gray. It was raining again, the clouds pressing down hard and heavy, the drops forming bubbles. I remembered my mom telling me once that that was a sure sign it was going to keep raining.

  It didn’t take long to figure out this was the place. Just like in the vision, the wine shop had Christmas lights over the door. I looked at the window. There it was above the menu. The handwritten sign.

  “All bottles of Syrah half off until 12/24.”

  I had the location. Tin Pan Alley. Someone was going to die here. Someone was going to die here soon. Unless I could stop it.

  I walked down the alley. The row of chairs outside the small theater. A couple of coffee places. An art gallery. Lots of bricks.