Thea Harrison: Oracle's Moon

Now there was only Grace and the children, and Grace was only twenty-three. She was facing something she should never have had to face alone, and she had her niece and nephew to feed, two small children for whom she would do anything. Hell yes, she applied for food stamps. Just as soon as she was able to leave the hospital, she had applied for everything they were eligible to apply for.

As far as her holding on to the Oracle’s traditions went, that decision was touch and go. When she was in the hospital recovering, Grace had promised herself she would not make any long-term decisions or commitments to anything or anyone other than Chloe and Max. If anything else became intolerable, she would drop it.

For now it was one foot in front of the other, one day at a time. She gently touched the back of Chloe’s tangled, shining head.

Chloe looked up and smiled.

“Gracie, did we have company when I was sleeping?” Chloe asked.

“Yes, baby girl,” Grace said.

“Why didn’t you wake me up? I like company. Did they miss me?”

“I’m sure they would have if they had known about you,” Grace said. “But this was adult company. This was not Chloe company.”

“I’m a big girl,” Chloe scolded. “I’m very big now.”

“I know you are,” Grace said. She chose two cans of tuna and put them in the cart by Chloe’s tiny feet. “I can’t believe how big you’ve gotten. Pretty soon you’re going to push the grocery cart, and I’m going to ride inside it.” Chloe giggled. “But this was Oracle-adult-business company. It wasn’t Chloe-big-girl company. That’s why Janice came over to stay with you and feed you breakfast until I got back.”

As soon as Grace said “Oracle,” a darker, knowing look shadowed Chloe’s eyes. Or maybe that was just a product of Grace’s exhaustion. In either case, Chloe simply nodded, bent her head over her doll and fell quiet for a time.

Grace added a gallon of milk and a dozen eggs to the cart. A few steps down the aisle she grabbed a couple of canisters of Max’s formula. He also loved bananas, so she looked at the fresh produce. Super Saver didn’t have a great selection of fresh fruits and vegetables, but the bananas looked nice enough so she put a few in the cart.

“Can we keep the doggie?” Chloe asked.

Grace had difficulty processing the words for a few mo-ments because they were so random and disconnected from anything else that was happening. But that was what talking to a four-year-old was like, and she soon caught up. “What doggie?”

“He says sometimes he can be a cat if I want.”

Grace grinned. “You want to keep a doggie that’s a cat.”

“Uh-huh.” Blonde curls waved in the air as Chloe nodded. “He likes me.”

“Of course the doggie-cat likes you.” Grace moved around the cart to drop a kiss on the girl’s forehead. Chloe looked expectant, so Grace told her, “You’re wonderful and likeable and loveable and very, very big.”

Chloe’s eyes rounded. “I am, aren’t I?”

“Yes, you are. And if we ever manage to find a talking doggie-cat, I would love to keep him. But for now, why don’t I see if we can get Joey and Rachel over for a playdate. I’ll make apple juice Popsicles. Would you like that?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Okay, sweetie.” She paused to search for a scrap of paper in her purse and scribble a note on it. Joey and Rachel were Petra’s friend Katherine’s children. Katherine had been an immense help since Petra and Niko died, and Grace owed her a good six months’ of regular playdates, but she would never remember to make that call if she didn’t write it down.

Her leg was hurting worse than ever, and she was limping badly by the time she got the children and the groceries out to her battered car.

Instead of using the car insurance money from the accident to buy a new car, Grace had decided to fix up her own 1999 Honda Accord so that it ran more reliably. Then she spent the rest on replacing a leaky water heater. The property was a money pit. The house was not quite falling down around their ears, but a building that was over a hundred and fifty years old had constant issues.

At least Petra and Niko had replaced the old monster of a furnace last year with an energy efficient one, but the roof was in such poor shape, Grace didn’t think it would last another winter, and she honestly didn’t know what she was going to do about it.

The trip home was lost in a fog of exhaustion. She got the children inside first and set Max in his carrier down gently on the floor by the couch. Then she put some pretzels in a small plastic bowl for Chloe, along with milk in a small cup. Chloe was delighted to watch Dora for the ten thousandth time. Grace limped through the house to make sure that the child gate was secured properly at the foot of the stairs and that other doors were shut throughout the ground floor.

She left the door to Chloe and Max’s bedroom open so that Chloe could get to the toys stored in that room if she wanted. Then Grace turned on the floor fan in the living room. Running a fan was cheaper than running any of the three window air-conditioners in the house. After that she carried in the groceries.

There were four steps up to the porch. She thought of all the times she had blithely run up and down those steps, her young, strong body working so smoothly she never gave it a second’s thought. She would never take anything like that for granted again.

She had gone up the steps once with the children. If she stacked all of the grocery bags on the porch first, then she only had to climb up those four steps one more time. She stopped trying to think and let her mind float away on a sea of pain.

She had pushed too hard today. She would have liked to soak in the tub, except the tub was on the second floor. Getting herself and the kids up a full flight of stairs, along with the baby gate, sounded like climbing Mount Everest. She could wait until she put them down for the night and take the baby monitor upstairs with her, but she didn’t think she would last that long. She had a feeling that once she got the kids to bed, she would go out like a light. Thank the gods they were so small she could bathe them in the large, old-fashioned kitchen sink that evening without having to bend over or kneel. As for herself, she would have to wash again at the sink as well.

On the television Dora went in search of her lost teddy bear. Chloe ate pretzels, pretended to feed her doll and sang along with the show. The psychic air around the property seemed restless and full of spirits. Something about the Oracle’s presence, or the property, attracted them. The house was crowded with ghosts.

For some reason, a group of elderly women had been hanging out in the kitchen for the last couple of weeks. Grace didn’t recognize them, and she couldn’t quite make out what they said. Either the ghosts weren’t strong enough, or they didn’t have anything they felt passionately enough about to communicate clearly to her. She suspected they just enjoyed the children and the atmosphere of the old kitchen. Whatever the reason was for their presence, she liked their companionship. They felt worn, comfortable and faded, like an old, warm blanket. Concentrating on them helped to take her mind off her body’s misery.

Sometimes the ghosts that came to the house weren’t comfortable. Sometimes they were jagged presences, serrated with old malice and resentments, or still reverberating with the traumas from their lives.

Sometimes there was nothing else to do but chase the dark spirits off the property. She wasn’t Jennifer Love Hewitt, and this wasn’t the Ghost Whisperer, where angry ghosts somehow turned into nice people once they had a chance to settle misunderstandings or get grievances off their chests, and then all the happy ghosts moved on to a shiny afterlife at the end of an episode. Dark, angry spirits tended to be dark and angry because they held on to things. Given half a chance they also tended to linger, spreading their ill will and negativity throughout the property like a malaise.