Sandra Steffen - Slightly Psychic

“It isn’t exactly a secret. The media made sure of that. How long have you known?”

“It took me a few days to place where I’d seen you. I catch a lot of late-night TV at the tavern.”

“It seems we’re both famous,” she said.

“More like infamous.”

They looked at each other, both curious, but neither willing to voice their questions out loud.

Eventually, Joe said, “Not much happens in small towns, but what you hear makes up for it.”

“This is my first exposure to life in a small town. Myrtle Ann must have seen me on television. Pepper thinks that’s why she left The Meadows to me. You cared for her and this property. I don’t understand why she didn’t leave it to you.”

“I don’t need it. Noreen’s disappearance cost me my reputation, my concentration and my future, but I’m far from destitute.”

Turning her back on the animals, Lila surveyed her new home. The rising sun backlit the uneven lines of the house and accentuated the sag in the porch roof. The imperfections made the house look almost human, like lines on a wizened old woman’s face. Standing near the fence, the breeze in her hair and dew wicking into her canvas shoes, she’d never been so appreciative of someone she’d never met. “Thanks to Myrtle Ann, I’m not destitute, either.”

“Still,” he said, “now that people know who you are, they’re going to talk. The former psychic and the burned-out baseball player suspected of killing his wife.”

After another awkward silence, Lila said, “As long as it’s just idle gossip.”

Why that struck either of them as funny, she didn’t know, but she started to laugh, and so did he. Once they started, neither could stop. She snorted embarrassingly. He roared, even more out of practice than she was. They were bad at laughing. It made them laugh harder, until they were holding their stomachs, chests heaving, guffawing until they hurt. Oh, it felt good.

Lila had often counseled patients through grief and despair. How many times had she reassured them that one day they would be able to laugh again and mean it?

“My mother is going to be happy to hear I’ve taken my own advice,” she said, drying her cheeks with her fingertips.

She wound up telling Joe about the times her mother had stood up to obnoxious reporters and Lila’s former patients who’d threatened to sue. Looking back, she didn’t know how she would have gotten though the ridicule and media circus without her fierce, slight, eccentric mother.

Lila had read the newspaper accounts of Joe’s baseball career and his volatile relationship with his wife. She knew he had a daughter, but she didn’t recall reading anything about any extended family. As a counselor, and as an only child, she was always curious about families. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

“Just my dad and my daughter. Neither of them are one hundred percent certain I didn’t do it.”

She could have done quite well without that particular bit of information. She must have looked at him for a long time, because he glanced nervously at her, prompting her to ask the question on her mind. “Why did you move here?”

“What do you mean, why?”

“You have a beautiful house in Murray. From what I hear, it has every imaginable luxury.”

He stared across the meadows, past the fruit trees and the pond, to the mountains, more visible now. “Noreen had to have that house, so I had it built for her. There’s nothing for me there. Besides, it doesn’t have this.”

Lila was looking at him, not the view. “There’s no peace there,” she said quietly.

A muscle worked in his jaw. “That’s right, there isn’t.”

She understood, and it should have scared her. The fact that it didn’t should have sent her sprinting back to the house. Instead, she watched him walk away.

It didn’t take him long to reach the pond. He picked up a stone on his way by, and with a flick of his wrist that was probably second nature, he sent it skipping across the water. Strangely, he didn’t stick around to count the skips or watch it sink.

The screen door bounced three times, but Lila didn’t take her eyes off the pond. The water glinted in the morning sunshine, the surface now rippling in five places, spreading outward in a perfect, silent rhythm, propelled by a force too gentle to feel and too powerful to control. By the time the ripples touched the grassy edges on all sides, the middle was smooth again. Like those ripples, Joe was a power unto himself, too. Maybe everyone was.

She came out of her stupor to see that Pepper was on the porch. Tall, svelte and sleepy-looking, her friend stared toward the cabin, a quilt wrapped around her shoulders, both hands around a cup of steaming coffee. “There went one fine specimen of a man. It almost wouldn’t matter if he did it.”

“I don’t think he did.”

Pepper turned her head slowly, her short blond hair sticking up on one side. “Oh no?”

Not one to waste precious energy on pretense, Lila only shrugged.

“You’re falling for him,” Pepper said.

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

“Think about it, Lila. He has nothing to offer you, at least nothing except heartache, and maybe an early death.”

“It’s not as if I’m planning to propose. Believe me, Alex cured me of the very idea of marriage. I just don’t think Joe hurt his wife.”

“Why don’t you ask him?” Pepper said. “No, wait, the police already did.”

“And he said he didn’t kill Noreen.”

“I’d say that, too,” Pepper grumbled.

“I think he’s telling the truth.”

“Oh, God.”

Lila shrugged all over again.

“He’s dangerous, Lila.”

She didn’t think so. What’s more, for the first time in months, she felt revived and regenerated, not in a psychic sense, but in a living, breathing, female sense. “If you believe he killed Noreen, why are you still here?” she asked, joining Pepper on the porch. “Why aren’t you afraid?”

Pepper didn’t seem to know what to say.

“That’s what I thought,” Lila said. “Besides, you’re the one who told me I needed a project.”

Letting the quilt slip from her shoulders, Pepper said, “So take up knitting or go back to school. If anything happens to you, your mother is going to have me drawn and quartered.”

“Nothing’s going to happen to me.” Scooping up the quilt and handing it back to Pepper, Lila added, “You’re staying, then?”

Pepper followed her inside, muttering all the way to the kitchen where she topped off her coffee. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that. It seems I’m, or rather, I’m not, um, let’s just say I’ve run into a little difficulty regarding my finances.”

“What sort of difficulty?”

Pepper pulled a face. “My family has cut me off.”

“You mean financially? What did they do? Freeze access to your trust fund? And you didn’t tell me?”

Sighing, Pepper said, “You have enough problems of your own. Besides, it’s only until I agree to assume my rightful place in the bowels of monotony. I told my grandfather not to hold his breath, and he told me to stop acting like a spoiled little heiress. At that point, I probably shouldn’t have reminded him that I’ve been taller than him since I was thirteen.”

Oh dear. Pepper’s grandfather had a very serious Napoleon complex. “He really froze access to your trust fund unless you do as he says?”

“And my dad’s backing him up. My mother doesn’t like it, but everyone knows Grandfather and Daddy run that show.”

“You’re welcome to stay as long as you need to, but I have to remind you I don’t have much money, either.”

“I know. I have a little money left in my emergency fund, but it’s going fast. This may sound drastic,” Pepper said, “But I think I’m going to have to get a job.”