“I might as well just hang a sign around my neck that says, ‘Ask me about my special powers!’ I was so obvious today—I usually hide it better, but with two such dire situations back to back, I had to act quickly, and . . . I probably blew it big time.”
Tracy handed Rebekah a cherry 7-Up and sat down next to her on the couch. “Okay, so, Dr. Hunsaker is starting to get a little suspicious, and you’ve got one paramedic asking questions. That’s just two people, right? You can handle two people.”
“Yes, I can handle the paramedic—I barely know him, and I’m only going to be seeing him in passing when he brings in more cases. Dr. Hunsaker, though? He’s my boss. I work with him every single day. How am I supposed to handle him?”
Tracy shook her head. “I don’t know—I fix things, not people. It’s too bad one of us didn’t get the power to wipe someone’s memory clean. We could take care of your little problem in a jiffy.”
“Have you ever wondered why we got the powers we did? Mine makes sense because I’m a nurse, and yours makes sense because you sell cars, but none of the others really seem to fit, you know?”
“They might not seem to fit, but I think we’re each finding ways to use what we’ve been given.” Tracy tilted her head to the side. “Have you thought about telling Dr. Hunsaker the truth?”
Rebekah had been taking a sip of her drink and nearly choked on it. “Tell him the truth? Can you imagine how that would go over? We’re a walking, talking episode of The Twilight Zone. He would never believe me.”
“Does he believe what you’re telling him now?”
“No. He knows I’m still holding something back.”
“Then would it really do any harm?”
Rebekah put her drink on the coffee table and leaned back again. “If he thinks I’m crazy, I’ll lose my job. But . . . I could lose it anyway for being impertinent. I don’t know, Tracy. What should I do?”
“We could call Marti. She should be back at her dorm by now. Or we could talk to her this weekend when she brings her laundry home.”
“Can’t believe she’s about ready to graduate. Everything’s changing so fast.” Rebekah thought about her options. “Would her precog tell me what to do, exactly? How does it work?”
“I don’t know. That’s why you’ve got to ask her.”
Rebekah nodded. There was still so much they didn’t understand about the benefits and limitations of these gifts. Peter, their cousin, was lucky—he’d known he was a precog his whole life, and it was the expected thing in his family. As the seventh son of a seventh son for generations back, his destiny had almost been foretold. Rebekah and her sisters had broken the mold—they weren’t even sons, let alone all of the rest of it.
“I’ll talk to her this weekend. It’s a hard conversation to have long distance, and I probably couldn’t afford that phone bill anyway.”
“Yeah, it’s hard to solve the problems of the universe in under two minutes.” Tracy rested her hand on Rebekah’s shoulder. “Whatever you decide to do, just remember that we’re all here for you. Even Heather clear out there in faraway Idaho, land of the potatoes. And wherever Jessica and Gaylynn end up, now that they’re all smitten and stuff. We stick together.”
“You aren’t going to start singing ‘We Are Family,’ are you?” Rebekah teased.
“No, but it’s the perfect moment for it.” Tracy grinned. “Shouldn’t you be going to bed about now?”
“Yeah, I should.” Rebekah stood up and stretched. “Thanks, Tracy. I appreciate it.”
“No problem. You know you can always count on me to be here when you need me. Unless I’m not home. In which case, you have other sisters to choose from. Pretty sure that’s why Mom and Dad had so many of us—so we’d never run out of options.”
“Yeah, I’m sure that had something to do with it.” Rebekah smirked and shook her head. “Goodnight.”
Her apartment wasn’t too far away from Tracy’s house, but she was tired enough that it felt like miles. She went inside, kicked off her shoes, and flopped onto her bed, not bothering to do anything else. Using her gift always made her tired, and she’d been pushed to the limit that day. It was time to sleep like a dead thing.
***
Jeremy felt like a heel, wishing that someone would need to be taken to the emergency room so he could see Rebekah again. What kind of paramedic actually hoped bad things would happen to people? When the first half of his shift went by without a single emergency, he knew he was being punished for having such uncharitable thoughts. By the time his shift ended, he knew his fate was sealed—he was headed straight for hell. He’d better not tell his mother that.
He clocked out, then drove straight to the hospital, hoping Rebekah would still be there. He was in luck—he pulled into the parking lot just in time to see her exiting the building.
He parked the car and jogged across the lot to catch up with her. “Hey,” he said when he was still several yards away.
She turned and looked at him, clearly surprised. “Hi. What are you doing here? I didn’t hear an ambulance pull in.”
“No, I’m not here on a call. I actually hoped I could take you out to dinner.”
She shook her head. “Jeremy, please don’t make this awkward. I told you yesterday that this wasn’t a good idea.”
“I’m not trying to make this awkward, and I respect that you have secrets. But . . . I couldn’t sleep last night for thinking about it, and I just hoped that maybe if I asked again . . .”
She looked down at the ground, then back up at him, and he could see that she didn’t know what to do. “Okay, how about this—I’ll have dinner with you, but I can’t promise you anything else. No deep conversations, no sharing of secrets, no revelations or shocking announcements, okay? Dinner. Just one dinner.”
He grinned. “That’s a great start. Where would you like to go?”
“Comida. I need Mexican.”
“Perfect.” He held out his arm and motioned toward his car. “Would you like me to drive, or should we go separately?”
“Let’s each take our own cars. I don’t want to have to come back later to pick mine up.”
“Perfect,” he said again. “I’ll see you at Comida in a few minutes.”
As he retraced his footsteps to his car, he couldn’t believe that she’d said yes. Of course, that had been the outcome he’d been hoping for, but it was still hard to believe. He was going to have dinner with Rebekah McClain, who was without a doubt the most fascinating woman he’d ever met. Not to mention one of the prettiest.
He parked at the restaurant, then waited by the front door until she pulled up so he could escort her inside. After they were seated and they each had a glass of ice water in front of them, he asked, “So, how was your day?”
“Pretty quiet, actually. We didn’t have any ambulances dropping off half-dead people, so that helped.” A slight smile told him she was in a good mood. “I fished a pinto bean out of a little girl’s nose, I helped do inventory on boxes and boxes of gauze, and I picked up some litter in the parking lot. It was all very eventful.”
“Not like yesterday,” Jeremy replied, hoping to steer the conversation to what he really wanted to talk about.
“Not at all like yesterday. Speaking of which, how was dinner with your parents?”
Oh, she was good—she deflected it right back to him. Okay, he could allow her that for now. “It was great. My mom made some chicken and mashed potatoes, and Greg’s doing all right—well, mostly.”
“Greg?”
“My brother.”
“And he was in a car accident, right?”
“Yeah. It did some damage to his spinal cord. He’s in a wheelchair, but he also deals with a lot of pain.”
“And that’s why you said he was mostly doing well—because of the pain?”
Jeremy nodded. “They’ve put him on some new meds, but my mother says they haven’t noticed a difference.”
“Hmm.” Rebekah looked thoughtful. “I’d like to meet him sometime. Does he have any plans to come here for a visit?”
“Not that I know of. It’s hard for him to go places in cars because of the wheelchair and everything. Even his doctor appointments take all day because of the logistics.”
“I can imagine. He lives with your parents in San Antonio?”
“Yeah.”
She took a sip of her water and went back to perusing her menu.
When the waitress came back for their orders, Rebekah asked for a taco and enchilada platter, and Jeremy ordered the flautas. Then he said, “If you really want to meet Greg, I could take you with me on my next visit.” He hoped he said that casually enough that she wouldn’t think he was pushing the issue. He had the feeling that she wasn’t a woman to be pushed.
“I might like that.” She took another sip of her water. “How was your day?”
“Pretty much the same as yours, except I didn’t have to pull beans out of anyone’s nose. I’m a little jealous of that, actually. It might have livened things up a bit.”
“Oh, trust me, you don’t want any part of that. There were boogers involved, and long tweezers, and let’s just say, it’s nothing like playing a game of Operation. I want to know who invented that thing, anyway. It’s given a lot of people a very false idea of what it means to be in the medical profession.”
Jeremy laughed. He liked this girl’s dry sense of humor—but he supposed he shouldn’t think of her as a girl. She was a woman, but he was so used to hearing his mother call them girls. “I was never very good at that game anyway.”
“I rocked it. I beat every single one of my sisters until they wouldn’t even play with me anymore. But I still have issues with it because of the expectations it created. There’s no blood in that game, no one’s crying in pain . . .”
“And there are no boogers,” he finished for her.
“Exactly.”
The waitress brought their food, and Rebekah dug in. “Haven’t eaten since breakfast,” she said by way of apology after she shoveled in her third bite.
“I get it. I live on fruit snacks and Tab most days—there isn’t a lot of time to eat.” He watched her, amused. “You aren’t afraid of spice?”
She raised an eyebrow, picked up the bowl of salsa from the table, and dumped it all over her enchiladas. “I’m a McClain from Bagley, Texas,” she replied. “Spice should be afraid of me.”
They bantered back and forth all through dinner, and while he still wanted answers, he was able to put that aside and concentrate on getting to know her as a person apart from her mysteries. She was smart, funny, caring, involved in the community—she was perfect. He couldn’t think of a better word to describe her. She was absolutely perfect.
“Do you snore?” he asked her as she finished up her meal.
“Snore?”
“Yeah. I’m trying to find some kind of flaw in you, but I can’t.”
She threw her head back and laughed. “You can’t find a flaw in me? Seriously? Oh, my gosh. That’s just too funny. Ask my sisters—they’ll talk your ears off for hours.”
“Okay. When?”
She stopped laughing and looked at him. “What?”
“When can I meet your sisters? We’ve already decided that you’re going to meet my brother—it’s only fair.”
“Um . . .” She suddenly seemed unsure. “I don’t know, Jeremy. Remember—I said I couldn’t promise you anything, and I’m already feeling a lot more involved than I ever intended to get.”
“But isn’t being involved a good thing? Why are you putting up so many walls against me?”
“Because . . . I don’t know if telling you the truth is a good idea.” She slid out of the bench. “I need to go—I’m sorry.”
“Rebekah, wait.” Jeremy stood up as well and caught her arm. “Listen, I . . . I know you don’t want to hear this, but I like you. I like you a lot, and I can’t believe that this is going to be our only date. When can I see you again?”
“After I talk to my sister.” With that strange reply, Rebekah left, and Jeremy was even more confused than he’d been before their date.