Forty-Three

After I left Detective Jay, I walked quickly to school but stopped outside the front door. I should have gone in. I was already late. I’d missed more classes in the past couple of weeks than I had in the entire four years before all of this started. But each step looked a mile high; the door appeared to weigh a thousand pounds. I didn’t have the strength to make it inside. Drew most likely would still be giving me the cold shoulder. Everyone else would be watching me, waiting to see what might happen. I tried taking the first step, but then stopped. I couldn’t do it.

I spun and kept walking until I was outside the Catholic church. The door creaked open and the smell of the place—furniture polish, dusty books, and incense—enveloped me. It smelled like the place where magic potions were made. I crept in and absently rubbed the foot of the stone statue of the Virgin Mary that stood in the back of the lobby.

I slid into a polished pew and stared at the crucifix hanging at the front trying to calm my thoughts.

I shifted on the wooden seat. My eyes traveled around the walls of the church. There were paintings of various miraculous moments, a pregnant virgin, loaves and fishes to feed thousands, Christ floating up to heaven with his arms spread wide. No one saw anything exceptional in those miracles. They were accepted. Normal.

I’d always denied that my mom had any kind of special powers or ability. I made fun of the mere idea.

There were times when my mom had seemed to know things. The day my grandpa died, my mom had mentioned that morning that she dreamt about him visiting her. And there was the time she kept me home from school because she felt like something bad would happen, and that day a bunch of kids in my class got food poisoning from dodgy birthday cupcakes. I’d chalked those up to luck, but what if she was psychic? Maybe the person who wasn’t willing to see reality was me.

The TV was on as I came into the apartment hours later, one of those ballroom dancing shows. The air smelled like a field after a rain, so my mom must have busted out the Febreze. She swept around the living room. It looked like she was doing the tango. She didn’t stop when she spotted me and instead kept time with the music, her arms held out in front of her, embracing a ghostly dance partner.

“The school called,” she called out over her shoulder. “They said you didn’t show up today.”

I should have known the secretary would call. “Sorry,” I said. “Needed a break.”

Mom stopped dancing and wiped the sweat from her brow. “Fine with me. I told them I’d forgotten to call you in sick.”

“Thanks.” I leaned against the wall.

She smiled. “No problem. I remember how hard it is to sit in class, especially when the weather gets nice.”

“I went to the police department this morning.”

She caught my expression and stopped dancing. “Ah.” Mom clicked off the TV and sat on the couch.

I crossed the room and sat next to her. It was easier to talk when I wasn’t looking directly at her. I pulled the afghan onto my lap, even though it was too hot for a blanket. I buried my fingers into the scratchy acrylic yarn. “Detective Jay said he knew I was a fake. That you told him that.”

“You want something to drink?” Mom went out to the kitchen and poured herself a glass of white wine from the box in the fridge. She popped her head around the corner. “You want a glass?” She smiled at me. “After all, it’s after five somewhere in the world.”

“Of wine?” I asked, surprised. She’d never me offered me a drink before, and it seemed like a trick question.

She laughed. “You’re eighteen. I’m not so old that I think this is the first drop of alcohol you’ve had in your life.” She put her hands over her ears. “Not that I want you to tell me.”

It wasn’t my first drink, but she was wrong if she thought I was getting drunk at parties. Other than the time Drew snuck the vodka out of her parents’ liquor cabinet, we hadn’t done much. My mom often confused her wild teen years with mine. Drew and I had been more into Netflix and craft projects than boozy parties.

Mom passed me a glass. “Here’s to good times ahead,” she said, and we clinked.

I took a cautious sip. The wine was ice cold. It must have been near the back of our fridge, where things had a tendency to freeze. “Why did you tell him all the visions were yours?”

She shrugged and then fished out her bra strap to yank it back up. “They suspected you might be involved. Telling them all the visions were mine seemed the easiest way to get their focus off you.”

I took a deep breath. She thought I was guilty. “If you thought I was faking, don’t you wonder how I knew what I did?”

Mom put her glass down on the coffee table on top of an outdated People magazine she’d nicked from the beauty salon. “You have abilities.”

I stared down at my knees. “I didn’t have a vision. Not then, not ever.”

She sighed. “You won’t want to hear this, but your skepticism keeps you from seeing the truth. You have the ability, but you get in your own way.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but she cut me off.

“You were involved with what happened to Paige.”

If I hadn’t been sitting down, I would have fallen. For a few beats, the only sound in the room was the ticking of the clock in the kitchen. “What do you mean?”

Mom picked up her glass and drank half of the wine in one long swallow. “I had a vision of the two of you. It didn’t make a lot of sense at first, but I think Paige wanted to disappear and you helped her somehow.”

I was lightheaded, and a thin sheen of sweat broke out all over my body. There was no way she could know. “That’s why you told him we were together the night she died.”

She nodded tersely. She took me by the chin and turned my head so our faces were inches apart. “I will do whatever I need to do to keep you safe. You are my child. I won’t take even the slightest chance that the police will blame you.” She leaned forward so our foreheads touched for a second. “You’re a part of me. We don’t always get along, but never doubt that I would do anything for you.”

“Even if you thought I killed Paige?”

She closed her eyes as if the words coming out my mouth hurt her, then she kissed me on the cheek. “I don’t need psychic abilities to know you didn’t kill Paige.”

I sagged back on the sofa. My entire body ached as if I’d run a marathon. I hadn’t realized how I’d been tensing my muscles. “I know who did it. It was her dad.”

Mom blinked for a moment and then stood. “This calls for more wine.” She topped up both of our glasses and came back. “Tell me everything.”