Chapter 15
Pete
So… this was awkward. Jackson had called me his boyfriend, and baby. And in front of his sister. Who was now staring at me.
“So, um,” I started, not wanting us to sit in uncomfortable silence any longer. “If you want privacy with Jackson, please just let me know. I don’t want to be in the way when you need your brother.”
She tilted her head. “You truly mean that?”
“Yeah. I have a brother myself and I know sometimes it’s nice having some one-on-one time. I respect that.”
She fell back against the couch and exhaled loudly, almost like she’d dropped her walls and was allowing me to truly see the real her. “It’s all just so fucked up. I can’t even talk to Jackson about it.”
“Are you pregnant?” I blurted, then mentally kicked myself.
“Pete!” Berlina chastised me. “You don’t ask a woman that! Never! Have you no manners?” I had to fight against the eye roll. “Apologize!”
“I’m sorry,” I said, knowing Berlina was right.
To my surprise, Ida smiled. “No worries. And to answer your question, no, I’m not pregnant.”
“Then why can’t you talk to Jackson about what’s troubling you?”
“Ask if it’s about her mother,” Berlina said, sitting down on my right side on the couch. She seemed far too interested in Ida.
“Is it about your mom?” I asked, and Ida’s eyes widened, then she did something surprising, she looked at Berlina, and then me.
“You can… you can hear her too?”
I gaped at her. “You’re a medium?!”
“Oh, this is just lovely!” Berlina clapped. “Sven!” she called.
“What?!” Sven snapped as he came into the room.
“We have another medium!” Berlina gushed.
Sven looked at Ida, then nodded and grunted his hello. I believed that was the best welcome Ida could get from him.
“Is that what’s troubling you?” I asked, focusing on Ida. If it was, we needed to talk it through now. And fast. Jackson couldn’t be here while we talked about it.
“It is.” Tears formed in Ida’s eyes and she sniffed.
“I started hearing them first, around six months ago, and then… Then I saw them. I asked my mom if she could hear them, but she started worrying, threatening me that she would have me checked out. Apparently, hearing things wasn’t a thing sane people did. ”
“You are sane. You just got your abilities later in life,” I assured her.
“I got mine when I was twenty,” Berlina added helpfully. “I was freaked out too.”
“Wait?” Ida said, frowning. “You were a medium?”
Berlina nodded. “Me and Sven both.”
“Can you… can you help me?”
It broke my heart seeing Ida like this. It also explained why she was so tired looking. I was used to ghosts; she wasn’t. And it took some time getting used to feeling drained. It would get better for her, but yeah, it would take time.
“We will all help you. But not around Jackson.” That was my one condition. Jackson would do anything he could to help Ida out, but I wasn’t about to mess up his trauma.
“Deal,” she replied quickly. “Can I turn it off?” Her eyes were filled with hope and I hated that I would be the one erasing that.
“No,” Sven replied, surprising us all. “But you can ignore ghosts you don’t want to deal with. It takes practice, but you owe them nothing. If you want to help, then help, but no one will blame you if you don’t want to.”
“I… I want to. I just don’t know how.” She seemed terrified.
“I work as a medium, like Berlina and Sven did when they were alive. My mom is a medium too. If you want, I can ask her if she’ll help you? You can meet at her house so Jackson won’t overhear, and you’ll be safe with our ghosts there. All are friendly.”
“I would like that. She truly won’t mind?”
I shook my head and smiled at her. “No, I actually think she would be excited. I started my training when I was sixteen, so you’re the same age now as I was when I first got truly into being a medium. Oh, and Jackson believes I work for the FBI, something all us mediums have to say if we’re asked.”
She just blinked. “I need to sleep; all this information is just too much. I wasn’t even sure I was a medium until just now.”
“You thought your mom might’ve been right? That you needed professional help?”
She started tearing up again. “Yes. I felt so fucked up. That was why I left. The ghosts at home kept bothering me, demanding I look at them. That I help them. They weren’t all nice…”
“Ghosts are like they were when they were alive. Some people are assholes, and they continue to be assholes even when they’re dead. I’m sorry you had such a bad first experience with it,” Berlina said.
“Me too,” I said, handing her some tissues from the coffee table. “But I promise it’ll get easier with time.”
“How long did it take you?” she asked, wiping her nose and eyes.
“Well, I’m a born medium, so I’ve always been able to see and hear ghosts, but it wasn’t until I was ten that I could comfortably ignore them when I didn’t have the time to deal with ghost business.”
“Damn, I hope I won’t have to wait ten years.” She was smiling, and that helped ease my worries a bit. “Fuck, I can’t believe Jackson ended up dating a medium. That’s like, too funny.”
I laughed and she joined in. “So, you know about his fears?” It seemed like she did. But her reason for not wanting him to know could be that she was worried he would react like her mom had.
“I do. He told me when I was eleven. He’d taken me to the park, something he liked to do when we were younger.
‘Brother sister bonding time’, he’d called it.
I was terrified of the birds, and cried after one chased me.
He told me it was okay to be scared. I’d apologized several times for my reaction.
I felt so stupid and like I was making it a big deal when it was just birds.
That was when he told me about his fear of ghosts.
And I remember thinking, if my strong big brother could fear something and not be embarrassed about it, then so could I.
” I fell even harder for Jackson hearing that.
How that man could continue to grow on me was a surprise.
I thought he’d already reached the top of how perfect a man could possibly be, but he’d yet again topped the scale.
“I’m glad he told you. I just hate that we can’t talk freely about it with him here, especially now that you need it.”
She shrugged. “It wasn’t a total lie about my mother, she was angry at me, but not about the money. She knew I wouldn’t get anything, so at least I didn’t have to lie too much.”
“I still can’t believe she would treat you like that,” I muttered.
I’d been lucky growing up with an understanding family.
It was normal in my household. I couldn’t fathom how hard it must’ve been for Ida, carrying that fear around alone, feeling drained and then being harassed by unfriendly ghosts.
“I can’t either. It doesn’t seem like her at all. But perhaps she fears ghosts too, but instead of being like Jackson and dealing with it, she lashes out and blames me for her unease.”
“You sound like a person who’s gone through therapy and is very much in touch with herself. Not at all like a sixteen-year-old,” I teased, but still meaning every word.
“I have gone to therapy, actually.”
“You have?”
“Yes. For two years. My father paid. Funnily enough, he was the reason I needed the therapy.”
“Oh.”
“He wanted less and less to do with me, and his relationship with my mom was horrible too. So, I needed to deal with the fact that my own father didn’t want me. Therapy helped me work through that.”
“No child should ever feel unwanted.”
“No, I agree. But he wasn’t a very caring man.
He only wanted me in his life to punish my mom.
I know that for a fact, because he told me when I was twelve.
That was the last time I saw him. I didn’t want to see him after hearing that.
My mom demanded he pay for therapy for me, and since Jackson had been to therapy too, she used that as another reason I was owed the same treatment. ”
Fuck, Ida had been through a lot of shit. And she was only two years younger than me. “I think you being here is the best solution. You can even start training, if you want to work as a medium.”
“Is it a good job? I know it sounds silly, but I can’t imagine what I would actually do.”
“Oh, you’d go to haunted houses and speak to the ghosts. Often, we get called because the house owners are afraid of the ghosts, or the ghosts are actually dangerous and we need to deal with them. No job we take is the same, and that’s what I love about it. Never boring doing what we do.”
“I think, I’ll start with just learning what I am, and what I can do.”
“That sounds smart. I’ll text my mom and ask if she can help you out.”
“Thank you. Do you mind if I close my eyes a little? It’s just all so overwhelming, and I really need some rest.”
“I don’t mind. I’ll wake you up when Jackson returns.”
She fell asleep almost instantly, so I quickly texted my mom and explained the situation.
She replied almost immediately that she would come and pick up Ida tomorrow.
I knew Ida would be in good hands. Sharing one last look with Berlina and Sven, they nodded and left the apartment, knowing Ida needed some time without ghosts around her.
I appreciated that they respected her needs.
Now I just had to wait for my man to get home. My boyfriend.