10
Courtney’s eyes flared wide. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“No.” Julia sat opposite Courtney at a local diner, having told her about the call to Helen.
They’d met for breakfast, but their scrambled eggs cooled on plates in front of them.
Courtney looked put together in a fresh shirt, light blue sweater, and jeans, and Julia was dressed the same but looked raw and tired.
She hadn’t slept after learning that Helen was dead.
“You’re telling me that Helen’s dead, but you talked to her on the phone?”
“Exactly.”
“Did you try calling her back?”
“Yes, and there was no answer. I texted her, too. No answer.” Julia shook her head. “Also, I found plenty of obits. Scotland Yard even issued a statement.”
“So how did this happen?” Courtney asked, dumbfounded.
“I think I dreamed the whole thing.”
Courtney blinked. “Why do you think that?”
“It’s the only explanation.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Sure it is. I was in bed. I haven’t slept in, like, two days. I thought I was awake, but I wasn’t. I must have dozed off and dreamed the whole thing after I spoke with Gianluca.”
“What if you were communicating with her, even though she’s dead? I think you can communicate with her spirit.”
“No, I can’t, I don’t.”
“But you’re a medium.”
“Court, a medium is someone who can summon spirits and communicate with them. Talk to them, deliver messages to them and from them. I’m not like that.”
“Yes, you are, or you might be. How else do you explain the scream you heard in the garden? Or the fire?”
“I dozed off at the wheel, that’s how I saw the fire. And the scream, well, I think I heard that, but even so, it doesn’t mean that I can have an entire conversation with the dead person. That’s next-level mediumship.”
“So maybe you’re an entry-level medium?”
“I’m not.” Julia’s thoughts were jumbled, and her head pounded. “Helen is. She’s legit. The police consult her. She even said I shouldn’t hold myself out as an expert, she said that in the dream.”
“But she had to start somewhere. Maybe this is how.” Courtney moved her plate aside and hunched over. “Besides, Helen told you things you couldn’t know, like about the levels of consciousness. You couldn’t have dreamed that.”
“She told me that the first time I met her, too.”
“But how did you remember so well, after all this time?”
“Please, you think that can’t happen?” Julia snorted. “I was driving here and I remembered something about my father that I hadn’t thought about ever. He gaslit me, and now I’m gaslighting myself.”
Courtney frowned. “But you can’t dream an entire conversation, can you? It’s so detailed, so vivid.”
“Sure, why not? I dream things all the time that are vivid but aren’t true. I still have those dreams I’m in class and I didn’t study for the final.”
“But Helen said you were a medium, didn’t she?”
“Yes, but I only dreamed her saying it. She didn’t really say it.”
“What about before, when you met with her?”
“She said she thought I had some abilities, but I never explored or understood them. I never took the lessons.”
“But you thought you had abilities, back then.”
“I know, but that was a different time and place. It isn’t happening now the way it did before, and there’s other explanations. Helen even said people can experience premonitions and visions but it never happens again. So we don’t know what’s happening now.”
Courtney cocked her head. “What if Helen’s spirit is trying to help you?”
“If that’s true, why didn’t she just go directly into my mind? Like the scream did? Why do it in the form of a phone call?”
“You were thinking that you wanted to call Helen, like you formed the intention to call her, then her spirit knew you had that intention and began communicating with you.” Courtney hunched over.
“You perceived your conversation with Helen as a phone call because you intended to call her, so it became something you understood, like a phone call.”
“I’m not buying it.”
Courtney’s pretty features softened. “Jules, let me ask you something. Isn’t it possible that you just don’t want to believe it, so you don’t?”
Julia had thought of that, too. “Honestly, yes. Helen said the same thing, in the dream or not in the dream, whichever it was.”
“So then you’re in denial.”
Julia wasn’t ready to go there just yet. “But can I ask you something, in return? Isn’t it possible that you want this to be true, because it can help with Kay’s murder?”
Courtney puckered her lower lip and didn’t speak for a moment.
“I don’t mean to make you sad.” Julia reached across the table, touching her hand. “I’m just saying, even if it is true and I have these abilities, I’m really bad using them. If I get visions, like if the fire was a vision, I have to interpret these things myself, like a puzzle.”
“Okay, so?”
“So what if I’m trying to help you find Kay’s killer and I get it wrong?
” Julia felt tears come to her eyes, knowing that she was speaking her deepest truth.
“I don’t want to get this wrong for you.
I don’t want to give you false hopes that I’m going to magically find Kay’s killer.
I don’t want to take you on some stupid joyride or wild goose chase. ”
“You wouldn’t be.” Courtney blinked, nodding slowly. “I see what you’re saying, but you don’t have to do it alone. We’ll do it together.”
“How?”
“We’ll stop wondering about whether you have psychic abilities or not. You just tell me anything you think, and we’ll try to put it together.”
“But shouldn’t we leave it to the police?”
“We’re not stopping the police from doing anything. I want to cooperate with them as much as humanly possible. I want them to do their jobs.” Courtney frowned. “But that doesn’t mean I’m going to sit on my hands when that guy killed Grandma Kay. The guy that I let get away.”
Julia felt like she was traveling down a road she didn’t want to go, getting in deeper and deeper, but she’d come for a reason and Courtney was making sense.
“You can’t know everything in advance, Jules. Sometimes you have to play it by ear.”
“I know, that’s true,” Julia said, meaning it. Helen had said she had to live with uncertainty. Maybe that was her problem, even if Helen was a dream.
“It’s like sales, when I go in to sell a certain product. I have to listen to what the buyer wants and change on the spot.”
Julia smiled. “It’s not like sales, Courtney.”
“Everything is sales, Jules.” Courtney smiled back. “Okay, it’s like a marriage. You think it’s going one way but it’s going another. You have to be able to respond and pivot.”
“Fair enough.” Julia noticed a new tension around her mouth. “Why, what’s going on? Something up with you and Paul?”
“He’s driving me crazy. He’s not coming in until tomorrow. He can’t get away yet.” Courtney rolled her eyes. “He has a bug up his ass about everything I do. I work too hard, I travel too much.”
“Since when?” Julia asked, surprised. Paul was her late husband Mike’s best friend, and Courtney and Paul’s marriage had been happy since college days.
“Since my promotion. I’m not sure he likes me making double what he does. He measures his self-worth by his income.” Courtney snorted. “I wish he’d measure it by his dick like everybody else.”
Julia chuckled. “That’s tough. I have that with Gianluca because of my inheritance.”
“Now he’s talking about having a kid, even though we decided against.”
“Whoa.” Julia knew it had been hard for Courtney to admit she didn’t want children, but Julia understood. She knew from experience that it was no fun being an unwanted child.
“He doesn’t really want a kid. He just wants me to stop being a regional sales manager.
I don’t know how good a father he’d be anyway.
He’s fun, you know that, but lately, he’s stalled out at work and it makes him unhappy.
” Courtney shook it off. “Anyway, we have to get going.” Her gaze fell on her breakfast. “Is this edible anymore?”
“No, and the coffee’s cold.”
“You want Dunkin’ Donuts, don’t you?”
“You’re reading my mind.”
“Hey, I’m a medium, too!”