Chapter 16
Longest day in history at yet another activity, the yoga tent. What is this, summer camp?
Gabby had never liked yoga. Holding an uncomfortable pose until you were bored or about to fall over—it was more like sex with Phil than exercise.
And really, it was a waste of time when she had a national security leak to investigate.
Gabby needed to Be More. Do More, not contort herself into an awkward position to reach enlightenment.
Skip yoga and snoop around the main offices—that’s what she should be doing. Or working on an organizational map of the cult, which probably wasn’t the posterboard family tree–style project she was imagining.
Yoga was the last thing she needed. Getting centered and finding balance was a waste of time in the real world, and it was a myth here.
Just as she was flipping around to head anywhere but yoga, she spotted Sheridan outfitted in yoga pants and a Jackson Hole T-shirt.
Damn it. Now Gabby had to make a choice. Follow the woman she was supposed to be babysitting who didn’t want anything to do with her or…
There was no choice. If she had to do yoga to learn something, then so be it.
Gabby fell into step with the psychic and headed toward class.
Sheridan’s gray-streaked hair stood out at the resort where everyone else was Botoxed and filled to perfection and slathered in Inner Beauty cream. Sheridan didn’t need anyone’s approval. Her confidence had a gravitational pull.
“How’s the psychological decluttering coming?”
“I told you we weren’t talking,” Sheridan said sharply, not even glancing Gabby’s way.
“Are you going to skip yoga now?”
“No, but I’d like you to.”
The yoga tent wasn’t really a tent. It had a gleaming wooden floor, a live harpist, pillar candles, and an ocean breeze.
It was The Great British Bake Off tent on a beach.
Gabby defiantly picked up a yoga block. If Sheridan didn’t want to talk to her, she’d eavesdrop.
After the room filled with women, Gabby placed her mat closer to Sheridan, close enough that she could speak to her if she wanted.
Lana sashayed in and plopped her mat right in front of the two of them. After some hellos, she looked at Sheridan and asked, “What’s it like having a vision?”
“Like a bowel movement for your brain,” Sheridan answered matter-of-factly.
Gabby felt like her brain took a shit all the time, and she’d never predicted anything.
“I read that piece Amanda Duvall wrote about you,” Gabby blurted out because she wasn’t sure how else to work it into the conversation. Interrogation wasn’t conversation, unless you were good at it.
Sheridan flashed an annoyed look. “Ma’am, are you trying to rile me up? Because it’s not going to work.”
The way she answered the question made her seem a little riled up.
Sheridan, hands on hips, answered the question.
“Amanda had some fair points. I see how I am problematic, but democracy has worse problems than me: politicians who are owned by rich donors, lobbies that determine votes, an invisible administrative state, the electoral college, and an uneducated and misinformed population of voters. If she was truly worried about democracy, she has plenty of bigger fish to fry.” Sheridan gave her impassioned speech calmly, but there was a quiet energy behind her words.
Gabby never expected a psychic to be so worked up about government.
Jasmine dimmed the lights and cued the harpist. “Welcome, everyone!” she said in a soothing tone. “I normally don’t teach yoga, but Saphire is feeling a little under the weather.”
Probably too many G-shots. Blindly drinking anything a cult leader handed out seemed like a bad idea after Jonestown. The Kool-Aid might sound good, but…
Gabby’s thoughts drifted to Rasputin. It wasn’t like she was a historian, but she had watched the cartoon version of Anastasia with Meg Ryan, and she remembered Rasputin trying to take over Russia.
Sheridan could be pulling a Rasputin, but it was hard to say.
If Sheridan did want to take over, maybe she’d do a better job. Gabby was inclined to cheer her on.
After some light stretching, Jasmine moved into a downward dog. “Gia, this is an active pose. Push into your heels and engage your core.”
For Gabby, the core of her body was something to cover with rouching or drapey fabric that hopefully didn’t pooch out and make her look pregnant, even though that’s what it usually did.
Jasmine shifted into a plank and then back again, lifting one leg up into the air. She made it look easy.
The rest of the class followed Jasmine’s lead like they’d done it a thousand times, a good reminder that Inner-G recruited through yoga studios. This wasn’t paradise; it was Gabby’s nightmare.
Lana, thankfully, was still blabbing. “How well did you know Amanda? Everyone down here just loved her.”
The question seemed to take the life out of Sheridan. Jasmine called out, “Sheridan, stop hunching. I want your spine long from your tailbone to the crown of your head.”
Poor Sheridan dropped out of her pose and plopped on her mat.
Gabby asked, “Are you okay?”
A tear rolled down Sheridan’s cheek and dripped on the yoga mat.
“Now root your heels toward the earth,” Jasmine called. “Become connected.”
Why was everything so dramatic with yoga?
When Jasmine pushed down on Gabby’s heels, her hamstrings almost broke. At least she was giving Sheridan a break.
Lana, who also must have noticed the tear, said, “Oh, Sheridan, what’s the matter?”
A lightning bolt of inspiration hit Gabby.
Last night, Sheridan had said she was broken up over losing a client.
Now she was crying at the mention of Amanda.
It was foreseeable that she and Amanda met through the president.
Did a guy introduce his mistress and his psychic?
It seemed odd, but that must be how the two met, and how Amanda broke the story.
“Were you working with Amanda?” Gabby asked quietly.
Sheridan didn’t say no.
“Even though she wrote that article about you?”
“That wasn’t about me. That was about the president for hiring me without clearance,” Sheridan said.
That was half true.
“She’s dead, and I didn’t save her.” Sheridan sniffled.
Jasmine walked back. “Ladies! Stop talking or I’m going to kick you out.”
Sheridan took a yoga breath like she was trying to keep it together, but her face fell again. “I’m too emotional for yoga. Sorry, Jasmine.”
Jasmine nodded her head. “Get centered. Come back tomorrow.”
On her way past Gabby, Sheridan stopped and whispered, “Someone is going to die this week.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
Was that a threat? Gabby wobbled in her warrior pose while Sheridan walked out of the tent with her yoga mat under her arm and her head held high. Gabby stared after her with her jaw on the floor. Hopefully, Sheridan’s brain was still broken because that was not news anyone needed.
Oblivious, Jasmine said, “Root your feet to the earth and reach your head to the sky. Use your core. Many of us have forgotten to do something as simple as stand correctly.
“Gia!” Jasmine said sharply, “I’m talking to you.”
Had Gabby forgotten how to stand? Probably.
“Now hold your right leg out perpendicular to your body and grab your toe. You will never stand taller than after this.”
Taylor Swift’s posture bra sounded like a better option. But it was two hundred dollars, and some of the reviews said it was really hard to get off. You probably needed to do yoga to wear it.
Gabby teetered as she moved to one leg and put her foot back down.
If you can balance your body, you can balance your mind, you can balance your life.
Who could balance after hearing, “By the end of the week, one of you will be dead!” Was Sheridan just messing with her? Probably. She had been really pissed at Gabby for following her and then bringing up Amanda.
At the front of the class, Jasmine was doing the move Ralph Macchio had done at the end of The Karate Kid, the one that had finally taken down the blond guy who was really adorable on Cobra Kai. She needed to watch the latest season of that with the kids.
As Gabby stood on one leg and tried to hold the other out, her balance started to go.
Come on—Be More! Do More! She could muscle her way through this.
Just stiffen and clench. Left leg on the ground.
Right leg in the air. Compartmentalize. Control.
Standard operating procedures. Dead drops.
Parent pickup. Conferences. Dinner. Elder care.
Her mind clouded with everything she needed to balance. She tried it again.
Was Markus really doing this stuff?
“Squeeze your inner thighs,” Jasmine said. “All of these exercises are working your pelvic floor. A strong pelvic floor is the basis of a strong relationship.”
“Really?” There was something else she was missing.
“Do you want to find your G-spot, Gia?”
“I was just joking about that. I know it’s a myth.”
“It does exist. And so does balance.”
For a second, Jasmine held Gabby’s hand, just barely. She clung to that support for dear life. She could do with a helping hand.
Jasmine let go of Gabby’s hand and stepped away. “Trust yourself, Gia. You need to trust yourself before you ask someone else to place trust in you.”
Which just made her think of the report she was writing on Markus. No one should trust her.
“Gia, you can—”
Gabby wobbled, and panic shot through her like electricity. Her left leg started to go. She had no balance without support. She let go of her foot and started helicoptering her arms, but she was too off-kilter by the time she got her other foot on the ground.
On her way down, she reached for something, anything to hold herself up. She got a handful of tent flap. Instead of holding her up, she felt the tent give way.
“NOOOO!” Her scream cut through the relaxing harp music.
With the heaving and the creaking of metal and the chiming of sound bowls skittering across the wooden floor, the tent began going sideways. It was coming down on top of them like that parachute in her elementary school gym class, except this could hurt. Gabby froze for a moment.
Luckily, they all were able to make it out before the tent came down. It sort of slow-collapsed.
Outside, Gabby stood on the sand and viewed the disaster with the rest of the class. In the end, the tent looked like a hat that someone had sat on.
Once Jasmine verified that everyone was safe, she shuttled them all to the spa to recover from the drama.
Gabby hung back with Jasmine. “I’m so sorry about that.”
“You haven’t done much yoga, have you?” Jasmine didn’t sound angry.
Gabby flashed a guilty look.
“It’s just an observation, not an accusation.”
Gabby didn’t have the energy to pretend, so she went with her only other option: honesty.
“I don’t know if you know, but I have a couple of kids.
I bought a gym membership, but that’s about as far as I’ve gotten on my fitness journey.
I was hoping I could just stay in the back of the class and stay under the radar. ”
Surprise flashed across Jasmine’s face. “I didn’t know George had kids.”
Gabby blanched. Damn it. Trying to recover from her slip, she said, “Well, they aren’t his. Yet. Not until we get married. Then he’s going to be a stepdad.”
Stepdad—saying it out loud made it real. Releasing it into the air let some of the pressure off. Blended families could work. She saw them on TikTok all the time.
“I haven’t seen the kids on Instagram.” Jasmine seemed to be thinking aloud.
“Oh, I don’t post the kids. Too many low-vibrational people on the internet,” Gabby said in an attempt to relate.
Gabby never posted much of anything, actually. Like everyone else, she was addicted, but it was all voyeurism, scrolling through other people’s material. It was a blessing now that she was a spy. She had less of a digital footprint to hide.
“Genesis and I tried to have children.” Jasmine’s voice lilted slightly.
“I’m sorry,” Gabby said, legitimately surprised.
“You are lucky, Gia. I have to be satisfied being a mother to everyone at Inner-G.”
Gabby smiled back. “That sounds even harder than teenagers.”
Jasmine laughed. “Not to mention G. I’m pretty much his mother too.”
“I know that one,” Gabby said with feeling.
“I think I know what happened today,” Jasmine said.
“I can’t do yoga.”
“It’s more than that,” she said. “When I watched you going through the poses, I saw a woman struggling to control her body, her environment. Am I right?”
“Yes, but that’s what you have to do, right?”
“Control doesn’t come through micromanaging. Sure, there is some of that. You have to have intent and drive, but you also have to surrender.”
Gabby looked up. Surrender described her pre-divorce life, surrender to the status quo, surrender to the inevitable. Surrender had felt like defeat.
“If you can’t control something, don’t fight it. You can’t be present in the moment or mindful. In that tent, I saw a woman at war with her own body.”
That was true.
“And I see the tension in the way you hold your shoulders.”
Okay, that Taylor Swift bra might be worth the money.
“As far as the yoga, we’ll just scale back the difficulty. Practice presence and surrender in the easier poses before moving on. If you master that in yoga, you will be able to carry it into your daily life.”
“Really?” Gabby released a held breath, relieved that Jasmine wasn’t kicking her off the island.
“I’m so glad to meet George’s fiancée finally,” Jasmine said. “Are you upset that your kids aren’t here?”
Gabby thought for a second. “It’s complicated.”
Jasmine accepted that. “Surrender to what you can’t control.”
Gabby laughed nervously because that described nearly everything and everyone.