Chapter Eight #3
“Then he disappeared a few days later. I called Jake on my way here, told him they should start searching over by that damn rock face. And they found him there…without his walking stick.”
He stopped, remembering that awful day again. Remembering how helpless he’d felt as he drove like a maniac up the mountain, only to see them bringing down his grandfather’s broken body.
Grace wiped her eyes. “I’m glad you weren’t the one who found him.”
“I might as well have. The dream was real enough to me.” Daniel slapped his hand on the counter.
“And it didn’t do a damn bit of good. I couldn’t see why he fell.
I couldn’t see when. And there was no way Pops would stay off the mountain forever.
What good are these damn things if I can’t stop what I see from happening? ”
“What about Diana? You stopped that from happening.”
He shook his head. “Have I? For all I know, she’ll come up here at some point, maybe about the journal, and end up in a car wreck. And who’s to say Francesca won’t die in a different earthquake? Maybe things don’t change, only shift. Maybe nothing I do makes a difference.”
“I beg to differ.” Nick came into the kitchen and leaned over to kiss the top of Grace’s head.
“Sorry. I couldn’t help hearing,” he explained.
“I just talked to the Crescent Cove Fire Department down in Florida. Apparently, an RV over at the Beesom RV park caught fire about thirty minutes ago. But the owner, one Ms. Mel K. Noblett, got out safely.”
Daniel felt an overwhelming surge of relief. “She wasn’t hurt?”
“Not at all. Mel told them that she had fallen asleep, but her cell phone rang and woke her up.” He paused for emphasis. “Saved. Her. Life.”
“That’s two, Daniel. In the last forty-eight hours, your gift has saved two lives,” Grace said, leaning toward him but not attempting to touch him. “That is amazing.”
Daniel stared at his cup. Saved two, lost forty-nine, and now Mel is homeless. But she’s alive. “Did you talk to her?”
“Her phone went up in the fire,” Nick said with a meaningful look.
“I gave the owner of the RV park your name and number, and he said he would give it to her.” He handed Daniel a slip of paper with all the numbers on it.
“Her parents live in the same park, but they’re off performing somewhere in Texas. ”
Daniel looked at the number. “Performing?”
“Apparently,” Nick said. “Something called Scarborough.”
Daniel took a deep breath. “Thanks for finding all that out.”
“I have my moments. Now, I need to get back to researching this investment I’m looking at, unless there’s something else?”
“Just the measurements for the baby’s room,” Grace said.
“Got that done already. So, if this isn’t an official meeting of the board, can I go get some real work done?” The so-called board of their family foundation consisted of just the three of them at the moment.
“Are you implying that measuring for the baby’s furniture is not real work?” Grace asked.
Nick smirked. “Why, no, honey. But buying furniture is the spending part of the job. I have to go focus on the making-money-to-spend part.”
Grace sighed patiently. “No, this isn’t a board meeting. It’s more of a doctor-patient conference. We do need to have a meeting though, as soon as we can manage it.”
Daniel winced. “Doctor-patient?” Grace was a doctor and her gift from the old magic was healing. A perfect fit. Why couldn’t he have gotten the ability to actually talk to bees or something?
“That is my cue to walk away as fast as I can,” Nick said, doing exactly that.
“What do you mean, doctor-patient?” Daniel repeated. It sounded even worse the second time.
“Eat the muffin and I’ll tell you,” she said.
Daniel looked down at the untouched muffin and took a bite when he realized he might as well surrender now and save them both some time.
“What I started to say was, I’m not a walking CT or MRI, but my gift has…changed over the past few years, and, I mean, when I last saw you, I noticed you were losing weight and drinking more—”
“Is this some kind of intervention?” He took another bite of his muffin and looked around. “So the guys in white coats really are coming for me.”
“It’s not funny, Daniel.”
Daniel grimaced. “And your bedside manner sucks.”
“I have a great bedside manner, it just doesn’t work on you,” she quipped, but it sounded forced.
“I sensed it even more when you were home over the holidays, perhaps because I had gone into the cave again, I don’t know.
But even then, I couldn’t put my finger on it.
I was a bit preoccupied.” She cupped a hand around her protruding belly.
“The point is, when I touched you, I got this feeling that something was changing in your brain.”
Daniel straightened, wishing he hadn’t taken the two bites of muffin. “Changing?”
“There are theories about migraines that tie them to certain chemicals and hormones produced by nerve cells that narrow blood vessels. They can, in some cases, result in…lesions in the brain.” She held up a hand.
“Don’t jump to conclusions. I’m not saying I saw anything.
Like I said, I am not a CT or MRI. And these lesions they see in migraine sufferers don’t cause long term damage or even any symptoms in most cases, but—”
“Let me guess. No lesions is better than lesions.” Daniel rubbed at his temple.
He had felt it. Ever since Diana. Ever since that first excruciating headache after that horrible dream.
It had felt as if something was unraveling behind his eyes.
And the headaches and side-effects were just getting worse and worse.
“Can you do anything? Can these lesions be repaired?”
“I’m not sure. You need to let me take a good look around.” Grace reached out for his hand, but Daniel instinctively pulled away.
He closed his eyes and swallowed back the queasy feeling, then extended his hand to her again. “Sorry. I think I’m still tired. I have this uneasy feeling that the next damn vision is going to kill me. It’s irrational, I know.”
“It may not be irrational at all. Your body knows better than you think what is dangerous for you,” Grace said. “Is it all right to touch you, as long as there’s no skin contact?”
“Hell, I don’t know. I think it’s skin to skin. But the way things are going, who knows?”
She rubbed her hand down his arm through his shirt. “Is this okay?”
He blew out a breath. “Yeah. Nothing.”
“All right. I can do this without touching you, but it’s easier this way.”
“I… The impact on my eyes really scared me. I just can’t… You don’t think… You don’t think it could impact my vision permanently?” That thought terrified him more than almost anything.
“I don’t know.” Grace frowned, closing her eyes as she focused on something he couldn’t sense or feel. “Let’s see. It might not be physical.”
“Not physical?” Daniel said in disbelief. “You mean psychosomatic? Like I’m going crazy?”
“Shhh! I need to focus. Just give me a moment here.”
Daniel closed his eyes and tried to relax. After a moment, there was a warm tingle behind his eyes and the pain eased. He opened his eyes cautiously, but there was no stab of pain.
Grace took her hand off his arm and leaned heavily on the counter.
“Hey, you okay?” he asked
Grace huffed. “I’m getting better at this all the time, but it still makes me a little tired.”
“What about the baby? What about Lily? Should you be—?”
“No, no. She’s fine.” She laid her hand on her stomach again. “Sometimes I get the feeling she’s trying to help.” She shook her head and smiled. “It’s probably my imagination.”
“I don’t want you risking—”
“Don’t you talk to me about risk, Daniel James Woodruff!” she said. “You should have told me about the headaches getting worse and the eyesight issues.” Grace took a deep breath. “Sorry. Hormones.”
“No. Redhead,” Daniel countered, remembering their many childhood squabbles. He gulped down the rest of his coffee and thought about when the headaches had really started.
Grace smiled. “That too.”
“So, there’s really something going on in there? It is physical?”
“Something is happening in your brain. I think it is in response to the visions, somehow. It isn’t psychosomatic or a conversion disorder, any more than my getting sick after healing someone was psychosomatic. It was very real. Scared the crap out of me the first few times.”
“But it stopped? You stopped getting so sick?”
“Yes. It’s a bit like taking small sips instead of trying to swallow the bottle all at once.
But that’s not all.” She blew out a breath.
“I was afraid of my gift, to be honest. It terrified me. Accepting the gift, I think, was half the battle. And a lot of that was me desperately wanting to save Nick. I still have side effects, but they’re nowhere near as bad. ”
Daniel frowned at the remnants of his muffin. That was the real problem. He didn’t want to see what he saw. He didn’t want this damn gift. He raised his head to find Grace looking at him with understanding—frustrating, annoying, sibling understanding.
No way was he going to tell her the true horrors he had seen.
The stuff he’d seen that was still years away.
The water wars. The food riots. He hoped she had forgotten the middle-of-the-night phone call he’d made about his latest nightmare—the plague of miscarriages that seemed to hit so close to home.
He sighed. “Okay. So did you see the changes in my brain? Those lesions you were talking about?”
“It is hard to describe. I don’t see things, but yes,” she said. “There was significant damage, if that’s the right word.”
Daniel felt a frisson of fear. “But you can fix it?”
Grace let out a breath. “I fixed what I could just now, but I can’t fix the cause. You aren’t really a migraine sufferer. With them, you figure out the trigger or triggers and eliminate them, if you can.”
“So, what is causing it?”
Her green eyes locked onto his. “Obviously, it’s something connected to your visions.
But I won’t really know until you have another dream or vision and I have something to compare to what I saw.
But I think you need to stay close for a while, so I can monitor what’s going on. It could be dangerous. Very dangerous.”
“Are you saying the next damn vision could kill me?”