2. Olly #4
“Olly,” he said. “I think it’s best if we just get this over with, like ripping off a Band-Aid.”
“Okay,” I said warily. You know there was that saying that the truth would set you free?
Well, sometimes the truth just scared you shitless, and from what I felt wafting off Jeff, I felt like I ought to be scared.
He ushered me past one golf tournament trophy after another to a series of portraits.
I scanned the wall, and then my head was shaking even as I digested what I was seeing.
My eyes filled with tears of shock, and the hair on my arms raised, a sudden chill creeping over my body.
There, in a mid-’90s get-up, was a woman of around thirty with dark hair styled in the “Rachel” haircut, kind-looking eyes, and an engraved dedication under her picture that read: Lost But Not Forgotten, 1968-1999.
She was also Gemma Diaz.
I balled up my right hand and pressed it to my mouth, trying not to scream as I overlooked the lobby.
Just when I thought my life was gaining ground in the normalcy department, this was starting up, all over again, and to a degree I had rarely experienced.
I hadn’t had up close and personal encounters with the dead since I was a teenager, and I had puberty and pregnancy to thank for amping up my abilities back then.
Wait, pregnancy? Oh goddess, this was like a cosmic joke.
Though I did still sometimes see a person in a crowd, and I knew, somehow just knew, they weren’t entirely real.
Of course, that depended on how you defined reality, and the fact that I was perhaps the only person who could see them didn’t bode well for said full-fledged reality.
Jeff broke the stunned silence I had descended into, as I was also literally descending toward the floor.
He gently took me by the arms, pulled me up, and directed us to a handy bench facing this section of the wall, presumably for reflection.
After a long silence where I ignored the tears running down my cheeks, he took my hand and said, “So there’s that. Are you more like The Ghost Whisperer, or one of the gang on Sliders?” he asked, somehow managing to be both deadly serious and a bit amused.
“We find out I’ve been commiserating with that dead woman, a dead woman who crochets newborn hats for the hospital while I read at lunch, and you’re asking me about nineties television?”
“Well, it’s something like that, or you’ve got a major mental illness you’ve been hiding rather well.
” He paused, as if waiting for confirmation or denial.
My blood ran cold as I considered that the PTSD I carried from a catastrophic accident when I was eight might be interfering, but I discounted it because of all the other evidence I had of my abilities.
“Well, I don’t help ghosts ‘move on’ if that’s what you meant by the whole Ghost Whisperer thing, and I’m not travelling the multiverse to the best of my knowledge, if such a thing were even possible.
I mean, can you imagine? So we can rule out those theories.
I’ll be as honest as I can be without betraying anyone else’s secrets, okay?
” He nodded, so I continued. “Ghosts are real, and there’s something about me that is like catnip for them.
I see them in crowds sometimes, when others can’t.
And every now and then, one will like, latch on and seem utterly real and normal to me until something like this happens.
” I couldn’t believe I was having this conversation to begin with, let alone that it had gone this far.
Time to squash this shit. “All I can do is try to avoid her and ask her to leave me alone if she becomes too much of a distraction. If things don’t resolve from there, I guess I’m going to need a young priest and an old priest.” Yeah, that was me, cracking jokes at the most inopportune times.
“Robert thought you were pulling some kind of prank with the cell that backfired into un-funny territory, but is willing to let the whole thing go. I don’t want you worrying about this, okay?
My grandma believed her house was haunted, you know.
So did the whole family, actually. I have some whoppers I could tell you about ghostly encounters.
Just...just keep looking forward, Olly. Don’t look back on what’s gone. ”
I nodded at the somewhat strange advice he had just imparted, and he helped me up to the bank of elevators, grabbing my bag for me on the way.
I felt anxious, wondering if and when my next encounter with Gemma would be, and what I would say to her.
Did that throw me in a crazy pile? Being nervous over what to say to a ghost who was, for all intents and purposes, my friend?
Well, not anymore. I couldn’t encourage this.
I could easily get sucked into whatever fantasy or loop Gemma was living out and lose sight of what was real and what I wished was real.
Thomas already had that role in my life covered. One ghostly older sibling was enough. I didn’t need to collect more.