34. Olly #2
“How about we take it one folder at a time, after we finish exploring the house?” I suggested, and he nodded once and closed the folder that he had been examining.
He unleashed Becky after realizing that this was not a candidate for an episode of Hoarders, and that nothing in here would harm her.
She made her way to what was admittedly a very grand staircase near the front door where we started, and whined, so we decided to head on up.
Clark grabbed my hand since my balance hadn’t been great lately what with my already large body now sitting at the start of eight months.
Lord, would I be happy when this pregnancy was over.
My feet would be frickin’ delirious when it was.
When we finally reached the next floor, Clark stopped and looked at the packet of information Mr. Boutillier had provided Clark about the house and its history, something we hadn’t dove into yet.
He did, however, note that there was an elevator right at the bottom of the steps, designed to look like a coat closet.
I burst into laughter while wheezing from the loss of breath in climbing this monstrosity of a staircase, and Clark said that the elevator had been fully safety tested just three months ago.
I knew how I was getting back down, anyway.
The upstairs was bright, clean, and had inviting bedrooms that each had an elegant theme.
There was one room made up recently to serve as a nursery with an attached bedroom for a nanny or the occasional babysitter, and another room that had more books, a very posh pool table, and a nine-foot long shuffleboard table.
There was a table for cards, and a comfy recliner with a craft basket next to it, where I suppose someone could cozy up by the fireplace and work on knitting or crochet or some such.
We quietly rode the elevator back downstairs, and he looked at me and said, “Olly, this house, this huge lot it’s on, the pool, and the gated driveway with enough parking to host a party, it’s got to be worth in the millions of dollars. What do we do with it?”
We were sitting in the least fancy place in the joint.
The front porch, as it was a warm day for late April.
Daffodils, hostas, and crocuses were making their way up in well-maintained gardens, furthering our theory that either we had contracts with companies to keep the place maintained, or we had our own staff to look after us.
“Arg, I can’t look at this anymore. All the details are blending together.
You want to read through some of this?” Clark held out the file on the house.
I started flipping through it and saw what he meant, there was everything from soup to nuts in this report, though at least it was organized to a high degree.
I found a section which read ‘Maintenance’ and flipped to that page, and let out a sigh of relief when I found out that we had contracts with existing businesses who had each been in charge of the house for five years or more.
All we had to do was keep money in the account their services came out of every month, and the house would be kept clean, and the pool, lawn, and gardens tended to.
Of course, there was more to it than that, as in, if we wanted to move in, we would need to renegotiate our contract with the housekeeping agency to have someone on full-time if we wished, instead of a weekly go-over, that sort of thing.
Clark watched Becky run around the yard, the driveway gate shut.
She was so happy to have this much room and for it to be all hers.
As I was watching his face, I got the familiar headache of a vision.
I fumbled in my bag for a pencil, and just flipped the report over so I had a blank page, and my eyes sort of adjusted themselves to seeing a different reality than the one in front of me.
I drew Beatrice, age two, running around this yard in just her diaper, Becky at her side and barking, trying to herd her back to the house.
The remarkable thing? In this picture, Bea was running on air.
She was about four feet off the ground, and didn’t know how to get back down, so she was starting to panic.
In her state of distress, she didn’t realize that she was making other objects float, too.
Becky howled and all four feet left the ground.
There was a floating tennis ball, a frisbee, a water sprinkler turning upside down in circles.
The doghouse was obviously a challenge as she only got it about a foot in the air, but that was impressive enough.
As soon as I was finished, I looked down and said, “Holy shit.” Clark leaned over and repeated my sentiment.
And that’s when I knew. “Clark, Bea and I can’t live in the city, even with as much privacy as we have here.
Maybe she won’t make things fly around when she’s older and has better control, but the strength of her powers at around two years old is frightening.
I think...I think I need to take her with me somewhere.
Somewhere where she can have a freer and happy childhood without having to worry about news of her winding up on TikTok and then in a frickin’ tabloid. ”
My hands were shaking as I set the drawing down, tucking it at the end of the pile of documents about the house.
The house that both Clark and I fell in love with at first sight, and now might not ever live in.
“Hey,” Clark said, reaching out a large hand and taking both of mine in his.
“We don’t have to live near anyone. As long as we can get a satellite connection so we can access the internet to keep track of what’s going on with The Organization, which I know is a huge can of worms we haven’t discussed yet, we can live off grid in the middle of nowhere.
Or just somewhere rural, if she would be accepted by the people nearby. ”
I thought it over and the vision shifted, my head pounding and me motioning for the paper and pencil again.
This time, there were wild roses which grew near the shoreline of a beach, and sunflowers in a garden in front of a blue house with a red door.
There were trees around the house, forming a ‘C’ shaped barrier, but enough of them had been cut down that there was about an acre of pasture that the little house sat on.
There was sunshine, and wild blackberries, blueberries, deer, and the crash of waves at a nearby beach which was just rocky enough to suit my tastes.
Someone had built a wharf and a little boardwalk anyway.
I didn’t realize how much time I was putting into this picture until Clark touched my cheek, wiping away a collection of tears that were running all over my face.
“I’m sorry, but I think I know what I want,” I choked out, showing the picture to Clark.
He was usually so in sync with my thoughts that what he said next didn’t surprise me at all. “This is where Shepard’s portrait is set. See the sunflowers that would be in behind us, and the wild roses that would be in front?” I nodded.
“But what about the picture you drew of that disaster at the Halifax house?” he asked, sounding incredibly confused about something I was also incredibly confused about.
Then, like a spike entering my temple, I heard a groan from one of the largest ‘whales’ in my mind, and I remembered something important.
Something I couldn’t believe I had forgotten.
“The future isn’t set in stone. What I see is right like, ninety percent of the time.
But there’s always a little room for free will to get in there, for the objective to be made subjective.
Individual decisions can be powerful, and if we decided we didn’t want floating objects on Young Avenue in Halifax, then we can have them here, on Big Tancook Island instead. ”
“Big Tancook Island...it was fishermen from there that found you when you almost died at sea. That can’t be a coincidence.”
“You’re right, I think, but there’s a block there.
A blank spot where my memories should be.
I’m connected to that island somehow, Clark, and so is Bea.
And not just because that’s where I’m going to raise her, and homeschool her, at least until she has things under control.
Puberty is a nightmare for a psychic, and Bea so far?
She’s shown me that she is far more powerful than I was at her stage of development.
I keep wondering if it has something to do with that fucking silver book that I never have a spare minute to read. ”
He looked guilty, and said “You can read it whenever you like. Let me handle Organization stuff for the rest of the day.”
I shook my head. “No, I need to be involved to some extent, Clark. You know how important establishing and then implementing the guidelines for the restitution fund is to me. The Organization ruined my family, and yours, too. I can’t sit back and read statistics about which divisions have the most psychics, how our wild success with investments has been because of people with foresight or even the ability to manipulate things from a distance which would impact stock prices.
And then the money we earn goes into ‘research,’ with methods like assault, kidnapping, stalking, memory wiping, medical experimentation, and murder.
That’s a bit too much for me to sit out on.
I just can’t imagine handling this and being responsible for a baby,” she said, rubbing her hand over her belly.
“So about that, I have this crazy idea...”