Ink and Bone(11)
Let go? she’d asked. She must have stared, incredulous. Let my daughter go?
When we’ve reached the end of our resources, we have no choice, do we?
I haven’t reached the end of my resources, she answered. I’m still breathing.
She never went back to see that doctor; he was her third. Wolf thought that they were all quacks, and he hadn’t seen anyone. He was into dulling pain, not exploring it. He wasn’t doing any better than she was. But he was, she could see, letting go.
“You have arrived at your destination,” the navigation computer announced in its impassive way. It couldn’t care less whether you’d arrived at an amusement park or a funeral home or the last stop on a futile search to find your missing child.
Merri hadn’t made an appointment with the man she’d come to see, hadn’t even called. She’d read about him and his partner on the internet, and the idea of them filled her with a swelling, irrational hope. She didn’t want to be turned away on the phone. Wolf used to love that about her; that she never gave up. It was just one of the many things he disliked now. Christ, Merri, it’s over. She’s gone. Of course, he’d said that when he was drunk and ended up weeping into her lap for the next hour. He wanted to move away from pain. But that was not an option for Merri.
She’d die before she gave up on Abbey.
Merri climbed out of the car and stood in the cool fall air for a moment. Adrenaline pulsed through her, putting butterflies in her stomach, causing her hands to quake. Then she walked up the drive and onto a narrow, shrub-lined path that led off to the side yard, finally coming to a structure that looked like it adjoined to the main house. She read the plaque mounted on the wall: JONES COOPER PRIVATE INVESTIGATIONS.
Please God, she prayed. It was just something to say to herself. Merri believed in nothing except her own iron will. Please. She pushed through the gate.
THREE
By dinner the sound was driving Finley absolutely crazy. -Squeeaaak—clink. Squeeak—clink. She’d successfully pushed it away all day, taken her exam, attended a class, and spent the rest of the afternoon studying in the library. She felt good about herself. Studious. Doing the right things. Jason, the guy she’d met before class, had left before she’d finished her test. Finley had halfway expected him to be waiting for her, and was relieved (and a little disappointed) to find he wasn’t. He was the kind of guy you could get in trouble with; she could just tell. She could just see herself, back at his place—some seedy studio somewhere—smoking a joint. So, better not to even have the temptation.
On the ride home, she couldn’t hear it at all. She drove around for a while, just for the pleasure of the silence inside her head. But that evening, when she was preparing dinner for herself and her grandmother, feeling the weight of mental exhaustion, the sound just grew louder.
At the table, she finally lost it, put down her fork with a clatter. “What is it?”
Finley didn’t even know what to call it. An auditory vision? There had never been just a sound before.
“I don’t know,” said Eloise. “But it’s loud. It must be important.”
Her grandmother was frustratingly calm, her eyes tilted up to the air as if considering a puzzling but benign trivia question. The world-renowned psychic, responsible for the solving of countless cold cases and the rescue of abducted women and girls, guest on Oprah, and Finley’s personal mentor should have more to contribute, shouldn’t she?
Of course, there was nothing about her gray-haired, bespectacled grandmother, who sat primly in a pressed denim dress and white cable cardigan, that communicated her sheer power and ability. And in truth, it was hard for Finley to think of her as anything but her kind and loving grandmother. Right now, though? She’d happily trade her adoring grandma for badass psychic medium Eloise Montgomery—if she would help make the goddamn squeak-clink go away.
“What am I supposed to do with this?” Finley asked.
“You have to listen, dear,” Eloise said. She took a nibble of stir-fry. “Listen until you hear.”
“I am listening,” said Finley.
“Are you?” asked Eloise. “Or are you trying to make it go away?”
Finley blew out a breath and dropped her head into her hands. “I had other things to do today. I can’t give my life over to this.”
When Finley looked up, Eloise nodded in that way that she had, understanding and nonjudgmental, as if there was little she hadn’t heard before.
“In my experience, these events are like children. You may be able to delay attending to them, but they won’t grow any quieter from being ignored.”
This was a point on which Agatha and Eloise differed. Agatha Cross was Eloise’s mentor, the one who had advised Eloise on all things related to her abilities, helped her to navigate her new life after the accident that took her husband and daughter and left her with a gift she didn’t understand. And Eloise often directed Finley to Agatha when she felt the other woman had more to offer her granddaughter. Agatha was more about tough love; they get dealt with on your schedule, they don’t get to demand and dictate. (After all, Agatha said, they have all the time in the world.)
Eloise, on the other hand, felt that if someone needed her, it was her responsibility to give herself over, that there was no point in delaying it. If you don’t give, they take. Who was right? Finley had no idea, though she was well accustomed to two authority figures having strong differences of opinion, thanks to her constantly arguing parents. The good news was that she got to choose a little from column A, a little from column B. No one was right all the time; sometimes you just had to trust yourself. Of course, that was the hard part.