All That She Can See(42)

‘Dani… ’ Velina warned.

‘I’m just saying… prove it.’

‘W… what?’ Cherry’s palms became clammy.

‘Prove it does what you say it does.’ Danior placed both her hands on the table and leaned in towards Chase and Cherry. Cherry could smell her smoky breath.

‘Okay, fine,’ Chase said. He quickly opened the bottle of pills and shook one out into his palm.

‘Chase. Don’t,’ Cherry whispered but it was too late. Chase knocked it back and swallowed it dry.

‘Try me,’ he said.

Danior’s eyebrows flickered for a moment and her face cracked into the grin Cherry heard in her voice earlier but now that she saw it, it was worse than she feared.

‘Did you know Velina isn’t actually your mother?’ Danior said, a swagger in her hips as she circled the table.

‘What?’

‘Oh yeah. We had a third sister.’ Danior smiled.

‘Dani,’ Velina warned again.

‘That’s a joke… ’ Cherry squeezed Chase’s knee under the table. ‘… isn’t it?’ Danior gave her sister a wide-eyed stare and Velina dropped her eyes and shook her head.

‘So my mother is your other sister,’ Chase said, wanting to ask questions, to deny it all but Cherry’s trembling hand on his knee kept his focus on the task at hand. ‘Where is she?’ Chase’s fists clenched as Excitement slowly came into the room, squatting on Danior’s shoulders.

‘She died,’ Danior sighed. ‘Killed herself. Dear Velina here stole her man and it was just too much for your poor mumsy to take.’ Danior swiped a finger across her neck and let her tongue loll out the side of her wrinkled lips. Cherry dug her fingertips into Chase’s thigh once more, silently begging him to go along with it. None of this was true, she was sure of it, they just needed to get them to believe the pills worked and then they could leave and forget about the horrible lies Danior was telling Chase.

‘I’ve been searching for her ever since,’ Velina said, gesturing upwards to the unknown, a tear trickling down her face making a clear path in her make-up.

‘Why didn’t you ever tell me?’ Chase asked, looking at Danior, who in turn looked at Velina, whose head was hung in shame. ‘Why?’

‘Auntie Velina didn’t want —’

Velina held up a hand to silence her sister. She sniffed and finally lifted her eyes to meet Chase’s gaze. ‘I didn’t want you to feel like you didn’t have a family.’ Velina threw her hands to her face and sobbed loudly and Chase knew instantly they were lying.

Velina and Danior changed their ‘gift’ every few years. They had gone from being psychics to mediums to clairvoyants and then to Tarot cards and palm reading. Back when Chase was a young boy, his mother claimed to be a medium, someone who had perfected the art of summoning the spirits of the dead and communicating with them through the realms. Velina was theatrical and tried to put on a show, pretending ghosts had possessed her by convulsing and flailing her limbs, knocking over anything in the way and then when she finally spoke, her voice was a low and rough growl. Although her imagination and acting abilities were very limited and somehow every ghost that entered her body had exactly the same voice as the last, her clients always seemed to recognise it as their loved one. The client’s wishful thinking accounted for around eighty per cent of being a medium, which was half of the appeal for the sisters; it was quite easy. Chase would sit and watch Velina’s every move and copy her actions and noises, and the one thing that Chase had perfected above all else was Velina’s ability to cry on cue. She reserved it for special occasions when her clients weren’t believing her straightaway or were asking too many questions that she wasn’t able to answer. She would only ever be able to produce one tear that would slip silently down her cheek but from there she would throw her hands over her face, sob, wail and heave hard.

‘I’ve seen things in the other realm. Things I never want to see again!’ she would say.

‘They tried to hurt me!’ she’d wail.

‘It’s just… too much,’ she would cry.

It would cause her client to feel sorry for putting her through so much for their own selfish gains and be forced to come back again another day when she was more up to it – or at the very least, they would feel obliged to tip generously. Little Chase had learnt her tearful techniques and used them at home, at school, with his friends, in the few relationships he had had, in any situation that he wanted to get out of without getting caught or being penalised. It was manipulation at its finest and he’d learnt it from his own mother at a young and impressionable age.

Now when he looked at Velina, he saw himself. Selfish, shameless and a little heartless.

‘Chase?’ Cherry whispered. ‘How do you feel?’

‘I feel… ’ He looked at Velina, who was quieter now, still sniffing but he could see her eyes looking expectantly at him.

‘I feel… ’ He looked at Danior, whose eyebrows were raised, her lipstick-stained teeth bared and her breath held.

‘I feel… ’ Then he looked at Cherry, so full of hope and counting on him to say what they needed him to say.

‘I feel so sad that no one told me the truth. You are my family no matter what. Whether you’re a mother or an aunt, you’re still my family,’ he said to Velina.