If You Must Know (Potomac Point #1)(60)
“I’m so sorry, Eli.” I stroked his arm, wanting nothing more than to offer a comforting hug, yet sensing from his tightened muscles that one would not be welcomed. It’d take a lifetime of yoga to work through that pain.
He squeezed his eyes closed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “If I could go back, I’d insist we adopt, but she was so damn sure . . . so optimistic. That’s how she approached everything. Embracing life and challenges. Refusing to be limited by her illness. We should never have gone someplace remote like that, but she’d had me believing in her fairy tale, like always.” The corner of his mouth quirked up in a fond smile before his voice broke apart. “If I’d been smarter, she might still be here.”
I knew that feeling, too. If I had begged my dad harder to stop smoking. If I had paid more attention to his huffy breath instead of teasing “the old guy.” If I hadn’t gone to Dream Cream and helped him clog his arteries. Jesus, the way we tortured ourselves over fates we didn’t control boggled the mind.
If Amanda were standing behind Eli, she’d be giving me all kinds of hand signals to keep my trap shut. She’d be rightly worried, too, because despite my desire to be helpful, I had a bad habit of saying the exact wrong thing. This would likely be another of those times. “For what it’s worth, your wife sounds like my kind of person. She lived life on her terms, so she wouldn’t fault you for what happened. I bet she loved almost every second of her pregnancy, too. It’s tragic—what happened—but try to remember that she made all those decisions with you. You’ve got to stop blaming yourself.”
He dragged his gaze away from the house. “Easier said than done.”
“Most things are.” Those words echoed through my thoughts, considering the decisions my family had to make and all the blame we passed around. My dad had excelled at taking the sting out of distress and putting life in perspective. But even if he saw us foundering without him, it didn’t mean he could send a helpful message through Nancy. “Think it’s a coincidence that Nancy mentioned a name that meant something to you?”
“Dunno.”
Against all reason, I allowed for the possibility that Eli’s dead wife had actually made contact with Nancy, because it might help Eli feel better. “If it’s true, it sounds like Karen can’t rest until you’re happier. Maybe you should start writing songs again. Keep living . . .”
His breathing turned labored, so I shut up. But if her death also killed his passion for songwriting, then he needed a new muse so he didn’t shrivel up and die, too—metaphorically speaking. Maybe I—
“I’ve got to go, Erin.” He slipped into the driver’s seat without making eye contact with me. “Sorry. I’ll see you . . .”
I hoped so.
“Take care, Eli.” He probably hadn’t noticed me waving goodbye. Once his car turned the bend and disappeared, I stood on the road, replaying his awful tale—imagining his beautiful face screwed with alarm, picturing him slumped over his dead wife and child, lost and angry and benumbed—and my lungs filled with sand.
He’d come for yoga and been sideswiped by Nancy. How dare that woman think it okay to blurt out messages without any idea of the consequence? What damage might she do to my mother? I jogged back inside to confront her. “What made you say that to Eli?”
Nancy laid her hands on the table. “Someone named Karen gave me a message. I can’t interpret it beyond that.”
A convenient nonreply. “Gave you how?”
Nancy peered at me, looking mistrustful of my motives, but ultimately her ego made her prove herself. “Think of me like a tube. When a spirit wants to pass a message, it lowers its energy frequency. Before coming to a reading, I meditate in order to raise my energy frequency to meet spirits in the middle. When a presence comes, energy warms down my legs—sometimes I get goose bumps—so I back away and let that energy come through. Some mediums get visual cues, others can get scents. I mostly receive verbal ones.”
That she could turn herself into a telephone from heaven sounded like bullshit.
“Swear to me on your kids—you got kids, right?—that that was real. That you didn’t somehow look up Eli’s license plate before coming inside and then learning something to mess with him.” I didn’t know what to believe, or even what I wanted to believe. But my question was stupid because Nancy wouldn’t admit to scamming us.
Her eyes flickered. “I never do anything to mess with people.”
“Erin, apologize.” My mother nervously twisted her earring while Mo looked on from his perch on the sofa. “Nancy came to help me reach your father. What would she gain by hurting your friend?”
Nancy never did swear on her kids.
“I don’t know, but it’s careless to share messages when you have no idea how they’ll affect—how they’ll hurt—the recipient.” I picked up the discarded box of clothes and looked at my mother, concern and anger pulsing through me. “I can’t stop you, Mom, but you’ve been warned that this can end badly.”
Mo jumped off the sofa and followed me to my room, where I deposited him on my bed and then paced, shaking out my hands. I’d need another round of yoga to calm down because pacing this tight space wasn’t helping.
Not much had changed in here since Amanda and I had slept in the two twin beds laid out in an L shape, each with a pink comforter embellished with purple and white owls. The old posters and small dresser didn’t bug me, but the sense of still being that same odd kid whose opinions were disregarded sure did.