Leaving Time(49)

“You still want to find your mother if it means learning she committed murder?”

“Yeah. Because then at least I’d know that she’s still alive.” Jenna sinks down into the grass; it’s nearly as high as the crown of her head. “You said you’d tell me if you knew she had passed. And you still haven’t said she’s dead.”

“Well, I certainly haven’t heard from her spirit yet,” I agree. I don’t clarify that the reason might be not because she’s alive but rather because I’m a hack.

Jenna starts plucking tufts of grass and sprinkling them over her bare knees. “Does it get to you?” she asks. “People like Virgil thinking you’re crazy?”

“I’ve been called worse. And besides, neither one of us is going to know who’s right until we’re both dead.”

She considers this. “I have this math teacher, Mr. Allen. He said that when you’re a point, all you see is the point. When you’re a line, all you see is the line and the point. When you’re in three dimensions, you see three dimensions and lines and points. Just because we can’t see a fourth dimension doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It just means we haven’t reached it yet.”

“You,” I say, “are wise beyond your years, girl.”

Jenna ducks her head. “Those ghosts you met, before. How long do they stick around?”

“It varies. Once they get their closure, they usually move on.”

I know what she’s asking, and why. It’s the one myth about the afterlife that I hate debunking. People always think they’re going to be reunited with their loved ones for eternity, once they die. Let me tell you: It doesn’t work that way. The afterlife isn’t just a continuation of this one. You and your beloved dead husband don’t pick up where you left off, doing the crossword at the kitchen table or arguing over who finished the milk. Maybe in some cases, it’s possible. But just as often as not, your husband might have moved on, graduating to a different level of soul. Or maybe you’re the one who’s more spiritually evolved, and you’ll bypass him while he’s still figuring out how to leave this life behind.

When my clients used to come to me, all they wanted to hear from a loved one who had passed was I will be waiting when you get here.

Nine times out of ten, what they got instead was You won’t be seeing me again.

The girl looks sunken, small. “Jenna,” I lie, “if your mother was dead, I would know.”

I had thought I was going to Hell because I was making a living by scamming clients who thought I still had a Gift. But clearly today I am guaranteeing myself a front-row seat at Lucifer’s one-man show, by making this child believe in me when I cannot even believe in myself.

“Oh hey, are you two done with your picnic, or should I keep traipsing around here looking for a needle in a haystack? No, correction,” Virgil says. “Not a needle. A needle’s useful.”

He towers over us with his hands on his hips, scowling.

Maybe I’m not supposed to just be here for Jenna. Maybe I’m supposed to be here for Virgil Stanhope, too.

I get to my feet and try to push away the tsunami of negativity rolling off him. “Maybe if you opened yourself up to the possibility, you’d find something unexpected.”

“Thanks, Gandhi, but I prefer to deal in legitimate facts, not woo-woo mumbo jumbo.”

“That woo-woo mumbo jumbo won me three Emmys,” I point out. “And don’t you think we’re all a little psychic? Haven’t you ever thought about a friend you haven’t seen in forever, and then he calls? Out of the blue?”

“No,” Virgil says flatly.

“Of course. You don’t have any friends. What about when you’re driving down the road with your GPS on and you think, I’m gonna take a left, and sure enough, that’s what the GPS tells you to do next.”

He laughs. “So being psychic is a matter of probability. You have a fifty-fifty chance of being right.”

“You’ve never had an inner voice? A gut reaction? Intuition?”

Virgil grins. “Want to guess what my intuition’s telling me right now?”

I throw up my hands. “I quit,” I say to Jenna. “I don’t know why you thought I’d be the right person to—”

“I recognize this.” Virgil starts striking through the reeds with purpose, and Jenna and I both follow. “There used to be a really big tree, but see how it got split by lightning? And there’s a pond over there,” he says, gesturing. He tries to orient himself by pivoting a few times, before walking about a hundred yards to the north. There, he moves in concentric widening circles, stepping gingerly until the ground sinks beneath his shoe. Triumphantly, Virgil leans down and starts pulling away fallen branches and spongy moss, revealing a deep hole. “This is where we found the body.”

“Who was trampled,” Jenna says pointedly.

I take a step back, not wanting to get in the middle of this drama, and that’s when I see something winking at me, half buried in the thicket of moss that Virgil overturned. I lean down and pull out a chain, its clasp intact, with a tiny pendant still dangling: a pebble, polished to the highest gloss.

Another sign. I hear you, I think, to whoever is beyond that wall of silence, and let the necklace pool in the valley of my palm. “Look at this. Maybe it belonged to the victim?”