Suddenly Psychic (Glimmer Lake #1)(58)

“Familiar like your resemblance to Uncle Raymond.”

“Exactly.” He picked up another stone and skipped it. “I’m feeling stronger. Not sure why. More… clear. Clearer than I’ve been in a long, long time.”

Robin shook herself. She’d better ask the questions before she forgot. It was easy to lose track when she was talking with ghosts. “Monica had a vision of us walking in the woods by a cabin,” she said. “Do you know what she saw?”

“The cabin?” Billy smiled a little. “It’s not far from here. Just an old hunting place my dad maintained. I think it was on Russell land, but it was back in the woods before the lake came.”

“Where?”

He nodded to the forest across the road. “You can follow me if you want.”

Robin stood and cautiously followed Billy’s outline, which was growing slightly more translucent as he walked.

“Helen and me, the cabin was our place. We’d meet there and talk. Meet there to…” His smile was bashful. “Well, you know. We liked to pretend it was our own house. We were young.”

“How young?”

“We were the same age. Had known each other all through school. I suppose twenty-one when we started up together? Twenty-two when Helen got pregnant.”

“Why did you keep it a secret?”

Billy shrugged. “I knew her family wanted something finer for her. They were good people. Had property once. They knew she was smart and pretty and funny. She’d make someone a real fancy wife.”

“They didn’t care what she wanted?” Robin had seen the sadness on Helen’s face. She’d loved Billy. Wanted Billy.

“They didn’t see it that way,” Billy said. “To them, security would mean happiness. It was a different time.”

He was leading her on an animal trail through the trees and along a creek bed. The creek was dry because the rains hadn’t come yet, but they would. Soon, the shallow channel up the hill would be full of water, only to be covered with snow and ice when winter came.

“It’s not far now.” Billy stopped at the rise of a small hill to let Robin catch up.

Her knee was aching, but she pushed herself. It was hard hiking through the woods with a ghost who didn’t have to breathe.

“Where… is it?” Robin panted. “I don’t see.” She felt her phone buzz in her pocket, but she ignored it. Billy’s outline was starting to fade.

“There.” He pointed to the east. “See?”

Robin squinted and peered through the trees along the creek. Her phone went still in her pocket, only to start buzzing again almost immediately. She could see a deep green sweep of moss in a fold of the hillside, just under a granite outcropping.

“Is that it?” She reached for her phone.

Billy was walking up the creek and toward the granite rocks.

“Hello?” Robin tried to keep her eyes on him as she answered her phone. She didn’t want to lose him.

“Robin?” Mark’s voice was low and worried. She could hear someone crying in the background. “Robin, honey, you need to go to Russell House right now.”

She froze, watching Billy walk away from her into the shadows. “What is it?”

“It’s Helen.”

Emma’s voice was in the background. She was the one crying. Robin spun and started walking down the hill.

“Helen?” Robin’s voice caught. “No, she can’t have—”

“She’s alive, but she fell, Robin. Your mom found her this afternoon. She’s been in and out of consciousness since then.”

“Did they call an ambulance?”

“They did, and the EMTs called her doctor and home-health aide.”

“Are they at the hospital?”

“No.”

“What?” Robin started walking faster.

“They did not take her in.”

“Why not?” Robin started jogging. Damn her knee.

“She has a living will or something. She doesn’t want any extraordinary measures. Doesn’t want a hospital. The doctor’s with her and Grace right now at the house with a nurse. Just get over there. Emma and I will meet you.”





Chapter 21





Robin sat at her grandmother’s bedside, listening to the low voices of her mother and her husband in the background. They were discussing Grandma Helen’s wishes and her current status. She’d been in and out for the past few hours. She’d woken up when Robin got there, squeezed her hand, smiled, and then fallen back to sleep. She’d spoken to Grace a few times and smiled when she saw Mark.

Emma was sitting next to Robin, holding her great-grandmother’s hand, as Robin stared at the painting over her grandmother’s bed.

It was one of Helen’s own pieces, but the subject of the painting wasn’t the lake Helen had grown to love, it was the valley as it had once been. At the bottom of the painting, the twisting blue and white of the river snaked through a steep mountain canyon, threading through hills dotted by cattle and rolling through dense forest.

In the foreground, a cluster of cabins peeked through the trees, smoke rising from stone chimneys. There were wagons and a water tower. There were tiny trucks and horses.