Lynn Osterkamp - Cleo Sims 03 - Too Many Secrets

by Lynn Osterkamp

  “No,” I said. “Even if you wanted to do it, I couldn’t let you because you’re a minor. And at this point it’s not even clear who has the authority to sign a consent form to let you do it.”

  Ian pulled his hand free from Maria’s and turned to her. “Why did you bring me here?”

  She pulled back. Tears ran down her cheeks. “I’m sorry,” she said, opening and closing her mouth a few times as if struggling to find the right words. “My mom said Cleo had something important to tell us.” She looked at me, her head tilted to one side. “Do you have something to tell us, Cleo? What did you tell my mom?”

  None of this was going the way I had hoped, but I was too far in to turn back. “Here’s what happened,” I said, and then I told them about Paige’s contact session. “She was sure she saw your mom and talked to her,” I said, “and she and Gayle and I decided it would be wrong not to share that with you.”

  Ian shrugged and gave me a polite smile. “Look,” he said. “I know you’re Maria’s good friend and her mom’s good friend, and I’m sure you mean well. But I don’t believe in ghosts or spirits or whatever you call them. And I believe my mom’s still alive. So unless you know where she is or you have a clue about where she might be, you can’t help me.”

  He turned to Maria. “We need to get over to Kirby’s before it gets any later,” he said. “They’ll be wondering where we are.” He pulled her up.

  She put her hands on his shoulders and looked into his face. “No, wait, Ian,” she said. “Think about it for a minute. Your mom has been missing for a month now. If she’s alive, wouldn’t she have called you or sent you an email or something? Wouldn’t she want you to know she’s safe?”

  He sagged. “Maria, we’ve been through this.” He pulled away from her, frowning. “Just because I haven’t heard from her doesn’t mean she’s not alive. Maybe she’s being held prisoner somewhere, or maybe she hit her head and wandered off and doesn’t know who she is, or maybe she’s just off somewhere with a really good reason not to let anyone know. That’s as real as some room with phony ghosts.”

  He walked over to the front hall and grabbed their jackets, then came back to the couch and handed Maria hers. “Are you coming?” he asked.

  “Sure,” she said, putting her jacket on. She walked over and gave me a quick hug. “Thanks, Cleo,” she said. “I’ll talk to you later.”

  After they left, I sat by the fire, rerunning the conversation in my head. What had I been thinking? I was so focused on giving Ian the news that I totally overlooked exploring his interest in hearing it. My agenda, not his. Very un-therapist-like behavior.

  Chapter 30

  Sunday afternoon

  “Focus on Sabrina,” Paige said, her melodious voice soft and soothing as usual. “Hold her in your heart.” She paused to give us time to do that. Then she continued. “I asked Gayle to let you all know I saw Sabrina in Cleo’s apparition chamber yesterday.” Tears ran down Paige’s face. “It was amazing and I want to tell you exactly what it was like.”

  I was at Paige’s yoga studio, Inner Poise, sitting on a yoga mat in a circle with the five Moxie members. I had been nervous about how this meeting would go. But as soon as I arrived at the studio I had picked up a calming vibe, perhaps from all the yoga sessions that had been held there over the years. I had let myself relax into the place as I looked around.

  The studio was on the second floor of a south Boulder building, affording a stunning view of the mountains. The sparsely simple classroom was mostly space, with white walls, hardwood floor and large windows. A table at the front of the room held an Ikebana flower arrangement of three deep purple irises and green leaves in a flat black bowl.

  Paige had gotten us started with breathing exercises to help us get centered and find focus. She looked fit in deep turquoise spandex yoga pants and a tank top of a lighter shade of turquoise. She had pulled her long red hair back into a ponytail, but curly tendrils escaped to frame her face. Because of the tank top, I was able to see that she had a saying tattooed around her upper left arm. It said, “Live the life you love, love the life you live.”

  The rest of us were also dressed comfortably, following Gayle’s suggestion when she had called us to set the time for the meeting. And—except for Lark who had come from a hospital shift wearing blue scrubs—we wore comfortable workout clothes. Gayle was in black as usual—spandex pants and a long-sleeved scoop-necked top. I didn’t see any pocket for her phone in her form-fitting outfit. Maybe she had it under her legs.

  Diana wore the loose gray drawstring pants she wears at her physical therapy practice, topped with a fitted “Proud to be a feminist” black tee that showed off her amazing muscles. Hana wore black leggings and a drapey coral tank that hung to her hips and was the perfect backdrop for her long shiny black hair. I wore my favorite navy yoga pants and a soft loose-fitting ivory shirt.

  As Paige began to tell about her experience in the apparition chamber, I noticed that Lark’s head was bent toward the floor. I couldn’t tell whether her eyes were open or closed and wondered whether she was dozing after a long hospital shift. Diana fidgeted and looked around the room. Gayle, Hana and I sat quietly cross-legged, eyes on Paige as she began to speak.

  “I started out sitting in the dark in Cleo’s chamber, looking into a lighted mirror,” she said. “I saw colors all over the mirror and then I began to see scenes of past Moxie gatherings. I could feel the powerful love and support that we had in Moxie for so long.” Paige stopped and let her glance flit across our faces, embracing us with her smile. Then she turned her look inward as she continued. “I saw Sabrina in the mirror,” Paige said, shaking her head slowly. “She was right there in front of me and I was looking into her face. I felt sad because I knew she must be dead. But she didn’t look sad. She was smiling, kind of glowing. She told me not to worry about her, that she’s fine. I could feel love from her.”

  Diana had shifted position again, squatting back on her heels with her head jutted forward. “Excuse me, Paige,” she said. “I’m sure this was a profound experience, but how do you know it was real? It sounds like a dream or a hallucination to me. I don’t see how we can decide that Sabrina is dead based on what you think you saw.”

  Lark sat up straight, her arms folded over her stomach. “Diana has a point,” she said. “You are very suggestible, Paige.”

  I wasn’t surprised to hear the skepticism. I’ve heard plenty of doubts and disbelief about my Contact Project. Which is why—even though I firmly believe the spirit contacts are real— I don’t go around promoting the process or touting its results.

  But Gayle wouldn’t let me sit back. “No,” she said. ” Tell them, Cleo. You know it was real. I saw Paige when she came out and I heard her talk about it. She saw Sabrina.”

  I was between a rock and a hard place. I couldn’t testify positively either way. “I wasn’t in there with Paige,” I said. “So I only know what she told us. But in my experience, people feel very strongly that they do make contact with spirits in the chamber. And the way they describe their experiences is very similar to what Paige told us.”

  Hana shifted her legs in front of her, pulled up her knees and wrapped both arms around them. A slight frown flitted across her face as she turned toward me. “Look, Cleo,” she said. “You seem to be an honorable person, but I have to bring this up. So many psychics have been found to be frauds. How can we know you and Gayle didn’t set up a computer to project a digital image of Sabrina into that mirror? I know Gayle wants to have Sabrina declared dead—not that you want her to be dead, Gayle, but that you believe she’s dead and you want to prove it so you can get Ian away from Brandi.”

  Gayle jumped to her feet and began pacing the room. “Good grief, Hana! You think I’d do that? I thought we were friends.”

  “It’s not that I think you’d do that or that Cleo would either,” Hana said. “But I’m a scientist. When something unusual happens, I look at as many explanations as I can think of and try to find t
he most likely ones. It’s how I’ve been trained.”

  Paige narrowed her eyes as she looked at Hana. “Well that explanation may seem likely to you,” she said. “But it’s totally wrong. What I saw couldn’t be a fake. It wasn’t just an image. I asked Sabrina questions. And she talked to me inside my head.”

  “So you didn’t actually hear Sabrina talk?” Hana asked.

  Paige frowned. “No, I didn’t exactly hear her speak, but I knew what she was saying.”

  Hana didn’t back down. “What did you think Sabrina was saying?” she asked.

  “I asked her how she died. She said it was a mistake. I asked her to tell me about it, but all she said was, ‘Moxie has the answers.’ She said ‘Go have another circle ceremony. Return to the Moxie spirit. Fix it.’ Then she faded away.”

  Gayle, who was still pacing, came to a stop in front of Hana. “I can’t believe you’d accuse us of lying about Sabrina’s spirit, Hana. Just because you and Diana mislead and defraud people doesn’t mean the rest of us are like that.”

  “And if you want to talk about lies, what about Sabrina’s thirty-day plan?” Paige said. “When I brought it up at our meeting at my house on Monday, you three—Diana, Hana and Lark—said you weren’t in it and that Sabrina hadn’t talked to you about it. But that turns out not to be true. All three of you are in it. Sabrina had specific things in there that she said we all had to do.”

  “Stop,” Diana said, jumping up and holding her hands out as if directing traffic. “Is this something else Sabrina’s spirit told you? Because I’ve heard enough of these ghostly accusations. I’m leaving. You can call me when you have some actual evidence.”

  Gayle stopped pacing and stood directly in front of Diana. “As it turns out, we do have some actual evidence,” she said. “Paige found Sabrina’s thirty-day plan in her yoga locker. You’re all in it and we brought copies for each of you.” She turned to me. “Can you pass out the copies, Cleo?”

  I got the copies from my bag in the corner and gave one to each of them. We all sat down on our mats again and read, mostly silently with a few gasps and exclamations. Then Diana spoke up. “It’s about time she admitted she’s codependent. I’ve been telling her that for years. She totally lets men walk all over her. It’s disgusting.”

  “That’s all fine, Diana,” Gayle said. “But what about what she says about your website?”

  “What about it?” Diana challenged.

  “She was going to expose your illegal activity if you didn’t take it down and compensate your victims,” Gayle said.

  “We told you and Cleo that on Thursday,” Hana said. “So how is this news? Yes, Sabrina did threaten to expose our website.”

  “Okay. You knew about her plan, and now the thirty days are up,” Gayle said. “Have you taken the website down, quit infecting men’s computers with software that collects their financial information, and stopped stealing money out of their accounts?”

  Diana thrust out her chest and leaned forward, fire in her eyes. “Of course not,” she snapped. “We have a mission to stop abuse of women. Our work has just begun. We’ve found a way to even the score for some women and we’re not going to stop just because some of you got cold feet.” She glared at Gayle.

  I squirmed and bit my lip. Diana’s anger had swept away the calm in the room. We were all sucked up in the argument swirling around us. My instinct as a therapist was to try to defuse it, but Moxie had a long history as a group and it wasn’t my history. I was sure they had their ways of coping.

  Sure enough, Paige, in her Rivka facilitator persona, tried to pour some calm on the flames. “Diana, I know you and Hana care deeply about helping women,” she said. “But remember how often in Moxie we’ve talked about how revenge isn’t in anyone’s best interests and it doesn’t heal your heart. And in this case you could go to jail. The best revenge is getting your life together and moving on. I think Sabrina was trying to help you let go of your desire for revenge and step into a better future.”

  Hana had been shaking her head no, all during Paige’s talk. “It would be wonderful if the world were really like that,” she said. “But we’re not there yet. So many women around the world are living desperate lives—abused, prisoners in their own homes, even trafficked as sex slaves. We can’t stop now. We have so much more …”

  “We don’t want to stop, and we don’t intend to stop” Diana broke in, her face red. “We intend to settle the score.” She waved her hands dismissively. “No one ever gave women our rights, we had to fight for them. And we’re going to keep on fighting.” She sat back, arms crossed, shoulders tight, face like a bulldog.

  I expected Paige to respond, but before she could, Gayle shrugged off Diana and turned the focus to Lark. “What about you, Lark?” she asked. “Sabrina says you violated your nursing oath. That sounds serious. Had she talked to you about it? Did she actually threaten to report you to the state board of nursing?”

  Yikes. I wasn’t prepared for Gayle pushing everyone to the wall this way. My throat was tight and my stomach rolled. I wanted to run away, but I sat tight, waiting to see what Lark would say.

  Lark remained silent for a long minute, her face composed, looking intently at Gayle. Then she let her gaze roam around the room at each of us in turn, as if clinically assessing us. Her nursing experience no doubt had taught her to stay focused and avoid reacting defensively to an attack.

  When she finally spoke, her voice was clear, firm and composed. “I don’t know what you all think is going on here,” she said, “but I have no intention of being part of it. Any disagreement I have with Sabrina is between her and me and is no business of anyone else. I don’t know what happened to her and I don’t think any of you do either. You can believe what you want to believe about talking to Sabrina’s spirit, and you can cross-question and accuse each other all you want, but I’m done.” She paused. “We’ve been friends and I care about all of you, but I don’t have to answer to Moxie or continue to be part of it. I had decided to drop out even before Sabrina disappeared, but every time I was ready to tell the rest of you I was leaving, Sabrina talked me into staying one more week to see if things changed the way she hoped they would. Now that she’s gone, I don’t see Moxie in my future.”

  Lark stood up, walked over to the corner where the coats and bags were, and pulled on her coat. “I’m going now. If any of you want to get together to ski or snowshoe or hike, I’ll be happy to hear from you. But I don’t want to talk about Sabrina anymore until there’s some real evidence of what happened to her. And I don’t intend to come to any more Moxie meetings.” Before anyone could reply, she walked to the door and left.

  Paige burst into tears. “Sabrina trusted me. She told me to finish what she started, to have another circle ceremony, to return to the Moxie spirit, to fix our problems. And now look. It’s all ruined.”

  “Get a grip, Paige,” Diana said. “We all know Moxie is over. Even before Sabrina disappeared, we were split.

  “You get a grip, Diana,” Gayle said. “If you don’t take down that website, we’ll report it like Sabrina was going to do.”

  “Don’t even think about it,” Diana said. “If you make even one tiny move toward exposing our website, we’ll implicate you and Cleo so deeply, you’ll be up to your eyebrows in shit.”

  “How will you implicate us?”

  “We have so many choices. We can put stolen money in your bank accounts so it looks like you stole it. Then we can simply deny everything. Neither of you has a sterling reputation. We found out that Cleo nearly lost her psychologist’s license last summer for interfering where she wasn’t wanted. And Brandi has a restraining order out on you, Gayle, for being so pushy about Ian. Neither of us has a smirch on our reputation. So when it’s our word against yours, and we say you stole money and made up a big story to cover yourselves and blame us, who do you think they’ll believe?”

  Hana had quietly gotten up and gone over to the coats and bags and gotten her stuff and Diana’s. �
��Enough, Diana,” she said in a non-nonsense tone. “You know as well as I do that the authorities will never find our website. It’s well hidden and protected by a series of strong passwords. And even if they did find it, they’d never be able to prove anything. We don’t need to talk about this any more. Let’s Go.”

  After they left, Gayle, Paige and I sat pondering our shredded expectations. Nothing had gone as we had hoped. What to do next?

  “Paige, how about you go back into the apparition chamber and try to get more information from Sabrina.” I said. “This time maybe she’ll tell you what happened to her.”

  “Absolutely not,” Paige said in an unusually firm voice for her. “I’m not going back in there to see Sabrina again. I can’t face her. She asked me to fix Moxie and instead it all fell apart. How about you go, Cleo?”

  “I can’t do it,” I said. “She’s never even met me. Why would she contact me?”

  “But if she’s dead, doesn’t she know everything that’s going on? Wouldn’t she know how you’ve been helping us?”

  Now there was a question. One to which I had no answer. “I don’t know what she knows,” I said. “But I think someone she feels close to needs to be the one who tries to contact her.”

  Gayle had been sitting silently during this exchange, but getting increasingly restless. “Look,” she said. “I know I lost a lot of credibility when I pretended I saw Sabrina. I’m so sorry that I did that, and I promise you it won’t happen again if you let me try one more time. Please. Sabrina means so much to me. I have to find out what happened to her.”

  I heard her plea and decided to take Gayle at her word. I believe in second chances, especially when the person apologizes and appears to be sincerely remorseful. We set up her contact session for the next day.

  But unfortunately that was not to be.