My mother rarely talked about the past. "How old were you?"
She closed her eyes in concentration. "I was in high school. Tessa had just arrived. She and the chair were new."
My mother was a couple of years younger than Tessa.
"I wanted to get out of this town like a bat out of hell, but she loved it." She cocked her head at me. "So do you."
"This place is a part of me," I said, surprising myself. But it obviously wasn't a surprise to my mother. "How did Grandma feel about Ridge Grove?"
She frowned. "She loved it. You couldn't tell?"
I shrugged.
She leaned back in the chair and stared at the TV screen. "I wish Mama were here right now. She could help me do this right."
"Do what right?"
She swept her hand in a gesture around the room. "My father. You. Our family." She twisted in the chair and faced me. "We bought a new bedroom set for your room. A full-sized bed, a desk, an ergonomic chair, a dresser with an antique mirror I found at an estate sale. I think you'll like it."
I appreciated the effort. I nodded and managed a smile. "Sounds nice."
"It doesn't make up for what I've done."
My heart pounded, and my throat was dry. Memories I kept trying to bury rose to the surface like a coffin brought up by a flood. The miscarriage. My mother's depression and anger. My father's confusion and disappointment. She got up from the chair and sat on the couch beside me. I avoided looking her in the eye.
"I should have told you about that dream as soon as I'd had it," I said. "Maybe you could have—"
"You were a child," she said. "And I'd made my feelings known. You were afraid to tell me. I should have given Mama my blessing when she wanted to help you."
My mouth fell open. "What?"
She folded and unfolded her hands. "When I told her about your dream, about the miscarriage, she said it was about time you had a precog dream. She had her first one when she was five."
"I never knew...she never told me."
She put her hand on mine. "She didn't tell you a lot of things. I didn't want her to."
I kept my anger in check. "But she could have helped me so much. Now she's gone, and I don't have anyone to explain things to me."
My mother's hand felt hot on top of mine, and I wanted to snatch it away. Instead, I stared at the floor.
"The thing is, Guinan, she didn't protest much. You didn't have any more of those dreams after that, so we figured it was a fluke." She paused. "Or maybe you just didn't tell me about the others."
The dream of Kate's murder popped into my head. "That was the only one." My stomach lurched. The lasagna I'd just eaten threatened to make a reappearance.
"Are you sure?"
I swallowed. The impulse to lie was strong. If I were going to be honest with myself and about myself, I had to start telling the truth. "Actually, Mom, I dreamed about Kate's murder the night before it happened."
"Did you see who—"
"No, I didn't see the murderer. I just know Kate was waiting for someone. She thought about her family. Eric Rodman and Tim."
"I take it they both have alibis," she said.
I nodded.
"You felt you couldn't tell me about this. I've mess up a lot, haven't I?"
Yes, you have. "It doesn't matter now. I'll just have to figure it out on my own."
She started to speak, but bit her lip and slid back against the couch. We sat like that for a while, pretending to be interested in the TV. I had an impulse to call Tessa. She probably knew more about my grandmother than her daughter.
"I got the impression from Tessa that you two didn't get along. Why?"
She gave a quiet laugh. "I guess you didn't have to sense that." She shrugged. "I was jealous. Plain and simple. There I was, an only child with everything all to myself, and along comes this other girl. Older, pretty, sweet."
"She doesn't talk about the past much, either," I said. "Was she happy?"
"I don't see why she wouldn't have been. Everybody liked her. I used to have a crush on Tim. Bet you didn't know that."
My eyes widened.
"But guess who he liked?"
I tried to picture Tessa at eighteen, unmarried with no kids, and dating her future husband. "Did he have his own place by then?"
"I think he rented a house after he'd been on the force for a year."
The carved-up tree appeared in my mind. Tessa and Tim making out in the woods? I still couldn't see it. "What happened to her mother?"
My mother made a face. "She went to New Jersey with some man. Why are you asking all these questions?" Was there a hint of jealousy in her voice? Old habits.
"Where in New Jersey?" I pressed
"Atlantic City, I think."
"And how are we related again?"
"Tessa's grandmother and my grandmother were sisters. That makes us second cousins." She narrowed her eyes at me. "That makes you and Zeke third cousins."
I ignored that part and wondered if my mother was clairvoyant but hid it. Then again, I supposed it skipped a generation. I wondered how far back the ability went in the family, whether only females inherited it, and if I had clairvoyant cousins. My mother was an only child, so the cousins would be second, third, and so on.
"We need to do a family tree," I said.
"Well, I can tell you this much," she said. "Your grandmother had a brother who had two sons. I haven't seen or heard from them since I was a kid, though."
There had to be someone else in my family who was clairvoyant. My mother seemed to read my thoughts.
"I see where you're going with this. I can help you when we get to D.C."
"Help with what?"
"You want to do a family tree, right? Well, Mama mailed me a box of her journals just before she died."
My pulse quickened. "Really? I never knew she kept journals." Last year I'd started one of my own, but gave up after a few entries. "You said a box...how many journals?"
"I don't know. A stack of black soft-cover books. I've never read them."
I geared up to ask why the heck not. Would I want to read my mother's private thoughts? Reading a stranger's journal was one thing, but reading the private thoughts of someone who knew you? What if they'd written something bad about you?
"Where are they?"
"On the closet shelf in your dad's den."
"Why did she send them to you?"
My mother rose from the couch and stretched. She headed toward the kitchen, and I jumped up and followed her. "She didn't say."
"That's weird. Why wouldn't she have left them to Granddad?"
She stopped abruptly, and I ran into the back of her. "Maybe she wrote about things she didn't want him to know."
"She kept things from her husband?" As soon as I'd said it, I felt naive. Husbands and wives didn't share everything.
My mother made coffee, and I sat at the kitchen table, watching her back.
"She didn't want me to mention them to Dad, and I didn't ask why. I only mentioned them to you because they might help you figure out—"
"I can read them?"
She paused in her coffee preparations. "She wanted you to read them first."
A warm stream of gratitude flowed through me. Before I could ask why, she continued.
"Mama didn't share much with anybody. Well, maybe with Tessa. I guess she preferred to 'talk' to her journals. She asked me to give them to you when you're eighteen."
My heart sank. "But that's two years away," I said. The warmth in my chest turned to ice.
My mother sat down in the chair beside me. "I shouldn't have told you now. But you're so eager for answers, I wanted to give you some hope."
That didn't make me feel better. Suddenly, the journals were a forbidden treasure trove. I pictured my grandmother as a young woman, a teenager even, filling up the pages about the church ladies calling her abilities evil or meeting Granddad or discovering that her granddaughter had inherited her clairvoyance.
The fron
t door slammed, and my mother and I jumped. Granddad's voice reached the kitchen, uttering a profane word here or there. My mother and I looked at each other and raced to the living room.
He paced the room and rubbed his chin.
"What is it?" my mother said. "Not another murder."
He stopped, glanced at us, and resumed pacing. "Nothing like that, but it's bad news all the same."
Another hit and run? Rumors of other affairs? Did the pathologist screw up the test and Kate actually was pregnant?
"Calm down, Dad. What happened?"
He faced us and looked at my mother. "You know Eric made bail. Well, the Rodman's high-priced lawyer is trying to get the solicitor to reduce the charges from vehicular assault to careless driving."
Nobody spoke for several seconds. My mother tensed up.
"Dad, do you still have my shotgun?"
I gaped at my mother. "Your shotgun?"
She cleared her throat. "He taught me to shoot it when I was thirteen. Why so surprised?"
"You and Dad always seemed so...anti-gun."
She snorted. "Not when there's a murderer on the loose."
"The gun's in Guinan's room," Granddad said. "Didn't you see it?"
"I put it under the bed," I said quickly.
I couldn't tell whether my mother disapproved. If she did, she kept it to herself.
Granddad folded his arms, glanced at the staircase, and looked at my mother.
"Why do you want it?"
"In case he comes anywhere near her again."
Chapter Seventeen
My mother and grandfather spent the evening sharing memories about Grandma. He'd calmed down long enough to laugh out loud a few times. They were still at it when I went to bed at eleven.
That night, I tossed and turned as usual. I gave up trying to sleep around one in the morning, so I lay in bed staring at a ceiling I'd see for only a couple more days. My mind drifted to my lies of omission to Tamzen. All this time, I thought she was angry with me, that she'd found out about me and Zeke. In reality, she'd been dumped. She was sad and embarrassed.
My only consolation was that my days in Ridge Grove were numbered. I prayed she'd never find out about us having lunch. I forced myself to stop thinking about it and to recall my conversation with Skeeter Watson.
His comment about the moon being black stuck with me. Anybody who's sat through an astronomy class knows the moon's light is only a reflection of the sun's light. During a full moon, Earth sits between the sun and the moon. A crescent moon appears when the moon is changing positions either between the Earth and the sun, or behind the Earth. Was the moon black, gray, or white? There was something about the question itself that stayed with me.
I sat up and stared into the darkness. The bed made the usual creaking noise, and I winced. Granddad was a light sleeper. He'd been putting in long hours at the station, then coming home to deal with his daughter. He definitely needed all the rest he could get.
I climbed out of bed and went to my grandmother's sewing room. We always called it that, although she did little sewing there. It was more like a sitting room. The door was open, and I lingered in front of it. I hadn't been inside for almost a year. When Grandma died, I slept on the daybed under the window every night for a few weeks until Granddad made me go back to my own room.
Tears welled up as I stood there, staring. I walked into the room and sank onto the daybed. I asked myself an unavoidable question. Had I really seen Kate's death? Something was off about the whole thing.
Did my dream match up with Kate's thoughts? I knew I needed to start keeping a journal to record what I saw and heard. Maybe that's why my grandmother kept journals. If so, they'd be a goldmine for me.
Had I foreseen a death other than Kate's...such as my own? Either possibility was unimaginable. It meant that there was going to be another murder.
What aren't I freaking out?
Blood pulsed in my ears. I shivered, turned toward the window, and looked at the moon. Then I jumped up from the daybed, went back to my room, and turned on the laptop. I searched "phases of the moon" and scanned the results. I clicked on a link and read that the moon would be full on Monday, July 22.
I leaned back in the chair and closed my eyes. If I'd seen my own death, Grandma might have seen hers. Why hadn't she tried to change it? Perhaps she had. And failed.
I rubbed my temples to soothe my pounding head. I turned off the computer and got back into bed. I wished I could talk to her right now. Then I remembered Granddad was supposed to tell me something else about her. I glanced at the clock. 1:21 a.m. I set my alarm for seven in the morning.
***
I slept right through it.
I must have turned it off without realizing it. I glared at the clock. Thirty-six minutes after nine. I grabbed my cell off the table and dialed Granddad's cell. I hung up when I got his voicemail. I jumped up, skipped the shower, and threw on some shorts and a clean T-shirt. I shoved my feet into my sneakers without tying them. I headed downstairs and tip-toed when I heard running water in the kitchen. After last night's discussion about Eric and guns, the last thing I wanted to do was add to my mother's anxiety.
I softly turned the front door's lock, slipped out, and shut it behind me with a satisfying click. I grinned.
"You think you're so slick, don't you?"
My skin tingled as I slowly turned around. I tried to fix my face in what I hoped was an innocent and confused expression. "What's up?"
Tamzen's hair hung like limp curtains around her splotchy face. "You were with Zeke the other day, that's what's up."
Shoot. "It wasn't a big deal. He just wanted to talk."
She got in my face. "The two of you really think I'm a fool, don't you?"
I held up my hands. "There is no two of us. I had nothing to do with him breaking up with you."
She let out a breath as if she'd been holding it. "My best friend just happens to have lunch with my boyfriend. Why?"
I thought it wouldn't be the best time to point out he wasn't her boyfriend when we'd gone to lunch. Then I felt like crap for even thinking it.
"And then you go all the way to Chelsea, like you're hiding?"
I took a step back. "Don't you think you're making too much out of this, blaming the wrong person?"
Her eyes grew wide, and she stared at me as if she wanted to throttle me.
"You told me he found out you'd slept with Eric. What does that have to do with me?"
"So you just happened to be there to help him get over his pain, right?"
"We were just talking—"
"And spending time together and sharing things," Tamzen said, her voice rising. I glanced at the door. I hoped my mother was still in the kitchen. "He's supposed to do that stuff with me. His girlfriend. You know, I thought he'd lie to me about where he was that day. But he told me everything. Matter-of-fact like it was no big deal!"
My impulse had been to lie, but Zeke told the truth. A knot formed in my stomach. It was big deal to all three of us. I reached for her, and she jerked away. The tears she'd been holding back flowed freely down her cheeks.
"In my defense," I said weakly, "we used to be good friends. And we're family, for goodness sake. I'm not a rival."
"Apparently, you are." She wasn't even trying to stop the tears. "Thanks, pal."
"Tamzen, a murderer is on the loose. I think we should try to focus on that."
"That's right," she said, her voice now unnaturally calm. "Kate's murderer is still out there." Then her expression chilled, sending a shiver down my spine. "Be careful you don't end up dead in a field and bleeding like a stuck pig. Have a safe freaking trip!"
I opened my mouth to say...I don't know what, but she moved so fast, she was in her mother's car speeding away before I could collect my thoughts. I stood on the walkway staring at the empty space where her car had been. It filled with unwanted thoughts. She and Zeke had been together the night Kate was murdered. But she could have snuck out, killed Kate, and
gone back home.
***
Tamzen is not a killer.
I repeated these words in my head like a mantra as I drove to the police station. My mother's call snapped me out of it. She asked where I was, and I told her the truth. Her pinched voice was a dead giveaway she was angry, but she didn't demand that I return home.
I arrived at a hectic police station. I was barely inside when Granddad came barreling toward the door. He brushed past me and kept walking. I followed him to the parking lot and had to physically block him from getting into his car.
"You were supposed to tell me something else about Grandma," I said.
He looked down at me as if I were a gnat buzzing around. "Hon, can we talk about this tonight when I get home?"
"No," I said firmly. I stood my ground and ignored his shocked expression. "Remember when you told me about Miss Patsy? Grandma's dream? You were going to tell me something else about her."
He tried to prod me away from his car door, but I didn't budge. He rubbed his face. "Okay, okay….let me think."
"Rory interrupted us, remember? Something about the media."
A look of recognition crossed his face. I stared up at him and shifted my weight.
"Ah, yes. Tilda told me about this aunt of hers who visited her parents. Mary, Marion, something like that. Never married, no children."
More family history.
"The aunt's fiancé had died under mysterious circumstances, and Tilda went against her no-reading-family rule and tried to sense her emotions. She couldn't. The aunt realized what she was doing and told her why it hadn't worked. She was blocking her."
I frowned. "I didn't know people could do that."
"Not ordinary people," Granddad said. "Clairvoyants. The aunt explained she also had the gift, and then she taught Tessa how to block other clairvoyants from reading her emotions or thoughts."
I thought about the red-brick wall I used to block other people's emotions. Could I also use it to block clairvoyants from mine?
"How?"
He shook his head. "I don't remember. In fact, I don't know if she ever told me at all. I mean, why would she?"
Black-Eyed Moon (A Guinan Jones Paranormal Mystery #1) Page 10
