“Who’s Miss Lydia?” I asked.
“The old lady who owns the cafe next door. Jamie Riley’s mother.”
“Oh!”
“When I was little,” Sophie went on, “and Mom was working here at the Mallard, I’d go to Tea Leaves for my after-school snack. Miss Lydia liked me and talked to me a lot.”
“She sure doesn’t like me,” I said, then told Sophie about my introduction to the woman.
“Don’t be offended,” Sophie advised. “Miss Lydia doesn’t trust many people. A couple years ago she got in trouble for selling her herbal remedies at the Queen Victoria, the hotel across the street. Guests complained. A woman said she got sick, but that can happen with herbal stuff, just like it does with a prescription from a doctor. Anyway, now Miss Lydia only deals with locals and keeps thinking guys from the FBI are coming after her.”
“If she’s psychic, wouldn’t she know they aren’t?”
Sophie didn’t laugh and didn’t get annoyed. “No. Just because you’re psychic doesn’t mean you can see clearly.
Sometimes the more you see, the more confusing it is.
Images overlap and it’s hard to sort them out.”
We finished making the bed in silence. Sophie kept her head down as if she were deep in thought. When she looked up, her eyes were bright. “How about an O.B.E.?
Out-of-body experience? Some people do that, you know.
Their spirit breaks free of their body and travels around.
Maybe you were curious about your grandmother and came to see her as a child,”
“Without my body?” I said, looking at Sophie like she was crazy.
“Well, yes and no,” she replied. “Your body would be back where you left it. But if your grandmother were psychically aware, she’d have seen an apparition of you that looked like your body.”
I kept quiet.
“I’m making you uncomfortable,” Sophie observed. She stuck the vacuum cleaner plug in a wall socket. “This is all I have left to do. Thanks for stopping by.” She waited for me to leave, her finger on the trigger of the machine.
“Have you seen Sheer Blue?” I asked.
“The movie?” she replied. “No.”
“Want to go?”
She looked surprised, then smiled. “Didn’t scare you away, huh?”
“Not yet.”
“How about Thursday night?” she suggested. “We’re off school Friday.”
“Great.”
The vacuum roared to life and I left. As I walked up High Street, I wondered to myself what secrets were casting shadows long enough to reach into my dreams.
When I arrived home that afternoon, I found my grandmother sitting in the kitchen, idly watching her housekeeper fix dinner. Grandmother’s skin was so pale it seemed translucent, her hands clasped but in constant motion, as if she couldn’t keep them warm.
“Are you okay?” I asked, quickly setting down my purse.
“Has something happened, Grandmother?”
She didn’t reply.
I glanced over at Nancy. “What’s wrong?”
“Don’t know. She won’t say,” Nancy replied, then shoved a runny casserole into the oven. “I’ve tried all afternoon to get her to see the doctor. No use wasting your breath-she won’t go. She’s been spooky ever since I found that little clock.”
“You found the clock?” I asked, my mouth dry.
“Now, don’t you get funny on me.”
“Where was it?”
“On the hall table, behind the silk flowers.”
I pulled a chair up close to Grandmother and sat down.
“How are you feeling?”
“Fine.”
“You don’t look it. I want to call your doctor.”
“I forbid you,” she said.
Nancy gave me an l-told-you-so look.
“As you know, Grandmother, I don’t always listen.”
“You may call, but I won’t go.”
I stood up. “Matt should be home soon. He’ll know what to do.”
Nancy shook her head. “He called and Mrs. Barnes told him he could stay at Alex’s.” The woman sounded exasperated. “She could have told me earlier. All the time I put into that casserole, and her with no appetite and you a vegetarian.”
“I eat meat,” I said.
“Take it out when the buzzer goes off,” Nancy went on.
“You can dig around for the peas.”
I didn’t correct her a second time, just waited for her to leave, hoping Grandmother would talk to me then. But as soon as Nancy was gone, Grandmother retreated to her room. I followed her upstairs and told her I would check on her in an hour.
“You will not,” she said, then closed the door. I heard the lock click.
I ate alone in the kitchen that evening, glad to be away from the gory deer in the dining room. Afterward, I went to the library to see the antique clock. I weighed it in my hands and ran my fingers over its cold metal surfaces, hoping they would remember what my mind did not: Was this the first time I’d held it? Could I have moved it before I went to the rose-papered room? I set the clock down gently, knowing no more than I did before.
At ten o’clock Matt still hadn’t come back from Alex’s. I found the number and called to tell Matt the situation. He said he’d check on Grandmother when he got home. I went to bed, leaving my bedroom door cracked, knowing I wouldn’t sleep.
Twenty minutes later Matt knocked softly on Grandmother’s door, calling to her. The door creaked open.
I slipped out of bed and went to the entrance of my room.
Though I couldn’t make out Matt’s words, I knew from his tone he was asking questions.
Grandmother was upset and either forgot I was in the next room or didn’t care. She spoke loudly. “I have brought it on myself, Matt.”
He quietly asked her something else.
“I have brought it on myself!” she repeated, sounding frustrated. “Don’t you understand? I’m being punished.”
“But there’s nothing for you to be punished for,” Matt replied, his voice growing as intense as hers.
“God has chosen her as his instrument,” Grandmother insisted.
“God hasn’t chosen anything,” he argued. “You were the one who invited Megan. Things are being misplaced, Grandmother, nothing more. It’s all in your head.”
Her response was muffled with emotion.
“Hush! Everything’s going to be all right,” he said. Then I heard him take a step inside the room. The door closed.
Cut off from their conversation, I closed my own door and rested back against it. Their conference lasted a long time.
Finally I heard Grandmother’s door open and close again, then Matt’s footsteps in the hall, heading in the
