girlfriend and her girlfriends marked the spot -
Bill drove around the curve. A pair of black crows, plump and
shiny, lifted off from something pasted to the macadam in a splat
of blood. They had eaten so well that Carol wasn't sure they were
going to get out of the way until they did. There were no crosses,
not on the left, not on the right. Just roadkill in the middle, a
woodchuck or something, now passing beneath a luxury car that
had never been north of the Mason-Dixon Line.
Floyd, what's that over there?
'What's wrong?'
'Huh?' She looked at him, bewildered, feeling a little wild.
'You're sitting bolt upright. Got a cramp in your back?'
'Just a slight one.' She settled back by degrees. 'I had that feeling
again. The deja vu.'
'Is it gone?'
'Yes,' she said, but she was lying. It had retreated a little, but that
was all. She'd had this before, but never so continuously. It came
up and went down, but it didn't go away. She'd been aware of it
ever since that thing about Floyd started knocking around in her
head - and then the little girl in the red pinafore.
But, really, hadn't she felt something before either of those things?
Hadn't it actually started when they came down the steps of the
Lear 35 into the hammering heat of the Fort Myers sunshine? Or
even before? En route from Boston?
They were coming to an intersection. Overhead was a flashing
yellow light, and she thought, To the right is a used-car lot and a
sign for the Sanibel Community Theatre.
Then she thought, No, it'll be like the crosses that weren't there. It's
a strong feeling but it's a false feeling.
Here was the intersection. On the right there was a used-car lot-
Palm-dale Motors. Carol felt a real jump at that, a stab of
something sharper than disquiet. She told herself to quit being
stupid. There had to be car lots all over Florida and if you
predicted one at every intersection sooner or later the law of
averages made you a prophet. It was a trick mediums had been
using for hundreds of years.
Besides, there's no theatre sign.
But there was another sign. It was Mary the Mother of God, the
ghost of all her childhood days, holding out her hands the way she
did on the medallion Carol's grandmother had given her for her
tenth birthday. Her grandmother had pressed it into her hand and
looped the chain around her fingers, saying, 'Wear her always as
you grow, because all the hard days are coming. ' She had worn it,
all right. At Our Lady of Angels grammar and middle school she
had worn it, then at St. Vincent de Paul high. She wore the medal
until breasts grew around it like ordinary miracles, and then
someplace, probably on the class trip to Hampton Beach, she had
lost it. Coming home on the bus she had tongue-kissed for the first
time. Butch Soucy had been the boy; and she had been able to taste
the cotton candy he'd eaten.
