The left side of my mouth quirks.
“Honey,” the wife warns, her eyes wide and forehead scrunched.
“It’s a reasonable question,” he says, his voice deeper and nostrils flaring.
I lean back in my chair.
“Ted, it is Ted, right?” I say, crossing my fingers over my knee, and watching his expression shift slightly when I get his name right. “How old were you when you realized you could breathe?”
He shifts uncomfortably in his chair, his eyebrows tugging in.
“I thought as much,” I say, not letting him define his answer. “Look, what I do comes from outside myself. I’m not the one in charge. Something much bigger is. I don’t presume to understand it fully or even try to. So, either we can get down to business so we can find…” I close my eyes searching for the name. “Esther?”
I open my eyes to see his lips press into a thin line.
“—or we can have a philosophical debate about age,” I finish.
His wife, Lacy, I gather, grabs his right hand in her left, clutching it so tightly her knuckles turn white.
She whispers, “I told you she was the real deal.”
Ted’s nostrils flare, but he keeps his trap shut.
Finally, we can get somewhere.
“Lacy, I need the necklace in your other hand, if you don’t mind,” I say, pointing to her free hand.
With a shaky extension, she reaches out and lets the dainty silver necklace tumble into my palm.
Instantly, I’m inundated by flashes of a blonde, brown-eyed eight-year-old girl. She’s playful, artistic, incredibly intelligent. She loves reading, dogs, and more than anything else, her parents. This is no runaway.
“Can you—do you sense where she is?” Lacy asks, her voice cracking.
I take a deep breath and shake my head.
“Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work like that. Objects hold energy, yes, but they’re not necessarily tied to her present, future, or even the event itself. I get snippets, but I need context. How long has she been missing?” I ask.
This isn’t the first missing child I’ve dealt with, but this one is more urgent somehow. Of course, they’re all urgent, but this one hold some sort of importance and I can’t put my finger on what it is.
“Three days,” Lacy says breathlessly. “The police—they can’t find any leads. They’re frantically searching but it’s not fast enough. She’s only eight.”
Tears stream down her face as she reaches out for the necklace. I place it gingerly into her palm and she clutches it to her chest.
I take another cleansing breath and try to settle into the energy. Esther is alive, that much is for sure—but beyond that, everything is slightly obscured.
“Were there any clues or items out of place at the scene?” I ask, knowing full-well the police never declared an actual scene. They didn’t have enough to go on.
“We don’t know. Not for sure. We have some guesses as to where, or even who may have done this, but the police are having trouble making a connection. We were hoping—” Lacy looks tentatively at Ted, who sits stone-cold in the chair, still processing.
“Okay, what do you think you know?” I ask, trying to open their minds enough for me to dig around.
Ironically, it’s Ted, not Lacy who begins to relay the most information. Despite his stoic stature, he thinks about the day of the event and all of the situations leading up to her disappearance. The people he suspects. The whys.
I catch a flash of a man with a litter of puppies—the one thing Esther would love to get her hands on. It’s also the one thing Ted and Esther could never agree on. She wanted one in the worst way, and Ted couldn’t deal. One more mouth to feed when he was worried about losing his job. His company is downsizing and he’s afraid they don’t need him. A puppy right now was the last thing they needed. Especially since he hadn’t voiced his concerns with his wife.
“Good, good,” I say, nodding at Ted.
His eyes widen, and he glances at Lacy, “What in the hell is this woman doing? What in the hell have you dragged us into?”
“The man, the one with the puppies—who is he?” I say, standing up and leaning with my fingertips pressed on the glass table between us.
“He—uh—” Ted blinks rapidly, clearly reaching his max-spook point as his chair screeches backward when he stands up and backs away.
I hold my hands up apologetically. It can be a lot to take in when you’re expecting a fake.
“Tell her, Ted. Please,” Lacy begs.
Ted glances from Lacy, back to me. His mouth gapes open slightly as his eyes search the not-so-distant past.
“I dunno. He’s a guy who peddles puppies in the park. He’s always creeped me out, but I thought he was harmless. Esther and I—we talked about him, though. She knows she isn’t supposed to talk to him without me or her mom. Lately, I dunno, he’s been persistent with us. Esther wants a puppy in the worst”—he looks up, his eyes full of fear—“anyway, he wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
“Okay, I need you to take a seat and hold out your hands,” I tell him, pointing at the chair he’d kicked aside.
He does so without question, though I can tell he doesn’t understand why. His brain is on overload, but curiosity and a glimmer of hope starts to take seed.
As he holds out his hands, I slide mine underneath—the receiving mode—so our palms touch. Instantly, I see the man’s face, the last interaction between the three of them. Through the energy transfer, there are glimpses of truth behind the puppy peddler, not the assumptions made by Ted. His name is…
I tilt my head slightly, as I reach out for it.
Burt? Brent?
Yes, Brent.
He’s in his mid-forties but has a developmental delay of some sort. His mental age is still much younger. He loves puppies. And he loves little girls. Only recently has he learned to use one to get the other.
My eyes flip open.
“We don’t have much time. Your
