Page 35 of Everlasting

“How do you know about her?”

“I tried to get her father to deliver a message to Jay after,” I didn’t let him finish that thought.

“After you died?”

“He refused. Said if Jay ever came looking for answers he could give them to him, but that he wasn’t an errand boy for any damn ghosts.” He laughed about the memory then and I didn’t honestly know how to respond for a minute so I left him to his thoughts, whatever they were.

“If he wouldn’t help you, what makes you think this other person will?”

“You, showing up there on your own, should do the trick.”

“If I do this, you’ll be there watching?” He agreed by tipping his head up and down slightly. “What if I get killed?” Toby laughed at me again and this time it squeezed at my heart, making it ache. God, I had missed his laugh. I hadn’t heard it enough in the years before he died.

“Ever, I wouldn’t send you somewhere dangerous. Please, you have to try to remember this conversation, and you have to go there. It’s the only way.” He repeated the address with me over and over again so that I would remember it when I woke up and just before the real world came crashing in he left me with his beautiful words of comfort. “I love you more than you can possibly know.”

“I love you too, Toby. Always have.” He bent over and kissed my cheek before he whispered, “I know.”

I woke to my daughter wanting me to go downstairs and make breakfast, but before I moved any further, I picked up my cell phone off of the nightstand and I typed the address Toby had made me repeat in my dream. It was real. There was also an ad for a psychic medium. What the absolute fuck? I had no clue what a medium was. Toby had mentioned that they spoke to ghosts, but I wasn’t sure I really believed that was possible. Actually, I felt like I was losing my mind a little bit. The only bonus to that was, debating my own sanity kept my mind off of what the clubs were doing to bring Deck home.

If my dream was real, then that meant I had spoken to my brother and he had been checking in on Deck. It took me two days to work up the courage to go see the woman whose address he had given me. During those two days, my prevailing thought had been to ask him what was really going on between Deck and the woman who kept sending me the photos. I knew it was wrong to have doubts, but I was only human, and my heart had been battered to hell and back over the past year. I honestly didn’t trust it any longer. It wasn’t about anyone else in my life. I simply didn’t trust myself, my judgment, or whether or not I was still clinging to false hope. Going to see a fucking psychic screamed bad decision. There I was though. I stood on her weather-battered porch that seemed as though it hadn’t seen a fresh coat of paint in more than a few decades past when it should have last happened.

“Hello, welcome and come in,” the little pixie of a woman greeted.

“Do you always just invite strangers into your home so warmly?” I asked right away, figuring it was better to be blunt.

“There are things I read about a person long before I open that door. You won’t understand them, so I won’t bore you with the details. Let’s just say, I have an extra set of tools I’m working with.” She winked at me then tilted her head up towards the corner of the porch where a camera pointed in my direction. “Besides, you’re on camera, and my video uploads offsite.”

I chuckled then. “Smart,” I told her while wondering if she was telling the truth or if it was just a dummy for when people like me asked her that same question.

“I have to be. I know exactly what kind of people are out there in the world. I live and work alone for the most part, so one can never be too careful.” She smiled back at me over her shoulder as she led me through the entryway and into a small sitting room. The furniture inside all seemed very old, antique quality stuff that was well kept, even if aged. I noted that there was a table in the middle of the space with a cloth across the top and fresh-cut flowers sitting in a gorgeous bowl at the center.

“You were expecting a crystal ball?” The woman asked, and there was no judgement. She was making fun of herself, not my prejudices.

I grinned at her. “Well, you couldn’t blame me if that’s what I’d been thinking, but actually I was admiring the bowl the flowers are in. It’s stunning.”

Her cheeks flushed with color. “Thank you. It belonged to my great grandmother. She used it as her scrying bowl once upon a time.”

“Scrying?”

“Mmm, yes, it’s a thing where you look into the water and see things like the future or…” she cut herself and waved the explanation away. “No matter, that’s neither here nor there because it isn’t an ability I was gifted with. I’m Avalyn, by the way. You can call me Ava, if you’d like.”

“Avalyn is a gorgeous name, unusual.”

“It has many meanings, they usually revolve around beauty, singing, and things. My grandma told me it meant ‘beautiful bird’ and since I used to go around chirping all the damn time as a child, she thought it was fitting that it was the name my mother bestowed me with before she passed.”

“Oh, I’m sorry about your mother,” I told her. “I recently lost my own.”

“Rule number one when going to see a psychic, especially for skeptics, never tell me anything personal!” She winked at me again as we both took our seats.

I laughed. “Well, I must say, you aren’t quite what I was expecting.”

“I get that a lot.”

We sat quietly a moment as I let the atmosphere soak in. “You may think I’m crazy,” I started but she just smirked at me and lifted her hands as if to show the room we were in again.

“Probably not, but I promise, I won’t judge you, if that helps.”

“I was sent here by mydeadbrotherwhovisitedmeinadream.” Okay, so I feared her judgment anyway, even knowing she was a psychic and saw dead people, or talked to them, or whatever.

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