Page 28 of Little Shattered Dreams

“You are a licensed therapist,” I said.

“I am.”

“Don’t you think the women who come to the retreat deserve to know before they start their sessions with you?”

“I used to be a therapist. I’m not anymore. I don’t see what difference it makes.”

“I’d say it makes a lot of difference. I'm not sure people would open up to you in the same way if they knew.”

Or maybe they would.

I wasn’t sure.

“When I look back on those days now, to the man I was before, it seems like another lifetime, a person I no longer recognize. Back then, when I met with clients, there were times when it seemed like I knew what they were going to say before they said it. Once I discovered I was more in tune with people than I realized, I knew the path I was on wasn’t the right one. I started attending retreats and seminars so I could learn how to fine-tune and develop the intuition I already had.”

To most, his confession would have sounded like a lot of mumbo jumbo, but for years I’d had strange dreams whenever I worked a homicide case, dreams that pointed me in a direction, showing me the way but never giving me the answers.

If what he said was true—if heknewthings—what did he know about me?

“What has your intuition told you about me?” I asked.

He smiled like he expected the question. “Why do you think I asked more than once about your profession?”

Touché.

“What else do you think you know about me?” I asked.

“I thought you were interested in talking about Quinn.”

He was right. Here we were about to talk about what I’d come here to talk about, and I was the one pushing myself back down the rabbit hole.

“You seem genuine in your interest in helping others,” I said.

“I am.”

“Then why not help me now?”

He laced his fingers together over his lap. “I’ll need to think about it.”

Back at square one.

“If you won’t talk to me about Quinn, there’s nothing more for me to say,” I said.

I pushed myself off the floor and began to stand. He reached out, placing a hand on my arm. “Wait just a minute. I do want to help you. Can you give me a moment? Please.”

I gave him a moment, and then another, and then another.

Life was full of moments like these, but my day was slipping away.

Just when I thought he wouldn’t relent, he said, “It’s true. Quinn was having nightmares.”

“What can you tell me about them?”

“She said the dreams always began with someone hovering over her when she was in her bed at night, and they ended with her murder. But the murder itself wasn’t always the same.”

“How so?”

“One night she’d be stabbed to death, the next she’d get shot, the next she was strangled, and so on.”

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