Page 7 of Christmas Past
“Ever since Jenny died…”
“Committed suicide, you mean,” he said, sparing her nothing.
Guilt pressed against her chest cavity. She pushed back. She couldn’t wallow in the past. Not then. Not with him and his accusations that she’d hurt a little girl. In the present.
Past regrets...most particularly the ones dealing with the last reading she’d ever given…were hers to deal with alone.
But he thought there was another girl…
“I get feelings…”
His frown turned into disbelief and she wanted to call him back to her somehow. Needed him to listen. To at least understand this part – so he’d forget about any girl and go away and leave her alone.
“My whole life, I’ve had intense emotional bouts,” she said, trying to sound completely practical while she lay her innermost shame and embarrassment naked before his disbelieving eyes. “I’ve come to realize that I’m a storyteller,” she told him. Then knew that wasn’t right. He wouldn’t get the whole archetype thing.
At all.
And it was a part of herself that she’d accepted as real, her being a natural story teller - as opposed to the lie of herbeing able to sense what other people were thinking and feeling.
“I imagine stories in my head and I start to feel what the characters are feeling…” That wasn’t completely right, either. Sometimes, like that morning, the feelings came first. But she was trying to help him understand, not convince him that he was right about her being nuts.
He had to understand there was no girl.
“And sometimes the feelings get so strong that I start to panic. I know it’s all in my head – a product of my own creation…”
“What did you do to the girl, Bella? I can help you. Get you help. Just tell me where she is…”
She shook her head. It was starting to hurt. But not as badly as her foot.
No. She looked up at him. Her foot didn’t hurt. Only her elbow did. Her arm where he was still holding on to her.
As though he was afraid she’d run if he let go.
There was no girl.
“It’s just my imagination, Chad. But sometimes it starts to feel so real that I panic. What if I’m really getting something? What if I really am empathic? Even in academic fields they’re starting to recognize that human beings have the ability to feed off the feelings of others. And that some human beings are far more emotionally sensitive and prone to doing so than others.” She was talking in a rush now, needing him to understand, at the very least, that there was no girl. “I grew up believing that I had this special gift – the ability to read people, to discern answers they couldn’t find for themselves. We both know that was nothing but fantasies perpetuated by my greedy family, but sometimes…it’s hard not to fall back into the conditioned mentality you’ve known all your life.”
She paused to breathe but he looked like he was going to say something and like he still thought she was hiding something so she rushed on. “Sometimes the feelings are so strong and my mind starts to play with me. What if they’re real? What if someone really is in trouble? What if I’m the only one who can help? I’d rather look like a fool to you, to all cops, to anyone, if it means that I’m not responsible for another person’s death. That’s all this was, I swear to you. I was making soap and started to get feelings. Then they stopped and I moved on to sage, and they started again. Only stronger. I panicked. And I called you. Just in case. I haven’t left this house today, Chad. And the first time I opened the door was when you knocked. There is no girl here. I’ve seen no girl. I’ve heard no girl.”
She’d only felt a girl.
And there was no way he was going to believe that.
Chapter 4
“You felt a girl.” Chad pulled on every ounce of training he had to remain calm.
And to not be sucked in by the warm look in those blue eyes, made more compelling by the halo of reddish brown strands that surrounded her face and fell halfway down her back. When he’d known her before, her hair had been as long – but permed.
Interrogating the right way to reach a subject was sometimes the difference between life and death.
She knew about the girl. Her phone call couldn’t have been more timely planned. Or it was the greatest coincidence of all time.
He didn’t believe in coincidence. Even on a good day.
“IimaginedI felt a girl.”
The distinction was important to her. So he nodded. Told himself to accept her at face value for the moment so that she’d think that he did.
