“My mother passed away several years ago,” I said, sticking to the story we’d told Ree. “I came to Gaither to scatter her ashes, but before I do…”
“Yes?” Marcela said breathlessly.
“Her spirit asked me to come here and do a reading for you.”
I was a horrible person.
As Marcela Waite served us tea and sat down across from me in her formal sitting room, I pushed down a stab of guilt and forced myself to focus on her BPE instead. Behavior. Personality. Environment.
This was your husband’s house. He came from money. You didn’t. He never pressured you to change, and you haven’t—but you also haven’t altered his décor. My gut said that she’d loved him.
“You’re a very spiritual person,” I said, feeling more like my mother than I had in a very long time. “I’m sensing that you have a touch of the Gift yourself.”
Most people liked to consider themselves intuitive, and 90 percent of this job was telling the client what they wanted to hear.
“You’ve been having dreams,” I continued. “Tell me about them.”
As our hostess launched into a description of her dream from the night before, I wondered how my mother could have done this for so many years.
You did what you had to do, I thought. You did it for me. But deep down, I also had to admit, You liked playing the game. You liked the power.
It took me a moment to realize that Marcela had stopped talking.
“There are two sides to the dream you’ve described,” I said automatically. “The different sides represent two paths, a decision you have to make.”
The trick to my mother’s trade had always been to stay vague until the client gave you cues about how to proceed.
“New versus old,” I continued. “To forgive or not to forgive. To apologize or to bite your tongue.” There was no reaction from Marcela, so I got a bit more personal. “You wonder what your husband would want you to do.”
That opened the floodgates. “His sister has been so nasty to me! It’s pretty rich, the way she looks down on me when she’s on marriage number four!”
Your husband’s sister never thought you were good enough for him—and she let you know it from day one.
Sloane cleared her throat. “There are fifty-six anagrams of the name Marcela, including caramel, a calmer, and lace arm.”
Marcela gasped. “Caramel was my Harold’s favorite candy.” Her brow furrowed. “Harold wants me to be calmer? More patient with his sister?”
Lia took that as her cue. “I smell caramel,” she said, her eyes focusing on something in the distance. “Harold is here. He’s with us.” She latched on to my hand as she turned her weighty gaze to Marcela Waite. “He wants you to know that he knows how his sister can be.”
“He didn’t always see it when he was alive,” I added, elaborating on Lia’s statement to make it more consistent with my profile of Marcela. “But he sees everything now. He knows it’s hard, but he’s counting on you to be the bigger person. Because he knows you can be.”
“He said that?” Marcela asked softly.
“He doesn’t say much,” I replied. “In spirit form, he doesn’t have to.”
Marcela closed her eyes and bowed her head. You needed to hear that he supports you. You needed to remember that he loved you, too.
I could almost believe that we were doing a good thing here, but then Lia arched her back, her body contorting itself into an unnatural position.
“Help.” Lia pitched her voice into a high, nails-on-chalkboard whisper. “I can’t find my son. There’s blood. So much blood—”
I gave Lia’s hand a warning squeeze. This wasn’t how I would have chosen to bring the conversation around to the Kyle murders, but Lia—in true Lia fashion—hadn’t left me much of a choice.
I forced myself not to roll my eyes. “Tell me your name, spirit,” I said.
“Anna,” Lia hissed. “My name was Anna.”
Luckily for us, Marcela Waite—like most gossips and lovers of gold lamé leggings—had a finely tuned sense of melodrama. I was fairly certain she’d enjoyed Lia’s performance even more than talking to her dead husband.
“It must have been Anna Kyle,” Marcela told us, tapping red fingernails against the side of her teacup. “I was nineteen when she and her husband were murdered. That poor woman.”
“What happened?” I asked. We’d put on our show. Now it was time for the town gossip to put on hers.
“Anna Kyle was stabbed to death in her own kitchen. The husband, too,” Marcela said in a hushed voice. “And Anna’s daddy barely made it out alive.”
“And her son?” I asked. “She said she couldn’t find her son.”
“He was there,” Marcela told us. “Saw the whole thing.” That echoed the sentiment we’d heard at the diner, but contradicted the official report that Agent Sterling had dug up. “You ask me, there was something not quite right with that boy. He was a rowdy one, always running around with the children of those people.”
I filed the reference to those people away for future consideration.
“How awful,” Lia murmured. “It’s a miracle the killer left the boy alive.”
Marcela pursed her lips. Even without Michael present to read her, I recognized the look of a woman on the verge of saying something that she knew she shouldn’t.
“I don’t hold with gossip, mind you,” Marcela hedged, “but some folks say that little Mason knew the killer. Some folks think he didn’t just witness the murders.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “They think he watched.”
Sloane frowned. “Why would anyone think that?”
Marcela didn’t even try to resist answering. “I told you about Anna’s daddy? He was stabbed over and over, had to have surgery, and when he woke up, he told the police he never saw the attacker.”
“But?” Lia prompted.
“But after that, Malcolm Lowell refused to have anything to do with his grandson. He wouldn’t take custody of his own flesh and blood, couldn’t even look at him. Old Malcolm never spoke a word to the boy again.”
I could see how this would play out in a small town, how it had played out for Nightshade. At first, people felt sorry for you. But after your grandfather woke up, after he insisted to the police that he hadn’t seen his attacker, people started asking questions. What if he was lying? What if he was protecting someone?