My gaze rocketed past black riding boots, black pants, and a billowing black cloak to the rider’s face. Or where his face should have been. The space above the collar where one usually finds a head sat empty.
I screamed and fell back. The horse reared up then retreated a few precious steps. It was enough for me to scramble past and run for my life. I sprinted through the gift shop and out the front door, asking no one in particular, “Are you kidding me? Are you fucking kidding me?”
The headless horseman didn’t follow, thank God. I slowed my steps as I descended the outside stairs and forced myself to calm down. Glancing back every few seconds, I went to the car, a coppery crossover, to wait for Cookie.
“There you are,” she said when she found me. “You seriously need a phone. I thought you were still inside.”
“Nope.” I shifted my weight from foot to foot waiting for her to unlock the doors. She did so, and I practically dived inside.
“You okay, hon?” she asked when she climbed in.
“Yep.”
She really needed to hurry.
“Okay. Oh, did you hear a scream?”
“No. Someone screamed? That’s weird.”
“Yes, it is.” Her tone was full of suspicion.
“I say we go somewhere far away to eat. Like Manhattan.”
After a giggle, she started the car and backed out. “That would take a while. How about we go somewhere in Tarrytown?”
“Okay.”
We talked all the way to the restaurant, which was a quaint little hole-in-the-wall with amazing food. We’d discovered it by accident one day while shopping for flip-flops. In the snow.
“So,” she said to me, growing serious, “you gonna tell me what happened back there?”
I’d wanted to spend the afternoon with her, to tell her all my dirty secrets, but how could I do that to her? How could I introduce the world that I can see to someone who can’t and then expect that person to be unchanged? Unaffected? Not that she’d believe me.
Even with all that, I’d started suspecting a few things myself. I bought the whole story about her friend Charley and how she disappeared, but I still felt like she was holding something back. Like she knew more than she was letting on. And if my suspicions were right, I was about to get a lot of answers.
There was one surefire way to get those answers: the threat of physical violence.
“I’ll tell you what,” I said, opting for negotiations first. If those didn’t work, then violence. “I’ll tell you everything if you’ll reciprocate.”
Anxiety spiked inside her, but she pasted on a bright smile and said, “What do you mean?”
I leaned closer. “You know something. About me. I can tell.”
“What?” She smoothed her napkin on the table. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I think you do.” I raised my butter knife. “I will cut a bitch,” I said through gritted teeth.
She gasped. Slammed a hand to her chest. Heaved her bosom. “No, please. I swear I don’t know anything.”
Damn it. I let out a lengthy sigh of disappointment. “You’re not even scared.”
“Yes, I am,” she assured me with a nod.
“Oh my God, you’re not.” I dropped the knife on the table. “You aren’t even remotely scared.”
She hesitated. Chewed on her bottom lip. “Sure I am.”
“You are, like, the worst actress.”
She lowered her head in shame. “I am. I’m horrible. Always was. I once got booed off stage.”
“Broadway?”
“Kindergarten.”
“Goodness. That’s… harsh.”
“No, it was bad. My agent had to let me go.”
“You had an agent? In kindergarten?”
“Yeah, well, she wasn’t in kindergarten. It was my mom. She was a talent agent in Hollywood for years.”
“Your mom was a talent agent?”
“Yes.”
“And she let you go?”
“Yes. Not personally, just professionally.”
“Cook, I’m so sorry.”
“No, trust me.” She patted my hand to appease my misgivings. “It was for the best.”
“But why aren’t you scared? I could be a serial killer.”
“I’m pretty sure you’re not a serial killer.”
“You don’t know that. Heck, I don’t even know that.”
“I know.”
And that brought me back to my point. I leaned closer, let a stretch of several seconds pull the tension tight around us, then asked, “Do you know who I am?”
She pressed her lips together, an involuntary reflex, then relaxed them. “Yes,” she said, her tone resigned, and a spike of electricity rushed up my spine. “You are my best friend.”
She wasn’t lying, but that wasn’t what I’d asked.
“What is my name?”
With the gentleness of a doe kissing its fawn, she took my hand. “Today, you are Janey Doerr. But I can’t tell you who you will be tomorrow. Who you’ll be next week. I can tell you that no matter who you are or who you turn out to be, I will always love you.”
Again she was telling the truth. I wilted under the weight of fallen hope.
“Honey, do you think I know who you are? Who you really are?”
I lifted a shoulder because I no longer had the energy to lift both. “Do you?”
“I know that you are kind. I know that you are a good person and that no matter who you were in your past, no matter who you’ll become, you are incredible. You’re special, Janey. God doesn’t make someone like you for no reason. You are here for a purpose. A wondrous, beautiful purpose, and someday you will remember what that is.”
I kept my eyes lowered as embarrassment heated my cheeks. I’d suspected this incredible person, the only person in my life that I truly trusted, and accused her of deception. She gave so freely of herself, and I hid and scurried and ducked my head every time I came across someone in need. Gawd, I sucked. I swallowed and faced her again.
“I’m sorry, Cook.”
She squeezed my hand. “For what?”
“For interrogating you like that. I just thought…”
“You thought what, hon?”
“It’s stupid.”
“Janey, nothing you could tell me would surprise me.”
I dropped my voice to a whisper again. “Okay, I’m just going to come out with it. Are you psychic?”
The shock on her face pretty much told me I’d gone in a direction she never saw coming. If she were a psychic, wouldn’t she see everything coming? Maybe it didn’t work that way.
She took a sip of her moscato, choked on it a little, then said, “Sweetheart, why do you think I’m psychic?”
“Because you work with the police but have no discernible skill set that would explain why.”
She fought a grin. The grin won. “Um, thanks”
“No, I don’t mean that in a bad way. It’s just, nothing surprises you. It’s like you know things. You see them coming.”
“Or I’m just not easily surprised.”
“But you are. I’ve noticed things that surprise you all the time.”