Donn's Hill

by Caryn Larrinaga

  I gaped at her. “What? But why? If you couldn’t afford the other guy, why’d you offer to pay me?”

  “That was the other lie. I already knew you were a psychic.”

  My heart thumped, and I stood there in stunned silence. When I spoke again, I formed my words slowly and carefully. “How could you have known that? I didn’t even know.”

  “I guess I didn’t know, know, but the odds were good, and I took a chance. When you saw the Grimshaw Library ghost so quickly, I knew I’d made the right call.”

  “Wait, stop. Back up. You had—what—a hunch or something? What made you think there was even a chance?”

  She swallowed. “Gabrielle told me… well, sort of.”

  “Gabrielle? But how did she know?” I was no expert, but I was pretty sure psychics couldn’t just sense each other. We didn’t give off a smell. After all, if Gabrielle had somehow felt I had an ability, wouldn’t I have felt hers, too?

  Kit shrugged. “She didn’t mention you by name. But I went by her house the night you and I got back from Moyard to drop off some books I’d picked up for her. She looked super happy. It had been a while since she’d looked that excited, and she told me it was because she’d met another psychic, someone who was new in town. From the timing, I guessed it was you.”

  The full weight of everything Kit was saying slowly seeped into me. Gabrielle had known somehow that I was psychic. How? And why hadn’t she told me? On top of that, Kit had lied to me. Lied to trick me into being a part of her father’s show. Lied to get me to put myself in danger, just for better ratings.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I kept my voice soft. I knew that if I raised it any louder than a whisper, it would turn into a scream.

  “I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t know what I was thinking. I felt so trapped, Mac. I knew I should have told you, but I was scared. The network loved your interview, and the footage we get when you’re around is amazing.” She reached out and grabbed my hand. “I wanted to tell you, but I couldn’t take the chance that you’d quit.”

  I couldn’t find any words. She had lied to me. More than that, she’d kept important information about myself from me. My head began to pound, and I took back my hand to rub my temples.

  My walkie-talkie squawked, and Phillip’s voice came out of the speaker. “Runner four, runner four. This is Team Leader. Come in. Over.”

  Great timing. With a scowl, I pulled the radio off the clip, raised it to my mouth, and pushed the button. “Yeah?” I said into the microphone.

  “Please follow proper radio etiquette, Ms. Clair,” he lectured through the device. “Over.”

  I sighed. He’d gone over the terms ad nauseam during our orientation session. I should’ve known better than to try to talk like a normal person over the radio. I tried again. “Team Leader, this is runner four. Go ahead. Over.” I felt like a dork and looked around to make sure no one in a military or police uniform was around. Thankfully, Kit and I had ventured into relative privacy.

  “Please return to base camp. We need you to run a delivery to the movie theater. Over.”

  Damn it. My impromptu break was at an end. I wanted more time to process everything Kit had told me, to mull it over and figure out how much it really hurt me. But as I locked eyes with her, I realized something. Whether I had ten days or just ten seconds, the outcome would be the same: I’d be crushed to lose her. And that would be entirely my decision. She didn’t want to throw our friendship away over all of this… and I didn’t want to, either.

  “I’m not going to lie,” I said. “This is a lot to take in. But we can get past this. Can we talk later?”

  She nodded. Her face was blotchy, but she managed a smile. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

  After a slightly awkward hug that felt at once too short and too long, I left her in the shade and jogged back to my golf cart. My walkie-talkie squawked again.

  “Runner four, do you copy?” Phillip sounded irritated.

  “Uh, yeah…” I racked my brain, trying to remember the way to say, “Yes, you old loon, I’ll make the damn delivery” in radio language. Kit’s revelation had knocked me off balance, and I had a hard time getting my brain to focus on anything else. “I copy. Er… roger… wilco. Runner four over and out.”

  I climbed back into the driver’s seat of the cart and steered it through the throng of teenagers milling about. As I turned back onto Main, my brain was spinning. Kit had chosen a hell of a time to lay all that out on me. I pressed the pedal down as far as it could go and glanced at my watch. I had two more hours left of my volunteer shift. The second it was over, I knew where I needed to go.

  I needed to see Gabrielle.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  For the rest of my shift, I felt on edge. People and places blended together, and I did the bare minimum I could just to get through it. At last it was over, and I parked my golf cart in the lot behind City Hall. I found Phillip in the volunteer tent and handed over my keys and my walkie-talkie.

  “Mackenzie!” Phillip was beaming as though I’d just returned from a transcontinental journey and he couldn’t wait to hear all about my adventures. “Tell me, how did you enjoy your first day?”

  I didn’t have time to engage with him. I needed to get over to Gabrielle’s house as soon as possible.

  “It was great,” I told him as I backed out of the tent. “See you tomorrow.”

  “Oh, aren’t you going to the opening ceremony?” he called after me.

  Not bothering to respond, I slipped out between the tent’s flaps and into the town square. Even though the festival wasn’t officially starting for another half hour, tourists and townsfolk were already perusing the selections of clothing, soaps, paintings, and more. I wove through the light crowd, trying to get across to the road without stepping on anyone’s toes.

  “Mac!”

  Graham was waving at me from his stall. Desperate as I was to talk to Gabrielle, I couldn’t help ducking across the wide aisle and leaning over his table to give him a hug. It was tricky. I had to bend at an odd angle to keep from knocking over any of his sculptures. At least two-dozen pieces covered the long, skirted table, and there seemed to be more in the boxes at the back of his booth.

  “Hey! Your table looks great. I hope you sell out.”

  “Thanks.” He smiled, bringing his dimples out from hiding beneath his rosy skin. “Do you have time to give me a hand?”

  I shook my head. “Sorry, I wish I could, but I have to get to Gabrielle’s. I’ll catch you later, okay?”

  He waved me off, and I bulldozed my way across the rest of the square. Once I was clear of the grass, I had an uninterrupted view of Gabrielle’s old blue house. The windows were all dark, and the neon sign in the wide bay window of Nine Lives Book Exchange glowed closed.

  Undeterred, I darted across the street and up the long driveway. Even though her shop was closed, there was a chance she hadn’t left for the kickoff yet. I pounded up her back steps and rang the doorbell, crossing my fingers and hoping she was just upstairs getting ready.

  There was no answer. I waited on the porch, tapping my foot and checking my watch. After a full five minutes, I rang the bell again and knocked. Another five minutes passed, and I was forced to give up.

  I looped back around to the front of the house and stood in the shade of a tall maple, considering my options. I could go up to the kickoff and ask her my questions there. But it would be loud, and I’d prefer to have this conversation in private. I sighed and pulled out my cell phone.

  My text message was brief: Are you at the school?

  After a few moments, my phone pinged with her response: Yes. R U?

  I shuddered. I’d never been able to get myself to use texting shorthand. The abbreviations that are so popular with teenagers felt incongruous with Gabrielle’s classy, old-world aesthetic, and I had a hard time picturing her typing them out.

  I wrote back: Not yet. Can we talk after the kickoff?

  Gabrielle: Sure. Everyt
hing OK?

  Me: Just want to talk.

  Gabrielle: Come by the shop in an hour. C U then.

  Me: Thanks.

  I slipped the phone back into my pocket. If I couldn’t see her for an hour, I might as well do something to take my mind off Kit. If I just stood there thinking about her for sixty minutes, I’d lose my mind. I headed back to Graham’s booth to see if he still needed my help setting up. If anybody could distract me for a while, he could.

  The square had emptied out considerably in the last fifteen minutes. Most of the festival attendees had headed up to the high school and probably were settling in on metal bleachers, getting ready to listen to the mayor’s speech and watch the cheerleaders and marching band do their stuff. Many of the booths and food trucks were closed; the vendors must have gone up to the opening ceremony as well.

  There was one person who hadn’t gone up to the high school, and it was the last person I was in the mood to see. Penelope Bishop was marching straight toward me with a clipboard in her hand and scorn all over her face. She intercepted me on the sidewalk.

  “Ms. Clair. So happy I found you.” Her voice didn’t sound happy at all. It matched the expression on her face.

  I forced myself to smile. “What can I do for you, Mrs. Bishop?”

  “Dr. Lee won’t be able to complete her volunteer shift this evening. There was an emergency at the animal hospital. I’m going to need you to fill in for her.” She pulled her lips back into a tight smile. “Unless, of course, you’re too busy loafing around town?”

  Her disdain was too much for me to handle. I was tired from running around all day; I was irritated that I had to wait to see Gabrielle; and I didn’t have enough of the small-town neighborliness to be nice to everyone no matter how they treated me. The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them. “What’s your problem?”

  Two spots of pink appeared on her cheeks. I could tell she wasn’t used to being called out. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, what the hell did I ever do to you? You’ve hated me since the minute we met, and I can’t think of a single thing I’ve done to deserve it.”

  “Don’t play dumb with me, you stupid girl.”

  I was stunned. Her usual cold aloofness was gone, replaced with white-hot hatred. Her eyes flashed, and her mouth twisted into a sneer.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I know exactly what you’re doing here,” she spat. “Did you think I wouldn’t notice the timing? Tom disappears, and then you show up? I’m no fool.”

  I stared at her. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh, please. Drop the act! I know who you are. You’re Evelyn Clair’s daughter.”

  “You knew my mom?”

  “Of course I did. Who didn’t? Oh, everyone just loved Evelyn.” She laughed bitterly, and her voice dripped with loathing. “Especially Tom. I might as well have not existed when she was in town. Then he’d come crawling back to me after the festival, and for the rest of the year, we’d be happy together until that bitch came rolling back into town next April.”

  My hands curled into fists at my sides. “Don’t talk about my mother that way,” I growled.

  “I’ll talk about your whore mother any way I like.”

  Before I knew what was happening, I’d pulled my fist back toward my shoulder. As I released it and punched forward, someone grabbed me from behind and yanked me away from Penelope. My fist sliced through the empty air between me and my target, then swung limply back to my side. I spun around to confront whoever had just robbed me of that glorious moment. I’d wanted to feel my knuckles collide with Penelope’s perfect, sculpted nose.

  Graham’s arms encircled me. His blue eyes were wide with shock, and his glasses sat slightly askew on his face. He raised one hand to straighten them on his nose, then put his arm back around me.

  “What the hell is going on?” he demanded.

  “Let me go!” I struggled in his arms. “I’m handling this.”

  “Yeah, looks like you have things totally under control.” He tightened his arms around me. “Do me a favor, okay? Go cool off in my booth. Striker is in there. I’ll bring you a soda.”

  At the mention of Striker’s name, my shoulders relaxed. Graham released his grip on me, and I stomped off toward his booth. I had to resist the urge to kick a few stakes out of the ground as I passed them. I looked back over my shoulder and saw him standing in front of Penelope, talking to her with his hands on his hips. He towered over her, and the way he was leaning forward made him look more like a father lecturing his child than someone berating their much-older cousin.

  I slipped through the flaps at the back of his booth and sat down on an upturned crate. “Striker?” I called.

  “Brrrlllll?” She slunk out from beneath the tablecloth. She stretched—first her front legs then her back ones—and jumped up into my lap. Her breath smelled like cat treats.

  “I see Graham’s been spoiling you again.”

  She purred, lifting her head to allow me to scratch beneath her chin. We sat that way for several minutes, and my heart rate eventually slowed back down to normal.

  “You’re so good at calming me down,” I told her. “It’s your secret power.”

  In the coolness of Graham’s booth, with Striker on my lap, I felt like a fool. I couldn’t believe I’d lost control like that. I’d never punched anyone in my life, and I’d just tried to clock the deputy mayor, of all people. If Graham hadn’t been there, I would’ve spent the rest of the festival in a jail cell.

  A teensy part of me thought it might have been worth it.

  Graham joined me in the booth a half hour later, pulling up another crate and handing me a bottle of orange soda.

  “It’s non-caffeinated,” he said. “I figured you don’t need to be any more keyed up than you already are.”

  “Thanks.” I twisted off the cap and took several long gulps. “And thanks for stopping me back there.”

  “What happened? I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw you move to punch her. You’re lucky I was walking by. You could have been arrested.”

  I nodded. “I know. I don’t know what came over me. No, that’s not true. In the space of ten seconds, she insulted my mom twice.” I sighed. “It’s been a rough day. I guess I just lost it.”

  He narrowed his eyes and examined my face. “You got a lot of sun today. Your skin is pink.” He leaned forward and rested a wrist on my forehead. His skin felt cool against mine. “You’re really warm. Could be mild heatstroke.”

  “Could be. But to be honest, even if I was well-rested and totally healthy, I still might have tried to punch her.” I took another swig and stared at Graham. “She was going off about my mom and Tom Bishop. I had no idea what she was talking about.”

  “Yeah, she filled me in a bit just now.” He paused. “She seems to think you’re Tom’s illegitimate daughter.” He looked apologetic, as though he was accusing me of something and wasn’t happy about it.

  I stared at him. “What? That’s ridiculous.”

  “Is it? She seems pretty sure. According to her, your mom and Tom Bishop had a relationship while Penny was engaged to him.”

  I was dumbstruck. Was it possible? Could my mother have gotten involved with a man who was in a serious relationship? She died when I was so young; I never got a chance to learn what she was really like.

  I dug my nails into my palms. Okay. Let’s say, just for a minute, that my mom was involved with Tom. Could he be my biological father?

  After doing some quick counting on my fingers, I shook my head. “No way. First of all, my birthday is in August. If they were only together when she came here for the festival, I would’ve been born around December, right?”

  “Well, Tom did travel extensively. My dad always thought he was out seeing mistresses in other cities.”

  My heart thumped. The mathematical certainty I’d had a moment before evaporated, and I had to ask myself again if it was possible. The thought of
Tom Bishop being my father made my stomach turn. Not so much because of him but because of the man I’d grown up believing was my dad.

  For a while, I’d resented my dad for not being a part of my life before my mom died. When I was a kid, he told me again and again that if he’d known he had a daughter, he would’ve been there from day one, loving me and supporting me. But I didn’t believe him. If that was true, then it was my mom’s fault that I didn’t have a dad growing up, and I couldn’t put that on her. I couldn’t blame her for anything.

  So I blamed him. He took it with grace and spent years trying to prove me wrong. From the first moment he met me, he lived up to every promise he ever made. He turned his life upside down for me, trading in an exciting career of archaeological digs around the world for a sedate desk job. He bought me books and taught me everything that was great about music. And slowly I realized he’d been telling the truth. Mom hadn’t told him about me any more than she’d told me about him. The only people she’d confided in—to my knowledge at least—were Gabrielle and the lawyer who drew up her will, in which she had named him as my parent and guardian.

  Why would my mother have lied in her will? There would be no reason to at that point. My father hadn’t been a rich man. He was comfortable, but he hadn’t had the resources the Bishop family did. If Tom was my real father, it would have made a lot more sense for her to have been honest about it in her will. Anything else just didn’t make sense.

  “No,” I said. “I’m definitely my father’s daughter.”

  Logic aside, there was no doubt in my heart that my dad was my dad. Not only did we have identical noses and the same freckles, but our personalities were too similar. We had the same odd sense of humor. Sure, there was the old nature-versus-nurture argument, but our connection had always felt strong.

  “Besides,” I went on, “my mom brought me to this festival every year until she died. If he was my father, don’t you think she’d have introduced me to him? Even if she didn’t tell me he was my dad, I’m sure she would have brought us together at least once and called him her ‘friend’ or something.”