by Abbie Roads
He tugged her up to standing and guided her to his kitchen table, where he let go of her to pull out a chair. “How are you feeling?”
“Yesterday was a bad day. Today will be better.”
“Every day will be better than yesterday. I promise you that. Now, eat.” He set a giant cinnamon roll in front of her. “It’s a day old, but still better than the best you can buy. Another of Row’s specialties.”
The roll smelled of cinnamon and sugar and cozy memories from her childhood. Memories of her and Gran, and good and happy times before their world revolved around pain. “Looks delicious.” She forked up a bite. Her taste buds had a mini party, but she couldn’t enjoy it. She ate another bite and another.
Xander got a gallon of milk out of the fridge and poured her a glass. He was so thoughtful. So kind. Especially after everything he’d had to go through because of her. To him she had to be a pain in the backside.
But she wanted—oh, how she wanted—this to be her life. Something as simple as sitting across the table from him and eating cinnamon rolls together was all she’d ever need.
“You’re looking at me funny.” The sides of his mouth tilted up into a smile, and she almost stopped breathing. Normally, his face was all hard angles, accentuated by the scars, but his smile softened everything and made his eyes sparkle like gold. She resisted the urge to crawl over the table to him and press her lips to his.
“Thank you for…I guess everything. Saving us. Putting up with me. Being there for me yesterday.” If these few moments with Xander were the only moments she’d have with him, she’d store them in a special place in her mind. For the rest of her life, she’d remember them as the times when she had felt the most alive.
“I was…” His voice trailed off, and he looked over her head a moment as if what he wanted to say was in a bubble cloud. “I guess the word would be compelled. I was compelled to find you. There’s no need to thank me. I would never leave you when you needed me. I can tell you’re better today.”
“I am. I just feel a bit delicate and…”
When she didn’t finish, he reached across the table and grasped her hand, lacing his fingers with hers. His touch was affectionate and full of reassurance, and just like yesterday, she could practically feel herself getting stronger.
“And what?” he asked softly.
Might as well be honest with him about what really happened. Her chin quivered so hard she wouldn’t have been surprised if it fell off her face and flopped around on the table like a dead fish. Her throat constricted, imprisoning the words she needed to say. She forced herself to look at him while she spoke of her deepest shame. “Guilty. I’ll never stop feeling guilty over Gran’s death.” Her vision went wet and watery. A tear from each eye raced each other down her cheeks. She had thought there were no more tears to cry, but obviously she’d been wrong.
The entire story overflowed the dam she’d built around it. Her words were fast and rushed as she told him what had happened—everything—and she didn’t dare look at him until she’d said it all. “Xander, I-I watched her die and did nothing.” The words jumbled out of her mouth, mixing with the sound of a sob.
“What?” The word exploded into the room. Her heart startled from the suddenness of it. His grip on her hand went almost painful. “Baby, it wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t help it.”
Sincerity dominated his features. Which only made this all the harder.
“I watched him pour that poison in her mouth. And I didn’t stop him.” Saying it out loud, hearing her own words, hurt like a dull, serrated blade sawing and sawing until it finally tore deep enough to open a vein. After a moment, the pain eased, then dulled, and she felt oddly lighter. Maybe that was because he hadn’t let go of her hand. Maybe it was because his expression hadn’t changed. She had expected revulsion. Disgust. Aversion. Not him gently squeezing her hand and his eyes softening with compassion. Compassion? Huh?
“That’s not exactly what happened.” He enunciated each word clearly as if her merely hearing him would change reality.
“Oh, Xander. I don’t have the energy to argue with you over it. I know what happened.”
He reached across the table with his free hand and brushed his fingers through the tear streaks on her cheek. His fingertips were rough against her skin, the friction so sweet and fierce her heart swelled with longing for more of him.
“You are wrong. I’ll prove it to you.” Without letting go of her hand, he pulled his phone from his jeans pocket, hit a button, and held it to his ear. “Yeah. I need a copy of my interrogations of Simon Smith and William Goodspeed.”
“Goodspeed?” She blurted out the name. “You interrogated him?” Was it the same Mr. Goodspeed? Why had Xander interrogated him?
“Hold on.” Xander spoke into the phone and then turned his full attention on her. “I’m an interrogation expert for the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation.”
“Oh…” How did she not know that? Another emotion joined her guilt—curiosity. Xander had interrogated Mr. Goodspeed? Before he killed everyone? The coincidence of it was a bit surprising, but what did that have to do with Gran?
“I’m back.” He listened for a moment. “Of course I need them right now. As in right this goddamned second.” Xander’s tone was about two levels lower than mere nasty. “It’s for Isleen. She needs to see them to understand what’s going on.” There was a slight pause while he listened. “Are you fucking kidding me? This isn’t junior high. Jesus fucking Christ. Kent says to tell you hi, and that he and Killer will be stopping by tonight for a visit.”
Despite her guilt and curiosity, despite the confession she needed to give to Kent, just thinking about Killer’s sweet little doggy face lightened her mood and stretched her mouth into a smile. And here she had been thinking she’d never smile again.
“Tell him I said hi, and that I can’t wait to see them both.”
Xander rolled his eyes so far back in his head she thought they might get lost in his brain cavity. “You heard her, right? Yeah. She’s better. A lot better. She’s even smiling.” His voice softened, and his gaze was warm when it landed on her. “Just send the files.” He ended the call.
“Why are you so mean to him?”
“He’s an asshole.”
“So are you.”
He chuckled. “Damn. I guess you really are feeling better.”
“Kent tried to help me. Told me I needed to talk about things before I destroyed my future. He was right. If I had actually talked about what happened, maybe Gran would still be alive.”
“I think you’re confused about what’s real. And I’m about to prove it to you.” He seemed so sincere that she wanted to believe him, but her memory wouldn’t lie. Would it? “I need to explain what you’re about to see.” His hand around hers squeezed, then released—almost a quick imploring for her understanding. “Being struck by lightning did more than just scar me up. It supercharged my hearing, and now when I’m around people, my brain connects to their frequency and I can hear what they are thinking.”
She stared at him, knowing her mouth was hanging open a bit, and yet not being able to close it as her own brain struggled to understand his words. What he was telling her seemed impossible, but that didn’t matter. She believed him as truly as if it were her truth, not his. And that meant—oh gosh. Oh no. “So you’ve been hearing my thoughts from the moment we met?”
“Well…no. I don’t know what makes you different. Sometimes when I’m not near you, I can hear you—like when you were in that trailer. But when I am near you like right now, I can’t hear you at all.”
“Thank God!” The words spilled from her lips before her brain could censor them. How mortifying would it have been if he knew exactly how she thought about him sometimes?
He chuckled. “That bad, huh?”
“No, not at all. Just the opposite.”
; “When I’m near you, I can still hear other people’s thoughts, but it doesn’t hurt like it normally does. For the first time, I can control it, censor it so it’s not overwhelming. And I think I know why—” His phone buzzed and he looked at the screen. “Got it. Here. Watch this.” He held the phone between them so they could both see the screen. “This is my interrogation of Simon Smith.”
On the screen, the door to the interrogation room opened and the bushy-faced, scruffy-haired troll from under the culvert shuffled into the room. Fear froze her voice. She pointed at the screen with the hand Xander wasn’t holding and finally found the ability to speak. “That’s him. That’s him. He stabbed the girl in the park. That’s him.”
“I know. His name is Simon Smith, and he really did kill Courtney Miller in the exact way you said it happened.”
Isleen’s attention fully locked on Xander having a one-way conversation with Simon Smith. Nothing about Xander’s interview was normal. None of it made sense; none of it was logical. It mostly looked like he was having a chat with himself.
Xander didn’t speak until the video clip ended. “He didn’t know you. He didn’t know Queen. He didn’t know anything about the trailer you were held in. Didn’t even recognize the road number. Courtney Miller’s time of death was placed in the exact time frame while you were still in the hospital.”
“But I was there. I saw it happen.”
“You are right. And wrong.”
He tapped the phone’s screen and another video came on.
A man sat hunched over a table, his close-shaved head bowed so she couldn’t see his face, but she instantly recognized him. “Mr. Goodspeed. He killed Marissa and his wife and son.”
“No. He didn’t.”
“He did.” Her words were firm. “I watched him do it.”
“What you saw wasn’t real.”
“What do you mean, it wasn’t real? I was right there.”
“No, you weren’t. You were here. What you saw was the future. What would have happened if your information hadn’t stopped him.”
He was speaking English. She understood what each individual word meant, but in that particular combination, it just wouldn’t compute. “I have no idea what you are talking about.”
“I told Kent everything you said about Mr. Goodspeed. He contacted Sunny County Children’s Services and the local sheriff’s office and had a plainclothes officer stop Mr. Goodspeed the moment he pulled into the parking lot. They found his gun tucked into the back of his trousers and a suicide note in his car. He had intended to kill them all and then himself. But the information from your dream stopped it before it occurred.”
His eyes were the color of liquid gold and sincere, so gosh-darned sincere that she nearly believed him. Silence loitered between them while her mind rammed, bashed, and smashed into an impenetrable wall of disbelief. “My dream?”
Xander set his phone facedown on the table and grabbed her other hand in his. He looked into her eyes as if what he was about to say resided on the level of gospel. “Yes, dream. You are dreaming about these events.”
The way he looked at her made her want to accept her own innocence. But the memory was so vivid, so intense, and full of horror—there was no way it hadn’t been real. The strength of his personality swayed the logic in her mind. She let go of his hands, scooted back in her chair, stood, and walked across the cabin to stare out the window.
Outside, everything seemed so idyllic and calm. A lazy buzzard rode a current of air over the tops of the trees, then out over the yard. The sun shone through the bird’s wings, backlighting them with an oddly angelic glow.
“It’s real. Not a dream. I have felt the sun on my skin, the splatters of blood hitting my face. I see it. I hear it. I feel it. I can’t move and I can’t fight, but I’m right there…” Wait. Something had always been a bit off. She always got plunked down in a white nothingness that morphed into a picture, and then she couldn’t control her own body. Could the explanation be as simple—and complicated—as a dream?
“You were with me when you had the first dream, the one about Simon Smith killing Courtney Miller. You got up out of your hospital bed and walked down the hallway and stared out a window. The second dream, I found you running up the driveway in the middle of the night. The last dream, I found you slumped on your bedroom floor, staring at nothing.”
He was throwing her a lifeline, but she could only grab on with one shaky hand. Part of what he said made sense. She had thought she’d been to Prospectus Prairie Park. She had thought she’d been to Sunny County Children’s Services. But she hadn’t. Not really. But Gran… Those terrible memories had teeth that bit her to the bone.
“You weren’t physically there when your grandmother died. There was a suspicious vehicle parked at the end of the driveway that night. The BCI lifted prints off the front door that don’t belong to any of us. They are analyzing the bedding for DNA. I know it’s hard to wrap your brain around, took me interrogating those two yahoos before I’d believe it. There’s no other logical explanation.” He spoke from right behind her.
“You call that logical?” There might’ve been a hint of sarcasm in her voice.
“I threw out logical the moment I found you in that trailer. I’m operating on the what-feels-right theory. I know you loved your grandmother. I know you would never let her get hurt. I know that, and deep down you do too.”
Her vision went sloshy. “Then why”—she said that word with cynicism—“why did William Goodspeed and everyone else in that dream live but Gran had to die?”
“Baby, I don’t know. I don’t have all the answers. I’m muddling through this too.”
That bit of honesty tipped the scales in her mind and she believed him. He stepped up behind her, wrapping his arms around her. She leaned against him, hugging those arms that held her safe and secure.
And finally, she completely, wholeheartedly believed him. “But why would a priest kill Gran?”
A soft, faltering knock on the door stole Xander’s response. He let go of her and walked across the room to answer the door. Void of his touch, she felt as if she’d gone from being warmed by the sun to freezing on the dark side of the moon. She wrapped her arms around her waist, a poor imitation of how Xander held her.
She watched him open the door. Watched shock knock him back half a step before he caught himself, visibly braced, then said, “What the fuck are you doing here?”
Chapter 16
“I’d tell you to get off my property, but it’s technically fucking yours.” The venom in Xander’s voice was potent enough to take down a bull elephant.
With those words, she knew who must be standing there.
Alex.
One moment Isleen was clear across the room; the next, she pushed in next to Xander, primed and ready to provide support, backup, and a united front against the man who had never been a dad to Xander and who had verbally attacked her.
But the man standing on the porch didn’t look like the Alex she’d met. The one she’d met had eyes that didn’t see and showed no emotion—beyond anger at her and affection for Gran. This guy’s face was pure expression. This guy looked like he’d endured multiple lifetimes of torment, and the memories were too morbidly obese for one man to keep hauling around. His eyes were a luminous light blue that seemed backlit from the bloodshot shine of unexpressed tears. Deep worry furrows lined his forehead and slashed down either side of his mouth. His thick gray hair was slicked back straight and severe, like a punishment.
Xander put his arm around her, drawing her to him as if ready to shield her from his own father. It made her look weak, but she didn’t care. She leaned in to him, enjoying how utterly safe and protected she felt. Alex wasn’t going to be able to hurt her because in this moment she felt absolutely invincible.
“Xan—” Alex’s timid tone overflowed with remorse and repentance.
Xander’s arm cinched her tighter against his body, almost as if he were seeking comfort from holding on to her.
“Oh no. Don’t you even. Don’t you even go there in your damned head. I don’t want to hear it.” Xander’s voice was a blade, stabbing each word toward his father. “No apology, no amount of sorry-my-bad is going to fucking fix what you broke over twenty-five years ago. No fucking way.”
“Xan—” Alex held his hands up in a cops-and-robbers way of surrendering.
“You want to make me happy? Go back to pretending I don’t exist.” Xander stepped forward, neatly ushered her in behind him, and looked out on the porch. “Hopkins, escort him off my porch and don’t let him come knocking again.”
There was someone out there? She peeked around Xander to see a middle-aged man in oddly oversized pants and a baggy dress shirt step up to Alex. “Mr. Stone, you need to leave. Now.” Hopkins’ voice wasn’t intimidating, but the bulky gun strapped on his belt was a clear warning not to mess with him.
Alex ignored the guy and scrubbed his hand over his mouth. She couldn’t tell if the gesture was one of guilt or contemplation, or a stall tactic. Xander stepped back from the open doorway, reaching for her, pressing her into his side while closing the door.
“Did you really dream about what happened to Gale?” Alex’s words rushed out, powerful enough to stop the door Xander had been about to shut in his face. Isleen met the man’s gaze. His eyes begged for another chance with her, with Xander. Maybe Xander would never see a way to forgive his dad, and maybe there wasn’t one, but she wouldn’t deny him the future possibility of having a loving father in his life.
A father. Something she’d never had.
“Don’t you talk to her. She doesn’t need your—”
“It was the worst dream of my life.”
Alex’s brows bounced halfway up his forehead, as if startled that Isleen had answered him. But then he picked up the opportunity she’d just tossed him. “A precognitive dream. Science has never been able to confirm their existence. Most claims are hoaxes.”