Death Omen

by Amber Foxx

  He called Hubert first. “Sorry it took so long. Kids stole my phone. Hid, I mean. Not stole.”

  “Are they all right?”

  “Yeah. Resilient little buggers.”

  “You okay with them? That was ... I don’t know what to say about what they did. I didn’t raise them to act like that.”

  “Yeah, you did. They’re independent and stand up for themselves. Kind of scary that they think they can drive, but y’know, all in all—”

  “They can drive. My daddy’s four-wheeler. But not your van. Let me talk to them.”

  Jamie pushed himself off the van. His fever was raging in one of those spikes that made him want to curl up and moan. Why couldn’t he have one of his strong spells now instead? The cold morning air made him shiver as the sweat chilled on his skin. He walked over to the dry, trash-littered grass at the edge of the parking lot. The children were watching Gasser hunt grasshoppers.

  “Look!” Brook’s eyes grew wide with delight. “He caught one!”

  “That was awesome,” Stream said. “Does he eat them?”

  Jamie shuddered as his cat bit the insect’s head off and laid the body at his feet. “Nah. He does that.” He petted Gasser, thanked him for the gift, and nearly toppled over. Light-headed from the fever, he straightened slowly, handed Brook the phone and took the leash from Stream. “Talk to your dad.”

  Alone, he would have given in to his sickness, would have collapsed in the van and thought about death. But parents couldn’t do things like that. While the children took turns talking with Hubert, Jamie prodded his cat to exercise. Each step, he told himself, was the first step. There were no other steps, only this one.

  When the twins caught up with him, Stream handed him the phone. “It’s Mama. We called her next.”

  “Hey, sugar.” Mae’s voice made him ache for her. Part of him craved her tenderness and wanted to fall into her arms and be cared for. The other part of him demanded stoic control, something he’d never had in his life. “How’re you holding up?” she asked. “You okay with shopping and—”

  “What kind of feeble-minded imbecile do you think I am? Of course I can fucking shop with them and put in the bloody car seats, and I can pay for it, all right? I thought of all that without you telling me, y’know.”

  Mae spoke slowly, her words stiff with restraint. “Are you talking like that in front of my girls?”

  “Fuck. Sorry. Shoot me.” So much for stoic control. “Brook’s fining me a quarter for every bad word. She says it’ll cover the trip.”

  “I think it will. You sound stressed-out, sugar.”

  “Nah. Just hate it when you underestimate me, y’know?”

  “I’m not underestimating you, I’m being realistic. Those girls are a handful. Do you need me to meet you halfway?”

  “No.” Jamie cut off another burst of irritation. Be an adult. “Love to see ya, but you’d miss work and school. No worries, love, really. We’re fine.”

  “Okay ...” The word trailed off, shading into a question. “If you’re sure.”

  “I love you. I miss you. But I’m sure.”

  “When you get here ... I know this’ll disappoint you, but Brook and Stream need to be with just me for a while. Just the mama they grew up with. We’ll get some time alone together, too, you and me, but not overnight. Not this weekend. I’ve talked to Daddy and Niall and they’d love to have you.”

  Bloody hell. Jamie wanted to hit something. He wasn’t like Jen. The girls had run from her by choosing him. Didn’t Mae get it? He held back his temper. The twins were watching. “Yeah. We’ll figure something out.”

  Like getting married. Soon. Unless he was dying. Which he couldn’t be. The decision swept through him like a wildfire. They were going to be a family. That alone was enough to make him live. It could trigger the miracle that would heal him. He could feel it working. It was already making him strong.

  Before leaving the service plaza, he got more ice for his cooler and made himself eat some of the wholesome food he’d packed. He also purchased aspirin for his pain and fever, the first time in years that he’d bought an over-the-counter-drug other than herbal medicines or homeopathic remedies. The first time in eleven years that he’d been so confident of his desire to live that there was no danger in pills, no temptation to overdose.

  The next stop was a big box store where the twins picked out clothes and pajamas and refillable water bottles. This latter purchase surprised him, but it was sensible of them. They really could think for themselves. The only guidance Jamie gave them was “cheap.” He had to go to the local public health department for help installing the safety seats, which he found embarrassing, but at least the woman who assisted him didn’t make him feel stupid or question why a black Australian man had two little Southern-talking white girls. Maybe kidnappers didn’t bother with safety seats.

  The twins helped him rearrange the back of the van and took pride in solving the problem. Mae hadn’t needed to tell him they would want to do that kind of thing. He understood them.

  Without making Wendy do it for him, he changed all his hotel reservations to suites, so the girls could have a room of their own. At night, after a long hard drive, he tucked them into their bed and sang to them, something silly that made them laugh. They made him laugh, too. They lightened his load. Lightened his life.

  He only cried in the shower, where they couldn’t hear him, after looking at his terrifying glands. Death stalked him in the mirror. Then he stretched a little in the easy, gentle yoga poses he still had the strength to do and lay on the sofa bed in the living room of the suite and did his breathing exercises. Gasser kept trying to crawl on top of him, and Jamie had to slide him to the side. Breathing under the cat had become too difficult. “Support my arm, mate, all right? That’s your new job. Cushion the nerve.”

  Mae would notice the change, of course. She’d always wanted Gasser to move aside like that, so she’d be pleased, but she would notice everything else, too. And he would tell her, what? No worries. I’m almost well.

  He gave Gasser Reiki, then gave Reiki to himself and imagined the fever going away and the swellings shrinking down to nothing. William shrinking back into a kitten, and then a memory. It could happen. It could work. It had to.

  Chapter Twenty

  Mae moved the geodes and other crystals from the closet in the girls’ bedroom to her own room again. Having gotten what they craved, reconnection with their mama, the twins might not try to play psychic anymore, but they would need all the closet space. Hubert was shipping a couple of boxes of their clothes and favorite books and toys. They would live with her until Christmas.

  Returning to Brook and Stream’s room—Mae had stopped thinking of it as the spare room or guest room—she began making up the bed, recalling the twins discovering the rocks and wanting to know about them. Her gift of the Sight had been a breaking-point issue between her and Hubert, and now he was grateful for it. She stuffed a pillow into its case, and a thought jammed in her mind the way the pillow choked its way into the cotton covering.

  What if the twins had run off while Mae and Hubert were still married? Not that they would have. They’d been happy. But what if they’d been the ones to get lost in the woods on Jim and Sallie’s land and not Mae’s drunken first husband? What if they, not Mack, had been the cue for using her long-hidden gift? Her whole life would have been different.

  Or would it? Tylerton would still have rejected her. Sallie still would have found a psychic daughter-in-law bad for her image while running for mayor. But Hubert would have been on Mae’s side. And then what? It was hard to picture herself still in Tylerton or still married, and yet things could have turned out that way.

  She crammed another pillow into a case and unfolded the light bedspread. No blankets yet, not until December. When the twins would go home to Hubert, and maybe Jen. Maybe just Hubert. He had to be going through hell right now, struggling in his third marriage and facing the longest separation from his children i
n his life. Mae’s fantasy had been to have Brook and Stream stay longer than a few weeks, but not under such painful circumstances. It was like the full impact of her and Hubert’s divorce hadn’t hit them until he married Jen.

  And now they were traveling with Jamie. Mae tried not to think about all the things that could go wrong. He was conscientious about his driving, but between his distractibility, anxiety, and insomnia, it was a miracle he’d never had an accident on the road so far.

  Her phone rang, and her thoughts immediately shot to that possibility. She ran to the living room to answer.

  The caller was Don Gross. She’d been eager to hear back from him. While Don made some opening small talk, asking her how school was going, she went out on the new back deck and pulled the chaise longue into the slim patch of shade near the house, assuring him school was hard but good. Then Don asked how Jamie was doing.

  Mae wished she knew. “Something’s not right. He doesn’t talk much lately. He puts the young’uns on the phone and—”

  “Your children are with him?

  “Sorry, of course you don’t know about that.” Mae related the twins’ escapade. “They should be here tomorrow night. Thank goodness.”

  “And Yeshi Ngarongsha’s retreat starts the next day. That’s pushing it. Jamie will be exhausted.”

  “I know. His tour took a lot out of him. I hope he gets some actual retreat experiences, not just a lot of Sierra stress.”

  “That’s what I called about. Sierra. I tried to go to her support group and she wouldn’t let me.”

  “But she has an ad in The Reporter, and it sounds like people can just show up.”

  “I made the mistake of calling first, to prepare her to accept me. I said my back was getting worse, and I was rethinking what she’d said about causing your illness and wondering if she was right. But she said I would ‘give off the vibration of the medical system and suppress the healing process.’ ”

  “Seriously? Maybe I’m not sensitive to it. My mama’s a nurse. But I didn’t get that feeling around you. Maybe there’s some other reason she doesn’t want a doctor there.”

  “I thought the same thing. Or some reason she doesn’t want me, personally, to be there. It’s like she’s hiding something, and that’s suspect when she’s got vulnerable people turning to her for support.”

  “From what Kate said—she’s my friend who checked it out earlier—most of the people didn’t sound exactly vulnerable. More like well-off, independent people who made a weird choice. Only this lady named Posey seemed kind of weak and naive.”

  “She ...” He paused so long Mae imagined she could hear him thinking. Had he started to say something about Posey? Did he know her? Was she his patient? He wouldn’t talk about her if she was, but her connection with Sierra would concern him. He finally continued, “All sick people are vulnerable. Anyone with something worse than a cold feels a little bit powerless. Or completely powerless. Sierra may be offering them a way to feel empowered, claiming they can heal themselves.”

  “One of my healing clients is going to the retreat. I helped him quit smoking, and he hopes she can teach him to heal his emphysema. I could ask him what he thinks, once it’s started.”

  “Heal his emphysema?” Don made a noise of exasperation. “Is the retreat sold out?”

  “I have no idea. That would be a bummer for Jamie, to have only a few people, but he hasn’t mentioned the numbers.”

  Don was silent. “I’m looking it up.” Another pause. “It’s sold out now. Get me four people who aren’t going to believe what Sierra says. They’ll have to share rooms at the spa. I booked one for myself and two for your recommended participants. Bought the last five spaces in the retreat.”

  “Oh my god. That’s ... expensive.”

  “I’m the rare man whose divorce saved him money. You wouldn’t believe the fees I used to pay in that gated community. I’ve downsized a lot. I can swing it.”

  He was going above and beyond anything Mae would have asked of him. Posey had to be his patient.

  Mae asked, “Why so many people?” Then, before Don could answer, the reason hit her. “Oh, I think I get it. You don’t let any—I don’t want to call them suckers, but it’s the only word I can think of—you don’t let more suckers in. And you’ll all ask her questions or test her. Like Kate wanted to, but there’ll be five of you.”

  “Yes, that’s my strategy, such as it is. If Sierra’s exploiting people, we could expose her. I hadn’t thought of keeping ‘suckers’ from getting sucked in, but that’s good.”

  “I’d like to ask Bernadette Pena to attend, except Sierra would freak out if she knows her name from her column. If she didn’t want you, she sure wouldn’t want Bernadette.”

  “But I paid and registered. Dr. Pena can call herself anything she wants.”

  “I hope she’ll want to do this. You just spent a ton of money. I wish I could be there myself, but I’ll have my kids, and Sierra wouldn’t want me any more than she wanted you.”

  “Your job is to help me fill those spaces.”

  “Y’all will have to be careful not to spoil the Tibetan healing part.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll call Yeshi and find out what parts of the retreat are his and which are hers.”

  “Thanks. I’ll let you know if I find people who’ll go to it.”

  Mae wrapped up the call and gazed at Turtleback Mountain, its serene turtle shape profiled against the bright cloudless sky. She should recruit people who could not only help question Sierra but also shield Jamie from her. Bernadette would be interested if she was free to go. Daphne Brady and her husband Chuck lived out in the country and might enjoy staying in town for a spa retreat. Both were lawyers, sharp-minded, unlikely to be susceptible to Sierra, and Jamie had connected with Chuck the way he had with Don. Sierra wanted Kate to come back to the support group, and Kate wanted to debunk Sierra. Jamie was fonder of Kate than she was of him, but he didn’t notice. He’d be happy to see her.

  The tour had been lonely except for his couch-surfing stops. Being surrounded by people he knew and trusted should do him good, and so would the chance to be helpful. Instead of being bullied by Sierra, Jamie could be on the team that was trying to protect the sick and vulnerable from following her.

  *****

  Jamie sat in a plastic chair by the motel pool, reading a Tony Hillerman mystery while the children swam and chased each other underwater. He read in fragments, keeping an eye on the girls and watching out for motel staff in case they might object to the twins’ outfits. Since they didn’t have swimsuits with them, Brook and Stream had decided their despised pink dresses could be old-fashioned bathing costumes.

  Though he missed swimming, Jamie would have had to tie his hair back to go in the water, letting the glands in his neck show, so he had lied and said he’d lost so much weight his trunks didn’t fit. It was close to the truth, only leaving out the fact that he’d bought new trunks.

  The twins swam in circles and then switched to kicking underwater, reaching backwards to poke their hands above the surface with shoulder mobility that Jamie envied. After two shoulder injuries, both in accidents that could have killed him, he doubted he could get his arms into that position even with twenty more years of yoga. The children’s movements looked like water ballet until they stood up, baring their teeth, and Brook declared, “We’re sharks!”

  He could tell it was Brook because he’d put her hair up in a spray on top of her head like his manager Wendy’s former hairstyle, and then done Stream’s in a version of the Navajo double-folded bun like Dr. Gorman wore.

  “Good thing I’m not in the pool, then,” he said. “You’d scare me.”

  Shrieking as if this were hilarious, the twins made shark faces again, rearranged their dorsal fins, and dove under the surface to circle imaginary prey.

  A smile took over Jamie’s face. Kids were so frankly and unselfconsciously weird. Pink frilly sharks. He started to read again, then thought of Kate’s presumed pin
k dolphin incarnation. She hadn’t liked it, but he could picture her having been some strange and intelligent predator.

  He put the book down. What could Brook and Stream have been in other lives? Would they always have been twins? The Navajo art-inspired imagery on the book cover made him think of the tribe’s mythical hero twins, Monster Slayer and Born for Water. Or was the Navajo name for the warrior twin Killer of Enemies? He got the Apache and Navajo versions of the story mixed up.

  Closing his eyes, Jamie drifted into ruminations about mythical twins, the various warrior-healer pairs of indigenous legends his anthropologist father had told him about. Was Wild Thing the mischief-maker half of the Seminole hero twins? What was their peaceful one, the healer twin, called?

  The Mayan hero twins had done something to trick Death. Like Jamie was trying to do. He’d been having a good day, no fever so far. That could mean he was winning. Inside his mind, he called on those twins. What had they done to trick Death? The only part of the story he remembered was that they had done it in a deep hole or cave. Or had they? He was falling into one—

  “Jamie!” The children shouted in unison.

  Alarmed to find he’d been asleep, though surely it had been only for a few seconds, he jerked upright, dropping his book to the deck. The girls could have been in trouble in the water, and he’d failed to watch them.

  “Your phone is singing,” Stream said. “Ringing and singing.”

  The Mozart ring tone hadn’t disturbed him, though his brain was trained to be alerted by it. How tired am I? “Thanks, darl.” He answered, noticing the caller was Yeshi.

  “I have good news,” the Tibetan doctor said with hearty good cheer. “The retreat is sold out.”

  Did this affect Jamie’s pay? He tried to care, but he couldn’t muster the energy. “Uh ... great.”