by Stacy Juba
Hurt darted across her mother’s face, but her jaw had a rigid set. "You’re never to see that woman again. No more going out with Jamie and Candace, either."
Dawn jumped up, balling her hands into fists at her side. She wouldn’t have had to sneak around if her mother had supported her over the years. Dawn wouldn’t have even needed Serina. "I don’t believe this. I can’t count on you, but you have the nerve to pull me away from the only people willing to help me?"
"You don’t understand."
Dawn paced a few feet along the private stretch of beach. "You're not telling me what to do, Mom, not on this. Since I was a little kid, you've acted like there was something wrong with me. My abilities are part of who I am and you never wanted to deal with it. You can’t just get involved now."
Her mother stood and clasped the wooden railing. "Are you paying this woman?"
"Serina doesn't want our money."
"What does she get out of it?"
"She wants to teach us. She thinks we’re special."
Her mother cocked her head, shoulder-length dark hair ruffling in the breeze. "Why would Serina give up all that time? I understand why you were attracted to her, Dawn, I really do, but I don't like this."
"You don't even know her."
"Exactly. Can you blame me for being concerned?"
"Serina’s supporting my gift, not trying to hide it like it doesn’t exist."
"For God’s sake, Dawn, being psychic is dangerous. I know that better than anyone!"
"Dangerous? What do you mean?"
"Other people could find out and want to use your talent for their own purposes," her mother said quickly. Too quickly. "I wanted you to have a normal life."
"Mom, please. You know something. I have a right to know what it is."
Her mother sucked in her breath and her face tightened. Dawn closed her eyes, connecting with her mother’s thoughts. All she got was a strong pulsing sense of her father. Her eyelids fluttered open. "Daddy? What does Daddy have to do with this?"
Her mother slumped back onto the stairs. She cupped her chin in her hands, tugged on her earlobes and squinted up at Dawn as dusk veiled the sky. Her mouth hooked into an ironic humorless smile. "Please don’t do that. Your father used to read my mind and it drove me crazy."
"What?" Her knees spongy, Dawn teetered and lowered herself back onto the step. "That’s impossible. Daddy wasn’t psychic."
Her mother reached over, enclosing Dawn’s hand with fingers icier than the surf. "You were young, but stop and think for a minute. Do you remember when Daddy took you out of school and brought you to the zoo?"
"Yeah, that’s when I got Buddy."
"Your class was going on a field trip and there was a bus accident. No one was seriously hurt, but some kids went to the hospital. Do you remember?"
"Now that you reminded me." Dawn thought back to that long ago time. She’d heard her parents arguing in the kitchen that morning. Then Dad came upstairs and told her she had the day off from school.
"Wait a minute!" Dawn ripped her hand away from her mother. "Dad knew, didn't he? He was afraid the accident might be worse. If I’d been on the bus, maybe I would have been the one kid seriously injured – or killed. I don’t believe this, he read minds and had the same premonitions that I do, and you never told me!"
"I’m sorry, Dawn. Maybe I made a mistake, but I only wanted what’s best for you. I downplayed your abilities to protect you. I had reasons, good reasons."
Dawn stumbled to her feet. She looked up at the house and caught Ken peeking out the living room window. He ducked out of sight. All this betrayal. Ken, her mother, her father, they’d all betrayed her. She’d been seven when her dad died. Old enough to know him, to have a bond with him. They hadn’t been as close as she thought, if her father kept this secret.
Her father was a stranger.
Dawn lashed out at the only parent alive to hear her rant. "All these years, you’ve made me feel like there was something wrong with me. You tried to turn me into someone else. And the whole time, you knew my abilities came from Daddy."
"Dawn–"
"How could you let me feel like an ugly duckling when you knew I was just like Daddy? Do you have any idea how much it would have helped me to know that I shared something with him?"
"When you were a little girl, I thought ... I hoped that if I discouraged it, maybe you could push it away. Your father believed he was invincible and trusted his visions too much. I was afraid, Dawn."
Her mother rose and took a tentative step toward Dawn. Fear emanated from her, contagious fear that spread to Dawn in invisible tendrils.
"There's something I've kept from you about the car accident," her mother said. "I never wanted you to know, because I thought it would frighten you. But maybe that's what you need. To realize how dangerous these premonitions can be."
"That’s the second time you called them dangerous," Dawn said. "Why?"
"Your father's secretary told me later that all of a sudden he had just jumped up and flung on his jacket. She asked him what was wrong, and he kept repeating that he had to get home, that something had happened and his wife and daughter were sobbing in the bedroom. She assumed he'd just gotten off the phone with me."
"I don't get it." Dawn shook her head, trying to understand, knowing it was important to understand, but everything was a muddle. Serina had been right. There had been dishonesty and secrets about her father.
"He saw the future, Dawn. Yes, we were sobbing in the bedroom, but not until later that night, when we found out he was dead. If he hadn't acted on that vision, and rushed home to be with us, he wouldn't have died."
Her mother released a shaky breath. "It killed him, Dawn. His abilities killed him. I don't want yours to do the same to you."
Chapter Fourteen
"I’ve got to do my homework." Dawn backed away from her mother’s truths, her stomach rocking like a sailboat trapped in a hurricane. She pivoted and hurried up the wooden steps into the living room.
Ken popped up from the couch where he was watching television. "You okay?" he asked, a cautious note in his voice. "I saw you fighting with your mom."
Yeah, because he’d been spying, just as he’d spied on her with Serina. Torrents of fury increased Dawn’s heart rate, fury that psychic abilities killed her father, fury that her mother lied for years, fury that Ken’s interference destroyed the new life she’d worked so hard to attain.
Fury that she was doomed to a lifetime of fearing her premonitions and having no power to stop them.
Dawn hurled a lighthouse pillow at the glass door. Ken’s eyes moved from the pillow to Dawn, blinking rapidly.
"You jerk!" she shouted. "Who do you think you are, following me and tattling to my mother? My life is none of your business."
Ken rose, his expression going from hangdog to bulldog. "I tried talking to you the first time you went to that fortuneteller and you didn’t listen. For all I knew, you were being brainwashed or drugged. Sue me for caring."
"You were wrong. There's nothing criminal about Serina. Being psychic doesn't make her a bad person." Dawn glared at her trail of sand tracks on the carpet. For once, someone else could clean up her mess.
"Yeah, well, I think she’s on a power trip. You, Candace and Jamie act like you’re in a cult."
"That’s because no one else understands how hard it is to be psychic." His mouth opened, but she pushed on, "Yeah, Ken, I’m admitting it. I’m psychic. Now my mother’s forbidding me to hang around with my friends. My only friends."
"Whose fault is that? Anytime I tried talking to you about this stuff, you blew me off or lied about it." Ken shuffled closer, till they were inches apart. "I’m no psychic, but I listened to my gut and it told me you were in trouble. Two kids from the same school, the same crowd, die in freak accidents. I didn’t want anything happening to you."
Dawn’s breathing quickened. Ken was implying that Serina had something to do with the deaths of Scott and Tim? That was i
nsane.
"You should have minded your own business. Everything was fine until you butted in." Dawn elbowed past him and thumped upstairs to her room.
She turned off the lights, curled on the bed and eyed the shadowy framed headshot of her father in his favorite Red Sox cap. If Serina was right and psychics could pass on their skills in death, then her dad had given her his abilities. Had he bestowed them during his accident as the other car plummeted toward him? Had he accomplished it during some sort of afterlife?
However it worked, Daddy must have believed he was doing the right thing. Dawn tugged the ends of her hair, an empty shoveled-out feeling in her stomach. Why, Daddy? How could you do this to me after the powers killed you?
Dawn drifted off to sleep and was awakened by glaring light. She jerked up to find her mother and Jeff standing over her. She squinted at the peanut butter sandwich, chips and lemonade on the tray her mother carried.
Her mother cleared a place on the nightstand for the tray and squeezed Jeff’s hand. "I told Jeff everything. He’ll explain about your abilities to Ken. No more secrets."
"I think it was foolish of your mother to hide this from us," Jeff said, shooting her mother a glance that conveyed exasperation and love at the same time. "We’re a family. Besides, I’m not as shocked as you might think. Remember that time I lost my keys this summer? I searched everywhere and you told me to look on the seat of my car. There they were. There have been other instances like that. Something tells me they weren’t coincidences."
Dawn shrugged, gazing down at her bedspread. They’d only lived together a couple months. Wait till he saw what it was like rooming with a psychic for the long haul.
"I’m not afraid, Dawn," Jeff said. "You have a gift, but I agree with your mother, I don’t like this fortuneteller situation. She was dealing with young girls and should have required parental permission. If she’d called us, then we would’ve heard her out, but she didn’t. That doesn’t make me think highly of her."
"Jeff wants to go with you tomorrow to Serina’s house and tell her why you won’t be seeing her any longer," her mother said.
"That’s not fair!" Agitated, Dawn rolled off the bed and paced. "You can’t take away my teacher. You can’t stop me from seeing Jamie and Candace, either. Jamie isn’t even psychic, she just wants to be."
Her mother and Jeff exchanged a long heavy glance. Dawn stopped pacing and looked hard at her mother. "What?"
"The only way we’ll consider letting you go anywhere with Jamie and Candace is if we tell their parents what’s going on," her mom said.
"What? No! They’ll hate me. You can’t."
"Then you’re not allowed to see them outside of school." Her mother coughed. "As far as having Serina for a teacher, there’s someone else I would rather you learned from – if you think it’s absolutely necessary. There’s something I haven’t told you."
"Surprise, surprise." Dawn rubbed her throbbing forehead. What now? What more could there be?
"I’ll leave you two alone." Jeff kissed her mother’s cheek and murmured into her ear. She swallowed and nodded. He turned to Dawn. "Don’t be upset at your mother, Dawn. She’s tried to do what’s best for you."
He clapped a hand on her shoulder and walked out of the room. Dawn sat down on her bed, jittery. With Jeff’s absence, a bridge had collapsed between her and her mother. Dawn couldn’t handle the unleashing of another secret. She felt like Luke Skywalker in the original Star Wars trilogy.
Dawn’s mother laced her hands together and cleared her throat again. "Your grandfather, on your father’s side, is psychic also. It’s hereditary."
Shock flooded over Dawn like a tsunami. Did this mean her father hadn’t passed on his gifts from beyond the grave after all? That she’d inherited them the genetic way?
"What?" Dawn blurted. "Are you kidding me?"
"Unfortunately, no."
"You mean, all this time, I could have been learning from my grandfather?" Dawn’s pulse beat in her wrist and a warm flush spread over her from head to toe. Who was this woman with all her secrets? She was a stranger who’d cheated Dawn out of a teacher, out of knowing a blood relative that could have helped her to grow up confident instead of ashamed.
"Mom, you went too far. You had no right to keep this from me. You—"
Her mother’s imploring look stopped her short. "Just listen. Aren’t you curious why we were estranged from your grandparents?"
Dawn struggled to remember what little she knew about her father’s family. She’d been told that they lived far away. Since she wasn’t close to her mother’s parents either, their absence had never seemed odd. "Okay. Why?"
"Your grandfather said something terrible would happen if your father married me and he wouldn’t attend our wedding. Your grandmother went along with him. Your dad was furious, but your grandparents wouldn’t respect his feelings. They claimed I would be his downfall." Even now, bitterness tinged her mother’s voice.
"They just cut themselves off from us because you didn’t do what they wanted? That’s pretty unfair, isn’t it?" Dawn’s annoyance retreated and thoughtfulness took over.
Her mother hesitated and then sat beside her on the bed. "Truthfully, your dad was the stubborn one. When you were a baby, his parents wanted to see you, but he refused. They came to his funeral, but I wouldn’t let them speak to you. They’d caused your father a lot of pain and I was angry. Besides, I hoped you’d outgrow your psychic abilities and I didn’t want your grandfather encouraging it."
Dawn reached back with her mind, struggling to remember the people at her father’s funeral, but it was too hazy. They’d all been strangers. "Mom, something terrible did come out of your marriage. Look how young Daddy died."
"Don’t you think I realize that?" her mother asked, tears emerging from her blue eyes. "But we were happy, Dawn, and we had you, so I can’t wish we did things differently. When I first heard about this premonition, I thought it was an excuse. I figured I didn’t live up to your grandparents’ expectations and that they were making it all up. When your dad admitted he was psychic, too, but that he didn’t have any premonitions of doom about our relationship, then I thought your grandparents must have been New Age types who’d filled his head with supernatural nonsense."
"You didn’t believe in Daddy’s abilities right away?" Dawn’s spine straightened. Had her mother treated Daddy the same way, blowing off all his predictions and pretending he was normal?
"He had a lot of lucky guesses, like exactly what day and time you’d be born, but I passed it off as coincidence. As time went on, deep down I knew he had special abilities, but he didn’t like talking about it which was fine with me. It spooked me." Her mother chuckled, but it sounded more like a sob. "Once you started showing signs of it as a toddler, though, we had to talk about it."
"I don’t remember having premonitions until after Daddy died. Till I was about seven." Dawn blinked, disoriented. Not only had her mother lied, but Dawn’s own memories were warped.
"No, they just got more dramatic, about bigger things. Scarier things. When you were little, you knew what all your Christmas presents were under the wrapping paper, you’d give us accurate weather reports, that type of thing. You assumed everyone knew stuff like that. Daddy said that once you got older, as your skills matured and you were around more people, then you’d realize you were different." Her mother brushed her fingers through the back of Dawn’s hair. "I took it for granted that he’d be there to answer your questions."
At the gentle touch, Dawn felt sadness stirring within her mother and sensed that no matter how happy she was in her new life with Jeff, part of her would always miss Dawn’s dad. Maybe I wasn’t such a burden after all.
She’d only been her father’s daughter.
"If you still need guidance, then I’m willing to ask your grandfather," her mother said. "Your grandparents live in Florida, in St. Augustine. You don’t have to decide now."
"Mom, he doesn’t sound like a nice man. Why ca
n’t I just continue with Serina? She’s right here in town." Dawn couldn’t stop shaking her head. She didn’t even know her grandfather. Her dad hadn’t wanted her to know him. That had to count for something.
"I’m sorry, Dawn, but it’s your grandfather, or nobody." Her mother feather-stroked Dawn’s cheek. "I’ve given you a lot to think about. We’ll talk again later."
"You mean, you’ll talk," Dawn muttered. "Nothing I say matters."
"I know you’re upset. I love you, Dawn. I hope you know that."
As her mom left the room, Dawn clenched her teeth. Sure, her mother loved her, but that didn’t mean she knew what was best.
Dawn eyed the telephone on her nightstand. She had to warn Serina about tomorrow. After all Serina’s generosity, Dawn couldn’t just let Jeff blindside her. Besides, Dawn could use advice.
Serina answered on the third ring. "Hello, Dawn," she said calmly.
Chills scudded through Dawn. She hadn’t identified herself.
Dawn stumbled over her words with sudden shyness. She’d never talked to Serina on the telephone before. "Serina, something happened. My mother found out I was taking lessons from you and won’t let me come anymore. My stepfather insists on going with me tomorrow to tell you. I just wanted you to know."
Silence crackled for a moment. Serina cut into the quiet and an electrical charge punctuated the air. "This is ludicrous. Dawn, I’m disappointed in you. You’re not standing for this, are you?"
Dawn gulped. "Could you just listen? There’s more." She spilled out the revelations about her father’s accident and how her mother would only permit her to study with her psychic grandfather.
"That man will ruin you," Serina said. "If he’d been a good teacher, your father would still be alive. He wouldn’t have reacted to a premonition so irresponsibly. I’ll bet your father knew his training was lacking and didn’t want your mind poisoned. That’s why he kept your grandfather out of your life."
Serina echoed Dawn’s own thoughts, her own doubts. Still, Dawn tried to convince herself they were both wrong, to play devil’s advocate even though she had no idea who the devil was in this instance. She moistened her dry lips. "But, my grandfather predicted my dad’s downfall. He must have had some skill."