Past Tense

by Samantha Hunter

  “Morning to you, too. You’re a sight for sore eyes, literally,” she said, hugging him fiercely to erase the memory of seeing the ghost’s face on his pillow that morning. She didn’t let go for several minutes.

  “It’s only bagels, aspirin and orange juice,” he kidded, but his eyes were serious as they looked down into hers. “The usual morning fix-me-up. You okay?”

  “Yeah, I guess. I feel. . .raw inside.”

  His eyes caught sight of the paper, “Aw, fuck it, I’d hoped to catch that before you did. Sorry, babe.”

  “I can’t hide from it, Rog.”

  Roger pulled her back in, squeezing. “I know, but I can try to protect you from some of it. You are such a tough cookie, though, you know that?”

  She offered an indelicate snort in response and reached for orange juice. She should have known he’d get just what she needed. He always did.

  “You didn’t say much about the interview last night,” he commented carefully. “How did it go?”

  “It was fun. Matt’s a real party. We had coffee, played word games. . . .”

  Knowing her sarcasm was a shield, he nodded sympathetically. “I know it sucks, but he has to run down every possibility. It’s how it goes.”

  “Like suggesting I not only killed Patrice, but my own family?”

  Roger pulled back, a dangerous light flickering in his eyes. “He said that?”

  She regretted mentioning it; she didn’t want to start something for Roger at work. She could fight her own battles. Roger applied “protect and serve” with absolute authority to his personal as well as his professional life, but as time went on, Sophie didn’t always want to be protected. She waved it off.

  “He was trying to rattle me—that’s SOP, too, right? Make the suspect lose it and see if they let anything slip? He pissed me off, but it doesn’t change anything. I didn’t do it.”

  “Of course you didn’t. Hey,” he said, facing her to him, his hands on her shoulders. “This will pass, and things will go back to normal. Remember? That’s how it works. And we get through it together.”

  “Not for Patrice,” she said tightly, pain from another loss eating at her. “I wish I had rescheduled, or if I could just remember. . .something.”

  “It wouldn’t have changed anything. Whoever did this was probably following her and took the opportunity. If they thought you saw them, you might not be standing here. Passing out probably saved your life.”

  It was a weird echo of what the police had told her year before. Sophie sipped her orange juice thoughtfully. “You think some person took a random opportunity to kill Patrice in the store—and happened to have a tarot card on them while they were at it? Isn’t that strange?” She elaborated, telling him about the extra Thoth card.

  “There could be a million reasons why that extra card was there.”

  “That specific card? Don’t you think it means something?”

  “You’re the tarot reader, you tell me,” he said, cutting two bagels and shoving them in the toaster.

  “Well, it was only one card, the Ten of Swords. Endings, giving up, but if you add the one and the zero of a ten, you end up back at one. It’s both a beginning and an end. The Thoth has always hit me as a darker, more intense deck. The guide for that deck names the card as “ruin.” So someone wanted to ruin Patrice or maybe someone she had brought ruin to? Revenge? Had she pissed someone off? Who would benefit from her death?”

  “C’mere. Eat. Relax for a minute. You’ll drive yourself crazy.”

  He saw her face and smirked. “Sorry. Bad choice of words. You’re obviously not crazy, Sophie – just stressed. With good reason. But this will blow over.”

  He said it as if he could will it so. She wished he could.

  “You know, if Patrice was going to divorce Alan, he probably gets everything and life insurance, as well. Isn’t it double with murder? Why aren’t they hauling him in for questioning?”

  “We shouldn’t be talking about this—I’m not on the case for obvious reasons, and the farther we stay out of this, the better.”

  “Do you really believe that?”

  “Yes. They’re looking into it, Sophie. It will work itself out. Let it drop.”

  “I know, but it’s so frustrating! I didn’t do it, and while they’re trying to find a way to nail me, they’re losing time finding the real killer!”

  “Listen, they aren’t trying to nail you, though it may feel that way.”

  She stiffened. “You don’t have any idea what it feels like to be on the other side of that interrogation table.”

  “You’re right, I don’t. I’m sorry. I know it’s hard, but you have to sit tight and let the process work.”

  Like hell, Sophie thought, but only bit into her bagel.

  Roger had a lot more faith in a process than she did, especially when they’d never found the killer of her family, either. Had they really, really looked, she’d always wondered?

  Someone had come into a weird little occult shop and gunned down two psychics. Though the police would say every crime received the same attention, it was clear from the media frenzy around Patrice’s death that that was hardly the case. Was the murder of two psychics worth expending a lot of city resources on? Would they dig as hard or as deep? Roger always got worked up when she mentioned it, so she stopped mentioning it but never stopped thinking about it.

  They’d told her later that the shooting was a robbery gone wrong, or perhaps someone with a grudge of some sort. Maybe someone who wasn’t happy with their tarot reading. As if it was her aunt’s fault?

  With no weapon to match to the bullets, no DNA, no information from her, the case had reached a dead end fast. She’d heard the murmurs, saw the slant of stories in the paper. People thought her aunt and father were just two more crazies, or at best, con-artists who took people’s money in exchange for telling the future and had met a tragic end. A reporter had once asked her if her aunt could read the future, why hadn’t she been able to avoid her own murder?

  A chill passed over her, and she hugged herself, hating the memories.

  After a while, though, no one said anything and it all just faded. Guilt blossomed, because Sophie figured that in a way, she’d let it fade, too. Patrice’s death was bringing it all back in startling detail.

  “How long until I can open back up?” she asked, shifting the topic.

  “Probably by tomorrow. We’re out of there now, but you need to have cleaning done. I’ll make arrangements.”

  “I’ll need to get back to my place sooner than that. All my school stuff is there.”

  “Listen, why don’t you hang out here today? Maybe look at wedding dresses on the internet,” he suggested lightly.

  Not sure she’d heard right, she shook her head. “This isn’t exactly the right time for that.”

  “There never is a right time, is there?” Before she could respond he held up his hands. “Sorry. I know you’re right. I guess I meant you may as well take a day off. Do something that would take your mind off things.”

  “If I sit here and do nothing, I really will go nuts. I have classes. I don’t want this screwing up my life like it did before. I had to quit high school, but I’ve worked too hard at college to let this get the best of me. Patrice wouldn’t want that,” she said, and Roger murmured his reluctant agreement. “We have to get the shop opened back up. I want to help her, Patrice, but I don’t know how. Is there any word on services?”

  “Not yet, but you’re better off keeping your distance for now if for no other reason than there’s a killer out there, and you are a loose end.”

  “I want to go. I owe her that, at least.

  “Sophie, just. . .listen for once. Slow down and think.”

  “If I slow down, I think too much, and I really don’t want to do that right now.”

  She walked to the sink to rinse out her glass, hitting it on the side of the sink. She heard the shatter, but continued to hold part of the broken glass in her fingers, h
er eyes glued to the water coming out of the faucet, mesmerized in the most horrible way.

  “Sophie, what? What is it?” Roger rushed to her side, took her hand in his. “You cut yourself.”

  “The water. It’s. . .blood. The water turned to blood.”

  She heard him cursing under his breath and couldn’t tear her eyes away from the running faucet, which Roger turned off.

  “You cut yourself on the glass, Sophie, that’s all, see? This is the only blood.”

  She looked down at the red gash on her finger and blinked.

  “I’m calling the doctor, and you’re going in. No arguments.” Roger was firm while he wrapped the cut looked in the cupboards for a bandage. “You have some kind of post-traumatic stress, whether you’ll admit it or not.”

  “I. . .it’s like the man, and the dream. . .I keep seeing things. . .like something is trying to get through-”

  “Stop,” Roger halted her ramble, pulling her up short and shaking gently but firmly her by the shoulders. “Don’t do that. It’s a stress response, and that’s it. The blood from the cut triggered some sort of memory. That’s all.”

  “Maybe. Maybe you’re right,” she said, looking at the faucet as he bandaged her throbbing finger.

  “Why don’t you go lay down for a while? You shouldn’t go out in this condition.”

  “I don’t have a condition, Roger. Stop trying to hide me away.”

  “Take my word for it, hon, this is a good time for you to lay low.”

  “I’ll be fine. I need to figure things out and get back on my feet. Work will help.”

  “Tell you what, we’ll stop by the doctor’s office to get you checked out-” he held up a hand stemming her automatic protest. “And then I’ll get you back to your place and you can do what you have to do, okay?”

  She grimaced at the idea of the doctor, but nodded. Relationships were all about compromise, right? “Okay, thanks.”

  “Good girl,” he said, planting a kiss on her head. “Things will work out, you’ll see.”

  Chapter Three

  Roger drove by Talismans a few times, and they saw the reporters had more or less cleared out. The nice thing about living in a big city was that there was always news—they couldn’t focus on her forever. As they parked, Sophie saw two men talking on the sidewalk. The tall one was a reporter, no doubt, as she watched the guy furiously scribble notes. The other, she knew all too well.

  Theo Hughes.

  Theo owned The Astrology Shop, just down from Talismans, the two stores being the oldest on the block. She watched him talk animatedly to the reporter, his mop of salt and pepper hair, far too long for his age, falling down over his John Lennon-style eyeglasses as he gesticulated. Theo had been there forever, and he’d even been one of the people to come in and help now and then when she was getting on her feet, recovering from her surgeries. If only she’d known he’d had ulterior motives all along.

  “God only knows what he’s saying to them,” she murmured.

  Theo played dirty. When he saw the kindness route wasn’t going to work, that she wouldn’t be selling the store or asking him to take over, he tried to force her into selling by spreading the rumor that the murders of her aunt and her father had inverted the energy of the “Boston Vortex.” Tarot Alley was theorized to be a mini-energy vortex for spiritual power, similar to places like Sedona, Arizona. Or on a grander scale, Stonehenge.

  Some said it was the natural, magnetic power of the earth, pointing to the twisted shape of the trees that lined the street as evidence. The trees were healthy and beautiful, but all of their trunks swirled in a westward spiral, except for the ones outside of Talismans, which spun north. Theo used the fact to suggest that the murders of her family had messed up the energy around her store, which he, of course, could fix by opening a café there. It ignored the fact that the trees had always been that way, but no one had ever really noticed.

  He’d hoped to kill her business, forcing her to sell, but it didn’t work. People flocked to Tarot Alley looking for insight, crystals, tarot readings, astrology charts, aura cleansing, massage, among other things, and business stayed steady. She could only imagine what he was coming up with now.

  “Don’t worry about it. He’s a crackpot.”

  She wondered for a moment if that’s how Roger ever thought about her, her family, as crackpots. She knew he didn’t believe in tarot or any of the “woo-woo” stuff, as he called it. More or less, they found a happy balance – a happier one since she had agreed to sell Talismans and move on.

  “C’mon. Let’s go in the back. I’ll make sure no one bothers you getting in or out.”

  She smiled. “You’re good to me, Rog.”

  “I try, when you’ll let me,” he said, but with a smile as they followed the narrow alley between buildings to the back entrances, blocked with an iron gate.

  Upstairs, the sunny yellow kitchen with the cheerful daisy curtains offered some relief. Sophie loved this apartment. She’d learned to bake cookies here, playing after school while Aunt Doris and her father ran the store, and life was good in their little family.

  Those warm feelings remained, and this place was still Sophie’s safe haven, in spite of everything. Maybe she was lucky to only remember the happy things. She loved the big windows and the family artifacts that were scattered around the rooms. Her father’s drawings and her aunt’s knick-knacks. Aunt Doris as a quirky woman who had taught her to cook, and who had played Go Fish. That was what she remembered.

  “I’ll grab my stuff, so I can go from the doctor’s to school,” she said to Roger, shaking herself out of memories.

  “Okay. I called Dr. Thomas, and he said to come right in.”

  Yippie.

  Sophie liked Dr. T, as they called him, but she’d spent so much time in hospitals and physical therapy after her fall that it was enough for a lifetime. Seeing Dr. T would make Roger feel better, and it would only take an hour, she told herself, trying to be a good sport. Grabbing her books and her computer, she paused as she noticed the light on her answering machine flashing wildly. She’d shut off her cell phone and feared she’d have to change services and numbers to avoid the press.

  Deciding not to bother now, she left the room and the blinking light behind her.

  * * *

  As it turned out, Dr. Thomas agreed with Roger—stress, trauma, all of it was dorking with her mind. He could find nothing physically wrong with her. Healthy as a horse, if slightly off her rocker. . . . Well, he hadn’t actually said that, but he also said it wasn’t a surprise that having confronted a second trauma, her mind would have simply dealt with it the way it dealt before – erase everything, squash it down where it couldn’t be seen.

  However, he also suggested that her mind was, for lack of a better word, “at capacity,” which was why she was starting to see things, to dream and to experience some of those nasty memories she’d squashed down spilling over into real life. He’d offered her some anti-depressant pills which she’d accepted, and then put in her backpack, untouched.

  In spite of their good intentions, she couldn’t help but be resentful. She didn’t want to believe what she saw, but she couldn’t help it. She’d told Patrice to trust her gut, and Sophie’s gut was telling her what she’d seen was real. It also told her that she wouldn’t stop seeing the ghost until she figured out why it was happening.

  At the moment, back on campus, she was trying like hell to focus on the lecture in her security policy seminar. She’d managed to make it to class and reveled in the little bit of normalcy until she’d walked down the hall and noted some people staring and heard the hushed whispers of her peers in the lecture hall.

  Let them talk. It wasn’t the first time she’d been looked at that way. Adding insults to injury, she’d suffered many unkind innuendoes in the wake of her family’s murders, but there had been just as many people—more really—who were kind and supportive. She’d had to walk away from high school, but she was grown up now, and not as
affected by the stares and whispers. Fuck ‘em.

  Professor Fitzsimmons’ words eventually became a buzz in her ears as her mind kept processing the events of the past few days, and yanked her hand back as she found herself rubbing her knee again. On her way out of class, mentally calculating what to do next, she was pulled back by the professor’s voice.

  “Sophie, can you wait a moment?” he asked, as he wiped the blackboard clean.

  “Uh, sure.” She could only imagine what he wanted to talk about. She liked Fitz, who was also her advisor. No doubt he’d read the morning news, too.

  “How is your term project coming along? You didn’t turn in a progress report last week.”

  She stared for a moment, coming up short. That wasn’t what she expected him to ask. “Uh, I’m a little behind, but I have the equipment almost set up-”

  “The semester is half over. You may not have enough time for reliable results.”

  “I’m sorry, I know, I - It’s been a lot lately.”

  “So I see. How are you doing?”

  She wasn’t sure how to respond. He didn’t seem worried at all, as if his students appeared on front page news as murder suspects every day.

  “I, uh, I’m okay.”

  “Believe me, I know how hard it is being an adult student and working for a living -- and running a business is more work than having a job, which a lot of people don’t get,” he said in a kindly tone, and she relaxed a little. Fitz was a good guy, and the staff was always great in working with continuing education students. She wouldn’t have been able to get as far as she had otherwise. She was beginning to think she would hold some kind of record for part-time study.

  “Sophie, there’s a lot going on in your life, but a lot rides on this project, especially if you want to qualify for that internship this summer. Let me know whatever I can do to help. And for the record, I don’t believe a word of what the paper says. It will blow over. You hang in there.”

  Sophie didn’t know why she was so surprised when people were so kind, so understanding, and fought to control the telltale tightening in her throat. She’d known many good people in her life, and yet it always came as a little bit of a surprise when it was directed her way.