Up the Creek

by Alissa C. Grosso

  Typical, Caitlin thought. That had probably been what Luanne was gunning for all along, another chance for her to be the star of the show.

  “This all reminds me of back when Caitlin was still a girl,” Luanne said. “She was always having these psychic dreams, and this one time she had a psychic dream about this little girl who was murdered in Culver Creek.”

  Caitlin decided now would be a good time to make an appearance and put an end to Luanne’s story.

  When she stepped into the kitchen, she was struck by how pale her mother-in-law looked. Well, the last several hours had been extremely trying. She ventured a guess that her mother-in-law hadn’t slept anywhere near as well as she had.

  “Well?” Luanne asked eagerly when she saw Caitlin. “Anything?”

  Caitlin shook her head, and noticing there was still some coffee left in the coffeemaker, she poured herself a mug.

  “I was just telling Raquel about that time we went out to Culver Creek to try and help with that murder investigation,” Luanne said. “We were on the television and everything. Do you remember?”

  “Couldn’t forget it if I wanted to,” Caitlin muttered as she sipped the hot coffee.

  “What was so strange about that dream of yours is normally you only ever had dreams about someone who was connected to you in some way or that you had met or something, right?” Luanne said. “But here you were dreaming about some girl all the way out in Pennsylvania somewhere. But what if the reason you had that dream was because of right now, because of Adam going missing in Culver Creek. Maybe that’s the connection.”

  “I’m not sure I follow you,” Caitlin said.

  “What if the connection is that the person who killed that little girl is the same person who took Adam,” Luanne said. “They never caught him, remember?”

  Two things happened at once. The first was that the mug of coffee slipped from Caitlin’s hand and crashed on the floor with chips of stoneware and coffee splattering all over the place. The second thing was that Raquel gasped, pressed a hand to her mouth, and sprinted toward the first-floor bathroom.

  “Seriously, Mom?” Caitlin asked as she tried to mop up the coffee and clean up the scattered shards.

  “Well, it was just a theory,” Luanne said as she squatted and helped Caitlin with the cleanup effort.

  Tucker stepped into the kitchen and in his stentorian voice asked, “Does anyone know where Lance is?”

  Caitlin realized it was strange that she hadn’t yet seen her husband. Luanne shook her head, but Stu stepped into the kitchen and asked, “Do you mean he hasn’t come back yet?”

  “Back from where?” Caitlin asked.

  “I was awake late last night,” Stu said. “All the excitement, and I guess I’m still on Vegas time. Anyway, I saw Lance head out in the SUV.” Stu pointed toward the driveway.

  All of them, including Raquel, who had just emerged from the bathroom, turned to stare at the front window, where it was obvious that Caitlin’s car was missing from the driveway.

  “What time was this?” Caitlin asked.

  “Was he awake?” Raquel asked.

  Caitlin dismissed the bizarre question as Raquel being under a lot of stress and not thinking clearly.

  “I asked him if I could help him,” Stu said, “but I don’t think he heard me. I was trying to be quiet because I didn’t want to wake anyone.”

  “We have to go to Culver Creek,” Caitlin said.

  Everyone turned to look at her in surprise. Even she was surprised by her declaration. She didn’t know where it had come from, but suddenly she felt the unshakeable conviction that she needed to go to Culver Creek.

  “Did your dream just come back to you?” Luanne asked.

  Had it? Caitlin felt fleeting glimpses of it floating around in her head, but she didn’t think that was what led to this sudden belief. “I have to go to Culver Creek,” she repeated.

  “Well, I’m going with you,” Luanne said.

  “Me too,” Raquel said.

  “I’ll drive,” Tucker said.

  “Wait, someone has to stay here at the house, just in case,” Caitlin said.

  “I guess that leaves me,” Stu said. “If you’re okay with that.”

  “Of course,” Caitlin said. She considered showering first, or making some more coffee, but decided there was no time. She needed to get to Culver Creek as fast as possible.

  The windshield wipers sped back and forth, but even at full blast they couldn’t keep up with the downpour. With the visibility so lousy, Tucker had no choice but to drive below the speed limit and keep to the right lane.

  Caitlin sat in the backseat beside her mother, who had been unusually quiet so far on the journey. Nobody had much to say. Caitlin watched Raquel fidget nervously in front of her, and Caitlin’s stomach protested the fact that she’d provided it with no more than a few feeble sips of coffee. She stared out the side window at the rain pouring down and thought of Adam. She hoped he was somewhere safe, dry and warm. Safe, though, that was the important part. She didn’t care if he was drenched to the bone as long as he was okay.

  As if she could sense her thoughts, her mother reached over and gave her arm a squeeze, and Caitlin gave her a grateful smile. Maybe they didn’t have a perfect relationship, but Caitlin was thankful to have her mom here with her right now.

  “Hard to believe we’re headed back to this town after all these years,” Luanne said to her.

  “It makes me sick to think about,” Caitlin said.

  “You’ll get to be a hero all over again,” Luanne said, and she squeezed Caitlin’s arm again.

  “I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about,” Caitlin said.

  “Well, like last time when you gave the police that information to help them.”

  “Mom, it didn’t help them at all. They never found the murderer, remember?”

  “Well, you can’t be held responsible for police incompetence,” Luanne said.

  “And in case you don’t recall, it was my psychic dreams that destroyed your marriage,” Caitlin said.

  Luanne let out an inappropriate bark of a laugh. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”

  “Mom, I know about your affair with Officer Brighton,” Caitlin said.

  “Well, that didn’t have anything to do with you,” Luanne said. “And I don’t know if affair is really the right word. Fling might be more appropriate.”

  “The semantics hardly matter.” Caitlin turned and looked out the window, but her mother wasn’t done with the conversation. She reached over and tucked a strand of Caitlin’s hair behind her ear, forcing Caitlin to turn and look at her.

  “Listen to me, you had nothing to do with why your father and I got divorced, do you understand?” She waited for Caitlin to respond, and when she didn’t, Luanne continued, “I married the wrong man. Raymond and I, we didn’t belong together. I was never happy. That was all on me.”

  Caitlin felt something inside of her release. She had been holding on to this pain and shame her whole life, and now in an instant it seemed to melt away. What her mother said made sense. She saw her home life growing up, her wildly different parents who sometimes seemed more like bickering roommates than soulmates. They had argued over her dreams, it was true, but they argued over everything. If it hadn’t been Officer Brighton, it would have been someone else, and Caitlin spared a glance at her mother beside her. Considering what she knew about her mother’s more recent love life, there might very well have been several someone elses long before Officer Brighton. A fling was what she had called it, and didn’t people who had flings often have multiple flings?

  It made her think of Lance. When she told the story of how they met, she always used the phrase “love at first sight.” Maybe it wasn’t entirely accurate. She couldn’t say for sure that it was love at first sight, but she felt something the moment she laid eyes on him in that coffee shop. He had been younger then, and with his preppy haircut and country club clothes, not at all the sor
t of guy she normally went for, but there was just something that drew her to him.

  She had never been especially forward when it came to guys, but when she saw Lance sitting there, she went right up to him. When she told the story, she always ended it with something along the lines of “and I’m so glad I did.” She wondered, did she still feel this way? She thought of everything they had endured in the past twenty-four hours, and she felt a longing ache in her chest.

  She loved her husband, and she wished that he was sitting here beside her. Instead she closed her eyes and pictured him sitting there that day in the coffee shop. In her imagination his face went from young and boyish to the way it looked today, wiser and a little doughier, and she gasped.

  36

  Sage pounded on the dream whisperer’s door. The sign read “By Appointment Only,” and it looked dark inside, but he hammered anyway.

  “Can I help you?”

  Sage looked around and saw that the voice belonged to a man in a business suit, standing near the bottom of the stairs. It was the dream whisperer’s neighbor. The lawyer whose office was below hers.

  “I’m looking for the dream whisperer,” Sage said.

  “Did you have a nightmare?” the lawyer asked with a chuckle.

  I’m living in a nightmare, Sage thought, but he shook his head.

  “It’s about an important matter.” Sage ran down the stairs. “Do you know where I can find her?”

  “If she’s not there, no,” the lawyer said. “She must be out somewhere. Oh, but I think she did have some family visiting from out of town.”

  Family? As far as Sage knew, the only family Jade had alive was Rick. Could he have come here to visit her? What if he had come to finish what he started all those years ago when he murdered Lily? Sage glanced back at the dark door of the dream whisperer’s building. No, he was jumping to conclusions. He didn’t even know for sure if Jade was the dream whisperer.

  “What’s her name?” Sage demanded.

  The lawyer blinked in surprise.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch who you were.”

  Sage pulled his badge from his pocket and flashed it at the lawyer.

  “Her name’s Phelicity,” he said. “Phelicity Green.”

  He took out a pad and pen and had the lawyer spell it for him.

  Sage’s hopes sank. He found himself at another dead end. He thanked the lawyer for his time and started to walk back to his car.

  Phelicity Green. What the hell kind of name was Phelicity anyway? It sounded like the name of someone who would choose “dream whisperer” as their occupation. In fact it sounded exactly like the sort of name that someone who considered themself a dream whisperer would choose for a name. He stopped and spun around. The lawyer pushed his now unlocked office door open.

  “Do you know if that’s her real name?” Sage shouted.

  “Pardon?” the lawyer said, even though he had clearly heard Sage’s words.

  “Is Phelicity Green her real name?”

  “It’s her legal name,” the lawyer said.

  “What’s her real name?” Sage asked.

  “By real, do you mean—”

  “What’s the name she was born with?” Sage demanded. His patience was wearing thin.

  “Jade Esposito,” the lawyer said softly, and Sage felt a current of happiness run through him. He had found her! Well, sort of. It would have been a bit more of a thrill if she had actually been there. “You can’t blame her,” the lawyer said.

  “Blame her for what?” Sage trembled with excitement for what the lawyer was about to say, or maybe it was the shakes from sleep deprivation.

  “For changing her name, of course,” the lawyer said. “I mean she couldn’t exactly walk around this town with a name like Jade Esposito, could she? She would never have any peace. It would be like having your name on a wanted poster.”

  The tremble changed to a flash of recollection that rattled his whole head.

  The wanted poster. That was where he had seen that man who walked into the police station earlier. He was the guy from the psychic girl’s sketch artist drawing.

  Even as he thought this, he could see how it made no sense. That drawing was from nineteen years ago, but he didn’t have time to worry about that.

  37

  Caitlin felt the car start to slow, and she realized where they must be. As Tucker drove down the exit ramp, unease swept over her. She was still dizzy from the fragment of last night’s dream that had come back to her a few minutes ago. Was it just her mind playing tricks on her? Or maybe last night’s dream, which had seemed in nearly every other way to be an exact repeat of the nightmare she had when she was ten years old, was actually a revised version of that dream, peopled like Dorothy’s dream of Oz by the people closest to her. She wanted so desperately to cling to this idea, but something about it didn’t feel right, and she knew what it was.

  It was the bolt of electricity that seemed to go through her the day she laid eyes on a young guy sipping a cappuccino and reading a newspaper in a crowded coffee shop. She had never laid eyes upon him before, but some part of her subconscious must have recognized something familiar in his face. Foolishly, she had believed that jolt of electricity was destiny. She thought the universe was telling her, “Here he is. Here’s the guy you’ve been searching for your whole life,” and she supposed in a way that was exactly what the universe was telling her. It was she who had misinterpreted the message.

  But how could it possibly be? How could Lance be the man she had seen murder a little girl in a dream she had nineteen years ago? It didn’t make any sense. Lance was her age. He would have been a boy then, but she felt a chill pass through her as she thought of what she had learned just last night, that Lance was from Culver Creek. How was it that she had been married to her husband for seven years and was just now learning where he had grown up?

  She thought of something else she learned last night, and she grasped at it like a drowning woman grabbing a life preserver.

  “How old was Lance when his dad died?” Caitlin asked, but she was so excited that it came out as a startling shout in the silent car. The others jumped.

  Her mother gave her a puzzled expression, and Raquel turned around and frowned.

  “Oh, he was just a little boy,” Raquel said. “About Adam’s age.”

  No, that doesn’t make sense, Caitlin thought. If Caitlin’s theory was right, then it would have needed to be when Lance was older, twelve at least. That was when Raquel had sent him away to boarding school, Caitlin remembered. Sent him away to boarding school, sold their house and married her wealthy boss. The story had always seemed so bizarre to Caitlin, and she couldn’t help but see her mother-in-law as some cold, calculating woman, but what if it wasn’t that cut and dry?

  For years Raquel had lied to Lance about how his father died. So was it that much of a stretch to think she might have lied to him about when? Maybe he hadn’t died at all, but she threw him out of the house or they separated or something, and she made up a story about him dying to spare Lance’s feelings. Except death seemed a far more emotional thing than a separation, unless, like her lie about the nature of her husband’s death, the lie had been meant to protect Lance from the truth.

  What if Raquel had learned what a monster her husband was back when Lance was just a young boy? Caitlin had a sickening thought. What if Lily Esposito hadn’t been the first time Lance’s dad had murdered a child? If he had killed or otherwise shown his true colors, she wouldn’t have wanted someone like that in her or her son’s life. She would have kicked him out. Maybe she assumed that would be the end of everything, but then seven years later, Lance’s Dad could have murdered Lily Esposito, and to protect her son, Raquel had sent him away to boarding school, sold their house and married a man with enough money to keep her safe.

  There was something else. Caitlin knew Raquel had not wanted Lance to marry her. Raquel hadn’t exactly tried very hard to mask her feelings. Caitlin assumed her futur
e mother-in-law’s disapproval stemmed from the fact that she didn’t think Caitlin was good enough for Lance, what with his boarding school education and his country club membership, but what if that wasn’t it at all? If Lance’s father had murdered Lily Esposito, then Raquel would have followed the case closely. Surely she would have seen at least one of the news reports about the supposedly psychic girl from New Jersey who was working with the local police. When she realized who Lance’s girlfriend was, of course she would have worried that Caitlin would say something that would reveal the truth to Lance. Raquel had no way of knowing Caitlin wanted to put as much distance as she could between herself and wretched Culver Creek and had no intention of revealing that ugly bit of her past even to the man she loved.

  It fit, she supposed, but now she wondered, had she ever seen a picture of Lance’s father? She must have at some point, but she couldn’t pull up anything in her memory. Well, it would make sense that Lance would look like his dad, right? Enough so, that their faces in a shadow-filled dream might look more or less identical? Caitlin thought this might be true. She could see glimpses of Raquel in Lance, but only glimpses. So it stood to reason he probably looked a lot more like his father.

  Caitlin leaned over and whispered to her mother, “Do you remember what the police sketch looked like? The man I described to Officer Brighton?”

  “You’ve been thinking about that too, haven’t you?” Luanne said.

  Caitlin felt like she had been stabbed in the chest.

  “You mean you knew all this time that he looked like Lance, and you never said anything?” Her voice rose above a whisper as the emotion crept into her voice, and she noticed in the front seat the way Raquel cocked her head as if she was trying to hear their conversation.

  “Lance?” her mother said, not even attempting to whisper. “What are you talking about? I meant that going back to Culver Creek is making me think of when we came out here to try and help catch that killer.”