5
Dream journeys are rare and beautiful gifts. If you are blessed with a spirit guide, it’s best not to sass him.
—Have You Ever Seen a Dream Walking:
A Beginner’s Guide to Otherworldly Travel
The judgmental panda bear was not amused by my rich fantasy life.
I was in the middle of one of my usual “Daniel Craig is hypothermic and needs your body heat to survive” dreams when, suddenly, Daniel morphed into Jed. And in my subconscious, a low-core-temperature Jed is a randy Jed. Sadly, my neighbor and his pouty, slightly blue lips disappeared before things could get interesting. I was left wearing some strange, quilted clothing, walking up the foothills of a densely forested mountain. But instead of trees, I was carefully picking my way through bamboo stalks two and three stories high. The air was cool and fragrant with the green scent of growth and turned earth. To my left, a fat panda sat hunched against a rock, munching on a stalk of his favorite green treat and giving me a look that said, “Like you would have a shot with Daniel Craig, you silly twit.”
“I thought panda bears were supposed to be all sweet and cuddly,” I muttered, stepping carefully around an outcropping of jagged rock.
“In my experience, they can be nasty little sneaks,” a slightly creaky voice said. My head snapped up, and I found a thin, elderly version of Mr. Wainwright sitting before me on the outcropping. He was sitting cross-legged, wearing the same sort of quilted pajama-style jacket and trousers I’d donned. “Especially if they think you have something edible on your person. Lost a pair of pants to a panda once. Lesson learned: do not keep beef jerky in your front pocket.”
My jaw dropped, and my eyes flicked toward the panda, whose baleful expression now said, “Don’t look at me. I’m only here for the buffet.”
“What is this?” I whispered.
“This is a dream,” he said, stretching a cool, dry hand toward mine. And when I was unable to respond, he shook it gently. “And I’m your grandfather, or at least, your subconscious’s idea of what your grandfather would look and sound like. Can I just say it’s wonderful to meet you? I have to say I’m a little surprised it took you this long to show up. But no matter, we’re here now, and we can get to know each other under the watchful eye of that gluttonous panda.”
“Mr. Wainwright? Really?”
“I never thought—I never dreamed I would have this opportunity.” As he smiled broadly, his eyes disappeared. “Do you think you could call me Grandpa?”
I shook my head. “No, I don’t think I can,” I said, my face still frozen in an expression of shock and confusion. “Can you tell me where you stashed the Elements, so I can pick them up and can go home?”
“No, I told you, I’m not really your grandfather. I’m a figment of your subconscious. I don’t have any answers or information that you don’t already know.”
“That’s supremely unhelpful.”
Mr. Wainwright frowned. “Isn’t there anything you’d like to ask me that’s not related to the Elements?”
I stared at this sweet-faced old man with his conical straw hat. There were a lot of questions running through my head at the moment, most of them more hostile than I’d anticipated. How could he have abandoned my grandmother, who loved him? Did he realize how different my mother’s life would have been—how different she would have been—if he’d stuck around? Did he really want to know me, or was this only his way of socializing now that he was dead?
I kind of wanted to slug him, which was just confirmation that the panda was right to judge me.
“No,” I told him. “I didn’t come here for a family reunion. I came here because Nana left the task to me. I didn’t have a choice.”
Mr. Wainwright eyed me speculatively. “Well, I see Fiona passed her obstinate nature on to you. Good for you, I suppose. I guess I wouldn’t want you to make this too easy for me.”
“What exactly is ‘this’?” I asked, gesturing at the rural Chinese landscape.
“It’s whatever you want it to be,” he said. “It’s your dream. It’s your way of processing all of the information and emotions you’re absorbing. Sometimes people know the answers to their own questions, but they’re either unable or unwilling to express them.”
“So you’re my id’s bitchy spokesman?”
“I’m not comfortable with that label,” he said, wincing.
“Well, it’s my label, and I’m sticking with it.”
Mr. Wainwright lifted a bushy gray eyebrow. “Just to annoy me?” I nodded. “Good girl. Now, since you seem single-minded in your line of conversation, I have a piece of advice for you.”
“What’s that?”
He grinned impishly, hopped to his feet with surprising spryness, and slung a heavy rucksack over his shoulder. “You’re trusting the right people, for the most part.”
I turned toward the panda, who was shaking his head at me. “What?” I cried. “How has this been helpful?”
“And Nola?” Mr. Wainwright was already yards away, but I could hear him clear as a bell—an advantage, I supposed, to dream logic. He winked at me. “We always have a choice, dear.”
* * *
True to her word, the moment Jane opened the shop the next night, she welcomed me into the storeroom and helped me sort through the last of Mr. Wainwright’s dirty, much-abused cardboard boxes. Jane told me of the first night she wandered into the shop after a disastrous flirtation with a career in telemarketing. The store was crowded with messy, decrepit bookshelves, one of which nearly collapsed on top of Jane. The former librarian was in physical pain at the sight of such disorder and began organizing the titles. Mr. Wainwright found her like that, surrounded by neat stacks of books, and hired her as his assistant on the spot.
“Until I was hired, the storeroom was like that village in Brigadoon. Wainwright would find something—a book or artifact—and shove it in here, and then a bookshelf would fall against the door, and he would lose track of it for a decade or so. I’m sorry. I wish I could remember more details of what I sorted through, but to be honest, the weeks after your grandfather’s death were a blur. I could have chucked Excalibur into the recycling bin, and I wouldn’t have noticed,” Jane said, carefully lifting what looked like a mummified monkey’s paw from its cardboard tomb. My shoulders slumped as we sifted through the remaining boxes and found nothing.
“Why did you keep these, if you don’t mind my asking? There doesn’t seem to be much of value here,” I said.
“Something in that box over there bit Jane’s hand, so she gave up and declared that she was done,” Andrea said from the doorway of the storeroom.
I dropped the box I was holding.
Jane winced, grabbing at her head. “Nola! Jell-O shield! Panic makes your brain sound like a car alarm!”
“There are spiders in these boxes?”
“She didn’t say spiders,” Jane muttered. “Your grandfather collected a lot of bizarre artifacts. Some of them were ‘interactive.’ ”
Jane didn’t look up at me while she said this. In fact, she hadn’t looked me in the eye since I’d arrived earlier in the evening. I couldn’t help but notice that she and Andrea were a bit off-kilter. They kept glancing at the door and then at the clock, and they seemed to be having quiet, quick arguments whenever I was out of earshot. And every time I tried to ask them what was wrong, they asked me random questions about magic. Did I have a familiar? (No, but I did have a lovely tank full of tropical fish.) Could I really cast a love spell? (Yes, but relationships based on love potions or spells were notoriously fickle and required nearly constant contact with the subject to maintain the “thrall” of the caster.) What did witches do on Halloween? (In my case, stayed home and tried to avoid the costume party at my uncle Jack’s.)
The interrogation was becoming rather annoying, a compounding factor on top of my “panda dream” tension. I didn’t know what to make of my grandfather’s presence in my dreams. It had been easier, I supposed, to think of Mr. Wainwright in terms of his faded photographic image. Talking to him, having him ask me to call him Grandpa, was a strange mixture of getting what I’d wanted for years—a grandfather—and confronting feelings I wasn’t quite ready for.
With the storeroom search at a standstill, Jane sent me out to my car to retrieve the sketches of the Elements while she made me some tea. I was in such a tizzy to start the search that I’d left them in my passenger seat. When I returned, a tall, handsome man with dirty-blond hair was standing behind the bar, making some notes in a ledger.
“Well, hello there,” the man drawled. “Dick Cheney. What can I do for you this fine evening?”
Dick Cheney, my landlord. It was odd that I hadn’t seen him enter the shop, but Jane said she and the rest of the staff often used the back entrance. I didn’t particularly care for Mr. Cheney’s impish grin or his insinuating tone, which, now that I knew Jed, I recognized as a classic flirtatious opening. Considering that he was married to Andrea, I did not find this flattering in the least. He seemed so . . . not quite trustworthy. The tacky “Come to the Dark Side—We Have Cookies” T-shirt, the shaggy hair, the smirk.
“I’m Nola Leary. Jane’s helping me with some research,” I said coolly. “And if you have time, I’d like to talk to you about a not-so-small pest-control issue at the Wainwright house.”
“Ah, the new tenant,” Mr. Cheney said, a wide, friendly grin breaking through that smirk. He set his bottle of synthetic blood aside, took my hand in his, and pressed it between his cool ones. “A marked improvement over your predecessor. Cranky old woman with a lot of cats. Awfully fond of mothballs.”
“Is that what the smell is?” I asked as Jane and Andrea emerged from the back of the shop. Both stopped in their tracks and exchanged significant glances when they saw that I was talking to Dick. What was with the two of them? Was I in danger? Was Mr. Cheney in the habit of dragging renters into dark alleys and making snacks of them?
“Um, Dick—” Andrea started, but Jane stopped her.
“Iris said you were from Ireland!” Dick exclaimed, the soul of cheerfulness. “I only detect the slightest bit of an accent, but it’s there.”
There was a pregnant pause. Andrea clapped a hand over her face. “He’s trying to come up with a good Lucky Charms joke and/or nickname.”
“Leprechauns are also an option,” Jane told me.
I gave the vampire my sweetest smile. “Mr. Cheney, are you interested in a debilitating crotch injury?”
He shook his head emphatically. “No.”
“Then you should probably keep those jokes to yourself.”
Dick beamed at his wife. “I like her.”
Andrea sighed. “Dick, sweetheart, Nola claims to be Mr. Wainwright’s granddaughter.”
The news seemed somehow to stun my landlord. He nodded slowly, his face sagging and blank, as if he’d just been struck by a frying pan. “Well, of course, she is.” And suddenly, the vampire threw his arms around me in a spine-cracking hug and lifted me off the floor. “Oh.” He sighed, giving me a long squeeze. “I am so happy to meet you.”
“Can’t . . . breathe,” I wheezed into his shoulder, and he loosened his grip immediately.
“I can’t tell you what a surprise this is,” he said, a pleased smile breaking through the shell-shocked expression. “I thought Gilbert was the last, you see. But now here you are, and you’re just so beautiful. Look at you!” He took my face between his hands and scrunched up my cheeks. “You—you’ve got Gilbert’s eyes. And his nose! Look at that, Andi! She has his nose! Isn’t she gorgeous?”
Jane cleared her throat. “Dick?”
Dick gave me an apologetic smile. “Crossing a line?”
I nodded, my eyes wide and alarmed, like one of those upsetting anime characters.
“Dick and Mr. Wainwright were really close,” Andrea told me, carefully removing Dick’s hand from my face.
Dick looked in Jane’s direction and seemed to be thinking furiously at her, which was rather funny to watch. Dick would squint. Jane would make a vague gesture. Dick would squint even harder. Jane would shrug.
Meanwhile, Andrea retrieved the sleeve of sketches I’d dropped on the floor during Dick’s hugging tirade. “These are beautiful, Nola. Even if they weren’t of historical value, your nana had a wonderful eye for detail.” She carefully shuffled through the old papers. “So each of the artifacts represents one of the four elements?” she asked, while Jane tried to give a Dick a brief summary of why I was in the Hollow and what the hell Andrea was talking about.
I took out the sketch of the object Nana had called “Sea,” which was your typical silver bell, dotted with intricate Celtic designs that spiraled out like ripples on the surface of water. Nana described it as heavy and “flat,” meaning it never quite rang with the delicate, resonant note it was meant to have. The next sketch showed a circular clay altar plaque, “Earth,” which was vaguely shaped like an acorn. Then there was “Air,” the long, thin ritual knife used to direct energy flowing through the air. Ritual knives were also associated with fire, but I suppose my ancestors wanted to be as obvious as possible by using a magically preserved candle—“Flame”—to represent fire.
Jane joined us, poring over the sketches to see if she recognized anything. When her gaze landed on the rendering of Flame, she gasped. “Oh, no!” She clapped her hands over her face and began cursing vehemently.
“What?” I cried. “Please don’t tell me you threw it out, Jane.”
“No, nothing like that,” she promised, looking up at me with a distinct grimace. “I may have given that candle to my mama for Mother’s Day last year.”
Dick broke out of his near-catatonic staring-at-me state and let out a loud, barking laugh. “You regifted your mama something from the shop for Mother’s Day?”
“No one ever gave it to me as a gift; therefore, it is not a regift.”
“You didn’t pay for it!” Andrea protested.
“Did you see the storeroom before I got here?” Jane demanded. “Trust me, I paid for it.”
“Can we focus on the fact that Jane’s mother may be using my family’s magical heritage to decorate her guest bath? We need to get to your parents’ house before she decides to light it!”
There was a long pause, followed by Jane and Andrea laughing hysterically.
“I’m glad you two find this so amusing.”
“No, no.” Andrea giggled, wiping at her eyes. “Jane’s mama would never put something that Jane gave her as a gift in a public area of the house. Someone might see it!”
“Skeptical Nola is skeptical.” Jane snickered. She was very good at reading human facial expressions. “Trust me, I couldn’t have put it in a safer place.”
* * *
When we arrived at Jane’s parents’ perfect little brick house, a woman with a pert brown bob practically ran out the front door to greet us. I was introduced to Sherry Jameson and immediately smothered with hugs, which were only half as intrusive as the hugs Dick had showered on me when I attempted to leave the shop. Andrea threatened to “tranq-dart” him when he insisted that he would come with us, that he didn’t want to let me out of his sight just yet.
I thought she was kidding right until the moment Jane’s handsome husband, Gabriel, showed up at the shop and asked why Andrea had wanted their tranq gun. Personally, I was curious as to why Jane and Gabriel had their own tranq gun.
Mrs. Jameson was so pleased to meet a young person she could feed that she sat me down at the table and heated up a plateful of chicken pot pie. Mr. Jameson, a quiet, academic sort of man, sequestered himself against the counter, by the stove, and shared commiserating glances with his daughter. There was something off about the way he was standing. He seemed a bit pale, as if he wasn’t at his full strength.
“Is your father all right?” I whispered.
“He’s had that same pinched expression on his face ever since he retired. He spends a lot of time at home.” Jane sent a significant look at her mother.
“Come on, now, Nola, take a great big bite!” Mrs. Jameson chirped, sliding the plate in front me with near-maniacal glee.
“I actually had a really large lunch, Mrs. Jameson, and I don’t know if I’m hungry enough to eat again—”
“Oh, shush, you need some meat on your bones,” Mrs. Jameson said, nudging the plate toward me.
If you can hear me right now, Jane, I am going to smack you later, I thought while glaring at her. And despite a clear expression of discomfort on her face, she was still smirking. She could hear me.
Stop smiling like that, or I’ll do the Emergency Broadcast System beep again.
Jane’s lips twitched, but she said nothing. Still, it was very convenient having a mind-reader around. It was far more efficient than text-messaging.
“Would you like some sweet tea, Nola?”
I sighed in relief. “I’d love a good cup of tea, Mrs. Jameson, thank you.”
Mrs. Jameson fairly flitted to the refrigerator, pulled out a tall pitcher of brownish liquid, and poured a tall glass over ice. I tamped down the small flare of disappointment. I’d forgotten that hot tea wasn’t exactly the beverage of choice in Kentucky. It was no problem, really. My dad had enjoyed the odd iced tea now and then, so I accepted it graciously when Mrs. Jameson handed me the glass. I took a long sip, and a sickeningly sweet, near-syrup concoction flooded my mouth, making me choke and sputter.
Mrs. Jameson fussed and cooed, patting me on the back while I coughed.
“What is this?” I wheezed.
“Ah!” Jane said, pouring me a glass of water. “I forgot to warn you about sweet tea. It’s basically liquid cotton candy, equal parts sugar and tea. You’ll get used to it.”
I shook my head, wiping my mouth with my napkin. “No, I don’t think I will.”
“I’m so sorry, honey,” Mrs. Jameson fretted. “From now on, you should probably stick with unsweet.”
“I think I’ll stick with coffee,” I muttered.
My attention was drawn to Mr. Jameson, whose shoulders seemed hunched while he stirred a pan of sauce on the stove. I could sense a painful red buzzing somewhere in the vicinity of his head. A nagging, throbbing ache. It was almost powerful enough to distract me from the burgeoning tooth decay in my own mouth.
Can we ask your mother about the candle before she feeds me something that causes violent hives or vomiting? I thought to Jane.
Jane cleared her throat and seemed to compose the question carefully in her head before speaking. “Mama, do you remember the candle I gave you for Mother’s Day? It was a white candle with pretty symbols carved into the wax? Do you know where it is?”
Jane’s mother blanched but managed to cover it quickly. She chuckled, waving in an offhand manner. “Oh, well, I’m sure it’s around here somewhere. Why don’t you give me a few days to look around, and I’ll call you when I find it?”
“Actually, Mrs. Jameson, it’s really important for us to find it straightaway,” I said. “Would you mind if we looked for it?”
“Oh, honey, I can’t imagine where it is,” she protested.
“Mama, it’s important.”
Mr. Jameson cleared his throat. Mrs. Jameson snapped her head up to glare at him. “Sherry, you need to show them the closet,” Mr. Jameson told her.
“John, no!”
“Sherry,” he said in a stern, warning tone.
Mrs. Jameson sighed. “Come with me, girls.” She pulled me gently from my chair and led us toward the stairs. “John, stir those peas,” she called over her shoulder.
Mrs. Jameson led us upstairs, past an impeccably decorated master bedroom done in mauves and creams, into a smaller guest bedroom. Jane informed me that this had been her room until she left for college. Her mother had only removed Jane’s boy-band posters and unicorn figurines the year before when Jane got married.
“Now, Jane, I don’t want you to think I don’t appreciate the things that you give me,” her mother said, standing as a human shield between us and Jane’s old closet.
“Just open the door, Mama.”
Mrs. Jameson cringed as she turned the doorknob. The closet was packed floor to ceiling with various gift boxes. It was like that scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark, where the Ark of the Covenant was packed away with rows and rows of other priceless treasures. Jane was looking at the preserved remains of every gift-giving occasion since her elementary-school days.
And given the way her mouth was hanging open, I don’t think that made her very happy.
“We just have different tastes in décor,” Mrs. Jameson offered weakly.
Instead of throwing a box-pitching tantrum, as I expected, Jane burst out laughing. She bent at the waist and guffawed like a deranged hyena. “When I think of all the time I spent in Pier One!” she exclaimed. “You’re on a strict diet of gift cards from now on.”
Mrs. Jameson bit her lip and nodded. “I think that would be best.”
“Why not just sell them at a garage sale? Or give them away?” Jane demanded.
“Well, that would be rude!” Mrs. Jameson cried.
“Bet you don’t put Jenny’s gifts in a closet,” Jane muttered.
“Don’t start that,” her mother warned her.
“OK, so are these in chronological order?” Jane sighed. “If I dig deep enough, will I find the clay handprint I made for you in kindergarten?”
Since Jane seemed to find the situation funny, Mrs. Jameson had relaxed a bit and stopped trying to wedge herself between us and her trove of rejected treasures. “No, there’s no order to it. It was sort of like playing Jenga with gift boxes. I just stacked it however it would fit.”
Jane shot an amused glance my way and rolled up her sleeves. “I hope you like tedious stacking games, Nola.”
* * *
I bloody hated Jenga.
We’d been through nearly every box in the closet, and so far, we’d found tea towels, sets of bath products in various smells, and a frightening number of angel figurines.
“I thought you collected these!” Jane exclaimed, chucking another reject over her shoulder.
“No, your grandmother used to give them to me every year, and I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I found them downright creepy,” Mrs. Jameson confessed with a shudder. “And then you girls got to the age when you started buying us gifts, and you sort of latched onto the angels. And by then, it was too late.”
“I need to take a break,” Jane muttered. “Mama, do you still keep the—”
“Faux Type O, red label, in the vegetable crisper,” Mrs. Jameson assured her. “Nola, can I get you something?”
“More water, please?” I asked, smiling despite the fact that my teeth still tingled a bit from the sucrose assault on my dental enamel.
I heard their voices fade as they descended the stairs. I flopped back onto the guest bed and closed my eyes. My head felt cloudy, and my nose itched from all the dust in the closet. How in the bloody hell did I get here? I wondered. Lying in some strangers’ guest room, rifling through their unwanted knickknacks. Just a few weeks ago, I’d had a normal life with a normal job. Well, seminormal. I was able to pretend well enough that Stephen hadn’t run for the hills.
Aw, hellfire, I’d forgotten to call Stephen again.
He was going to be furious with me! And rightly so. I’d been in town for days, and I had only called him once. Even after my shirtless Neanderthal neighbor mocked our relationship, I’d just sloughed off to bed and fallen asleep. This did not bode well. It boded . . . very badly.
I was starting to realize how little Stephen really fit into my life. I tried so hard to compartmentalize our time together so it wouldn’t overlap with my family life. That wasn’t healthy. I could imagine Jed sitting around with my uncles at the Black Sheep, sharing horrid, manly stories. I could see him charming my aunts in a way that didn’t make them feel condescended to. I shook off these thoughts, as they were neither likely nor productive. Nor were they fair to Stephen.
Squirming on the purple quilted bedspread, I dug my cell phone out of my jacket pocket and dialed Stephen’s number. It was ungodly early by Dublin time, but I thought perhaps I could blame exhaustion and time difference for my lack of communication. I sat up slowly as the call went to voice mail. I yawned loudly and tried to sound addled and sleepy. It wasn’t that much of a stretch.
“Hullo, darling, I’m sorry I haven’t called already. I think I’m still a bit wiped out . . .” I trailed off as I caught sight of a box at the very back of the top shelf. It was about the size of a shoe box and just the right size for the candle with a swatch of Specialty Books’s signature blue wrapping tissue. Realizing that this soundless voice-mail message was costing me a fortune, I hastily added, “I’ll call again soon. Love you. Bye-bye!”
Unfortunately, Americans believed in building impossibly high closet shelves. Even with the help of a small stepping stool, I had to lean a bit on the shelf to brace myself up. It was at times like this I wished I was telekinetic instead of a witch. Then again, I already had the unstable mother. I didn’t want to risk falling into Carrie territory.
No, wait, I was falling anyway.
“Yipe!” I shouted as my weight shifted forward. Yanking the shelf down with my weight, I tumbled off the stool and onto the piles of boxes, crushing several of them as I landed. Just when I thought I could sit up, the box I was reaching for slid off the tilted shelf and landed on my head. “Ow.”
“Are you OK?” Jane cried, running back into the room.
“I’m so sorry,” I groaned. “I believe I broke a couple of things.”
“Really, it’s not a problem,” Mrs. Jameson told me, helping me to my feet. “It gives me an excuse to throw them out.”
“Clearly,” muttered Jane.
The box that had clobbered me was half open on the floor, the blue tissue spilling over the lid. I crouched over the box, removing the lid carefully. Inside was a long, creamy-white pillar candle, carved with ancient symbols for fire. I checked it over carefully. But I could tell from the pleasant, nearly electric hum I felt coming from the wax that this was the candle in question.
“I found it!” I exclaimed, beaming up at my companions.
I hugged the box to my chest as Jane and Sherry Jameson clapped and cheered for me. I felt like crying and laughing and screaming all at the same time. It was such a relief to know that I was one-quarter of the way to my goal, that the Kerrigans were that much farther away from it. And I’d done it without spending any of the buy money, leaving me that much more to work with for the other three.
Suddenly, the goal of finding all four objects didn’t seem so impossible. It was a bit like fishing. You got one little taste of success and lost all perspective regarding the amount of time or frustration that had led you there. I couldn’t wait to get back to the shop and look for the others.
“I’m very happy for you,” Jane told me, throwing an arm around my shoulder.
“Mrs. Jameson, I’m going to have to take this candle away from you.”
Jane snorted. “Mama, if you let Nola have this candle, I will forget all about the Closet of Misfit Gifts. Also, I will write the remaining thank-you notes for the wedding gifts.”
Mrs. Jameson cried, “You haven’t finished all the thank-you notes yet?”
“Mama.” Jane’s face was passive as she nodded her head toward the mountain of unappreciated presents.
Mrs. Jameson sighed. “Done.” She turned on me. “Now, Nola, are you still hungry? Because I have some leftover pot pie, smothered pork chops, smoked chicken, Salisbury steak, and some other goodies in the fridge. Would you like me to fix you a plate? Or I can just make up a little leftover care package to take home!”
I shot a frantic glance Jane, thinking, Jane, your mother seems to think I’m some sort of goose for the gorge. Could you please tell her that your dad is suffering from a serious toothache? He’s trying to ignore it, but he could end up needing a root canal if he doesn’t get it treated. It might distract her enough to get me out of here.
“That’s what that is?” she whispered, while her mother rattled on.
Jane frowned at me, arching an eyebrow. I added silently, I’ll explain later.
“Actually, Mama, I was hoping to talk to Daddy,” Jane said. “I noticed he was awfully pale earlier, and he wasn’t eating. Has he said anything about his teeth?”
Mrs. Jameson fell on the information like a bloodhound on scent. “No, is he all right? Is this something you picked up using your . . .” Jane’s mother paused and made a face that was half squinting, half constipation.
Jane studied the expression for a moment longer than necessary, I would think. It seemed “Funny Faces with Sherry Jameson” amused her. Finally, she said, “Oh, yes, the mind-reading thing. That’s right. That’s how I picked it up. And he’s trying to hide it from you, hoping it will go away on its own.”
“That man.” Mrs. Jameson sighed. “I swear, you’d think he would be more mature about something like going to the dentist. I had two babies, including Jane and her big ol’ pumpkin head, without drugs, and you didn’t hear me complaining.” She took a deep breath and called, “John, I need to talk to you!”
“You complain about that all the time!” Jane exclaimed as she followed her down the stairs. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t have already come up with the phrase ‘Jane and her big ol’ pumpkin head.’ ”
While Mrs. Jameson started in on poor Mr. Jameson and his dental phobias, Jane turned on me. “I hope we just threw my dad under the bus for a good reason.”
“I think your mother not smothering me with Southern cuisine is an excellent reason for your dad to get the dental attention he needs.”
“You’re going to explain that later,” she insisted. “All I could hear him thinking was that his drink was ‘too damn cold’ but if he said anything, my mom would fuss at him. You owe information, witch.”
“Oh, yes, ’cause psychic powers are clearly something you’re uncomfortable with, mind-reader.”
“Leprechaun,” she shot back.
“Cow.”