*
When she’d returned home after her flight from Rainer (and everyone and everything else), Eloise was back, and Cooper’s SUV was in the drive, as well. She’d considered fleeing again—but she didn’t have anyplace else to go. So she’d gone inside to find them at the kitchen table. Jones had filled her in on his conversation with Merri Gleason and he told her that Abbey had experienced prophetic dreams, and had nightmares about coming to The Hollows.
“Is she a Listener?” Finley asked Eloise, surprised. Eloise had her own language for their thing. Finley and Eloise were Listeners, people who heard (and saw, and experienced) what other people couldn’t. Someone like Jones was a Sensitive—whether he knew it or not—someone with sharp instincts with the ability to see right through the layers of a person straight into their truth. In fact, Eloise and Agatha thought that everyone was on a kind of spectrum of psychic ability, from absolute Dead Head (Agatha’s word), to Listener or Feeler or Dreamer, depending on the particular ability. It was far from an exact classification system, more like a slang between them.
Thinking about this made her think of Rainer. And thinking of him made her tattoo ache, which in turn got her thinking about Abigail. What are you up to, girlfriend? Finley wondered. But Abigail was nowhere to be seen.
“I don’t know if she’s a Listener,” her grandmother said. She rubbed at her head with thumb and forefinger. “I’m not getting anything on this at all. It’s yours, dear. I’m sorry.”
Jones had handed Finley Abbey’s binky, a pink and gray puff as soft as powder. She held it to her face, but it was as devoid of energy as any of the old rags Eloise kept under the sink. She stuck it inside her jacket pocket anyway, found herself worrying it between her fingers.
“If she was a listener,” said Jones, “wouldn’t she just be able to reach out to you or something?”
“At her age? Probably not,” said Eloise. “Anyway, it doesn’t work that way. We don’t communicate telepathically. Whoever we are. If there’s a pattern to all of this, if there are rules and ways, I never learned them.”
They talked briefly about the missing developer and Jackson Gleason’s premonition based on the news story he’d overheard.
“Are there other psychics in the Gleason family?” asked Finley.
“An aunt,” said Jones. “Deceased.”
“Do they have any connection to The Hollows, other than the fact that they were vacationing here?” Finley asked. A picture was forming for her, something nebulous, unclear. The Hollows had tendrils; it reached out for its children in strange ways.
“I don’t know,” he said, scribbling in his notebook.
“Why did they pick this place?” asked Finley. “To vacation, I mean. What drew them here? It’s not exactly a tourist hot spot.”
Jones shrugged, wrote a little more. “I’ll ask.”
He looked up at her, tucking his notebook away into his pocket. There was something like approval on his face. “Those are good questions.”
She didn’t want to be pleased with his praise, but she was. He rose and pulled on his jacket.
“Where are you going?” asked Finley, feeling a flutter of urgency.
“Betty Fitzpatrick—the woman with the missing children Eliza and Joshua,” he said. Finley remembered their image in the newspaper articles Jones brought with him that first morning. “She agreed to see me.”
It was late, after eight thirty. “It’s a weird time to interview someone.”
“She says she doesn’t sleep anymore,” he said. “Nighttime is the hardest time to be alone with your thoughts.”
“I want to come,” said Finley, not even meaning to. It wasn’t even true, was it, that she wanted to go? She rose feeling her grandmother’s eyes on her, curious. “I think I’m supposed to go. The sound is gone.”
“That’s not a good idea,” said Jones. He looked to Eloise for help.
“You came to us,” said Eloise. “Finley has to do things her way.”
“Still,” said Jones. “We talked about this.”
“What if we learn something because I’m there that we wouldn’t if not?” asked Finley. She had a low-grade buzz of unease, a sense of urgency. If he didn’t let her go, she was going to follow him.
Jones pressed his mouth into a tight line but raised his eyebrows in reluctant agreement.
“Get some rest,” he said to Eloise as he pushed through the kitchen door and headed down the hallway. Eloise gave him a quick, dismissive nod, and Finley saw how pale she was, that there was a dullness around her eyes. Some worry butterflies fluttered from her belly into her chest.
“Grandma,” she said. “Did you go to the doctor today?”
A look of surprise flashed across Eloise’s face but quickly passed.
“Just routine,” said Eloise briskly. “Off you go.”
“Don’t make me late, kid,” called Jones from the hallway.