Dr. Jo stepped away from me so quickly I thought she might stumble, so I put a hand on her elbow to steady her. All the blood had drained from her face, except for the scarlet smear of lipstick across her lips.
“What . . . how could you possibly—?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to scare you. It’s just that you said you thought I suffered a trauma in my past, and I haven’t. Not really. I just speak to the dead.”
She reached out to clutch my arm. “I think I need to sit down.”
Jesse chose that moment to come over. “Is everything all right?” he asked.
“Not really,” I said. “Could you get Dr. Jo a chair?”
“Certainly.” He disappeared, then reappeared just as quickly with a chair, into which he helped Dr. Jo. “Is that better?”
She’d closed her eyes, but once she sat, she opened them again and looked at him kneeling beside her in the grass, then back up at me.
“I’m assuming he knows about this . . . talent of yours?” she asked.
“Oh, yes,” I said. “He has it, too. Way more than me, actually.”
“Of course he does,” she murmured. “Why did I bother asking? Well, go on. What did Sy tell you, exactly?”
“I’m sorry. It’s just that your husband won’t move on because he’s so worried about you. He’s very upset because you haven’t remembered to have your tires rotated—”
“That’s Sy, all right,” she muttered. “That car. That damned car.”
“I didn’t know how to bring it up with you. But I see him almost every day in the faculty parking lot. One of my stepbrothers works at a car dealership, maybe he could—”
Dr. Jo wasn’t listening. “That damned car. It was all he ever cared about.”
“It’s you he cares about, not the car,” Jesse pointed out.
She reached out in a dazed way to pat his cheek. “You’re adorable. But I think I need some alone time right now. And a drink. Would one of you mind . . . ?”
Jesse said, “Of course,” and took me by the waist to physically steer me not toward the bar, but away from it. “Was that really the wisest idea? Isn’t she your advisor?”
“And my therapist, yeah. But I think she needed to hear that. Why aren’t we heading toward the bar? She said she wants a drink. I wouldn’t mind another, either, after that.”
“I’ll have your stepbrother take it to her.” Jesse signaled to Brad, who was acting as de facto bartender at the de facto bar, a couple of saw horses we’d placed a board between, then covered with a red-and-white-checked tablecloth. “If she’s a therapist, he’s exactly who should be speaking to her anyway. He needs a little career counseling. He’s not going to be working for his father-in-law much longer, you know.”
I sucked in my breath. “What?”
“No. He was telling me last night. He’s hit up your parents for a loan so he can enroll in the police academy.”
“A cop? Brad?” Somehow, preposterous as it sounded, it also seemed strangely right. Brad had thrived after the babies were born, loving the structure fatherhood brought to his life. A job on the police force would provide him even more structure. “Wow. Ackerman family get-togethers are about to get even more interesting.”
“Yes. In the meantime, there’s someone here who wants to speak to you.”
“Who? I can’t talk to anyone else, frankly. I’m in too much shock. Besides, I’ve already spoken to everyone, except the one person I most want to talk to. You.” I turned to put my arms around his neck. “I’ve barely had a minute alone with you all day. What do you think of my dress? You’re the only one who hasn’t told me.”
He reached up to take the empty champagne glass out of my hand and place it on a picnic table.
“I have an opinion on it,” he said, “and you’re definitely going to hear it, but not now.” He removed my arms from his neck and spun me around to face Father Dominic a few yards away, still sitting tucked beneath a blanket in his wheelchair beside an outdoor heat lamp we’d rented.
“But I’ve already talked to Father D,” I whispered. “Several times, as a matter of fact. And Sister Ernestine. She completely loves me since I got Father Francisco arrested. She says I’m hired . . . on conditional probation, of course, but that’s fine by me. So since I’ve done all my obligatory chatting to the sweet old people, can we please just sneak—”
“Susannah,” Jesse said, basically steering me until I was in front of a giant wearing a long black leather trench coat who was standing beside Father Dominic’s wheelchair. “Do you remember Jack Slater?”
I had to crane my neck to look into the giant’s face. When I did, I saw that it bore only the slightest resemblance to the child I remembered babysitting so many years earlier at the Pebble Beach Resort and Hotel.
“Jack?” I heard myself ask in a voice that sounded nothing like my own, it was so squeaky.