The Unquiet - J. D. Robb [81]
“She misses you.” Molly felt sure of that.
Charlie’s hands tightened on hers. “You can see her?”
“She misses you, but she’s all right. She wants you to know that.” Molly shifted her attention from the photo to the crystal ball. The dense glass had textures, reflections, opacities; it was almost always possible to make out something in its shifting surfaces. A face—sure, she might see one. Or not. But maybe. And whether or not it was Dottie’s face, and whether or not she was trying to tell Charlie she missed him—it did no harm to say so.
“Tell her—” Charlie’s eyes moistened. “Tell her I’m all right.”
“You can tell her.”
He swallowed. Mouthed the words. “Tell her—I’ll tell her—I’m sorry for not being a better husband.”
“She disagrees. She thinks you were . . .” Molly was going to say “great,” but changed it to “swell.” Just a feeling.
“Aw. Tell her I’m sorry about Cancún.”
“She forgives you.”
“Some vacation. All we did was fight.”
“Half of it was her fault.”
“She said that? Tell her I’m sorry for—”
“Wait, Charlie. She’s saying . . .”
“What?”
“She says quit with the apologizing. She can’t even remember that stuff. A couple of bad notes, she says, in a . . . in a long, beautiful symphony.”
Charlie’s face looked young, almost; transformed. It erased any guilt Molly might have felt for telling him things he wanted to hear. “Tell her I love her,” he said softly.
“She knows. Now she’s saying . . . to live your life. Say yes more.”
“Say yes more,” Charlie repeated thoughtfully.
Molly released his hands and leaned in, peering more closely into the ball. If she’d seen anything before, it was beginning to fade. “I think that’s it, Charlie. No . . . wait. She’s saying something. . . .”
“What? What?”
Now this was weird. “I think she said somebody’s thinking about you. Right now.”
“Who? Somebody, who? Is it Oliver?”
So strange—the form, the essence of Dottie, if there was such a thing, the smoky outline that might be a face, who knew, but in any case the thing Molly had been staring at so hard—it changed. She couldn’t have said how. But “Dottie” departed and something, or someone, replaced her. Maybe.
“Not Oliver. It’s a woman.”
Charlie sat back. “A woman. Is thinking about me?” He blinked repeatedly. “Really?”
“And she’s nearby. Relatively. She’s not, you know . . .” Dead.
“Well, who the hell is she?”
“I don’t know, I can’t see. She’s . . . she’s got gray hair. I think.” She looked up helplessly. “Oh, Charlie, it’s gone, there’s nothing. I’m sorry. I think she had gray hair.”
“Christ, Molly, everybody around here has gray hair.” He stood up, looking pleased, annoyed, agitated. “ ’Scuse me, I gotta use the bathroom.”
What was that? Molly fell back against her chair. She was feeling a little dizzy. “What just happened?” she asked out loud. Had she really seen a gray-haired woman in a crystal ball? Dottie she’d been making up—she was pretty sure—but that second woman had seemed so real. Aunt Kit was always telling her to be patient, if she wasn’t psychic yet she soon would be, McDougals were late bloomers, the gift hadn’t come to Kit herself till she was almost forty—to all of which Molly would say “mm hm” and privately roll her eyes. I’m just sensitive, she’d think; nothing magical about it. Well, she’d better be sensitive: She was studying for what she hoped would be a long, serious career in counseling young people. If she didn’t have a little natural intuition, she might as well pack it in.
Somebody knocked at the door. Molly stood up, uncertain. “Charlie?”
“What?” from the bathroom.
“Somebody’s at the door.”
“Could you get it? I’m . . .” Inaudible; something about “goddamn prostate.”
She went to the door and opened it.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
After that, she couldn’t think of anything to say. Neither could he—the man on the other side of the threshold. She registered