The Unquiet - J. D. Robb [90]
“Okay, I believe you,” Charlie said, as if that settled it. “So you’ll keep looking in the ball?”
“I will if you want me to.” Her psychic line rang. “Charlie, I’ve got—”
“And I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”
“Okay.” Her one full day to study for Monday’s exam. “But I have to go now, I’ve got a—”
“Go! Uh . . .”
“What?”
“Thanks for coming tonight.”
“You’re welcome. Thank you for inviting me.”
“Did you have a nice time?”
“Oh yes.” Her psychic line stopped ringing. “Except . . .”
“What?”
“Nothing.” She wanted him to bring up Oliver first. That seemed important for some reason.
“No, what?”
“No, really. Nothing.” Her psychic line started ringing again. “Gotta go, Charlie—”
“Go. G’bye.”
It rang steadily for the next two hours, backed-up calls from people who’d phoned earlier and gotten Madame Romanescu’s message that she would be unavailable from three until eight— most unusual for her on a Saturday, her biggest call day. Luckily she could walk Harpo in this safe, quiet neighborhood and talk at the same time. She couldn’t play Harpo’s favorite game, though: soccer in the downstairs hall, her kicking the ball, him making “goals” by head-butting it into the front door. He got too excited and barked, and then callers would ask, “Is that a dog?” offended by the thought that Madame Romanescu wasn’t focusing one hundred percent on their problems. So she sat in the Nathansons’ lush living room with a cup of tea, Harpo at her feet, and gave her whole mind over to whether Tina should have it out with her mother-in-law, if Carla should get her eyebrows tattooed, if Venus in retrograde meant Walter should ask for a raise now or next month.
Usually she loved these questions, or if not them, at least the people who asked them. The concept of a “trivial” problem didn’t exist, not if one person, just one, desperately cared about it. Molly had decided a long time ago that her singular talent was simply putting herself in the other person’s place. Empathy. That’s all it took. Oh, and a little common sense, so she could feel confident about giving advice that didn’t put anybody in danger. That’s why the answer to “Should I light my husband on fire while he’s sleeping?” was almost always “No.”
Tonight she was distracted, though; not sufficiently involved. Other people’s earth-shattering dilemmas seemed almost . . . frivolous. Almost. She wanted to tell Donette, the lady who called every other night to ask if her husband was cheating, which he obviously was, to stop wasting time and throw the bum out. She didn’t; she repeated her marriage counseling mantra, but it was a close call.
“I’m just in a bad mood,” she told Harpo, who followed her from room to room as she watered the hanging plants, the ficus tree. Sadie Nathanson was one of the girls she’d counseled at Stone Creek Academy a year ago, and now she was feeding Sadie’s turtle while the Nanthansons were seeing plays in New York. “How the mighty have fallen.”
That wasn’t it, though—she enjoyed house-sitting, and she’d never been mighty. It was everything else. Everything was piling up on her, exams, papers, debts, all her part-time jobs. Not to mention losing her house.
And something else, a brand-new burden, was weighing her down tonight. “That jerk Oliver,” she muttered to Harpo, unwrapping the new tug-of-war toy she’d brought him. “Who does he think he is? You should’ve seen him—he never stopped glaring.”
Except when he did, and then she’d felt a flip in her stomach, as if she’d been upside down and Oliver had righted her. So stupid. Cheap physical attraction, the most untrustworthy emotion in the book. “ At least I’ll probably never see him again, so that’s good.” And yet, the thought didn’t cheer her up.
The Nathansons’ guest room was as tasteful and comfortable as the rest of the house, but she still missed her own room, missed being at home. Missed Merlin, whom the neighbor was feeding. Free of charge—to pay somebody to housesit her house while she house-sat somebody else’s would’ve been too silly, even for her. And she