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“Evie. You’re thirteen. You can’t heal everybody. You can’t fix everything.”

“You don’t know that!” I burst into tears. “You don’t know anything.”

“Coding,” one paramedic says.

They hustle my floppy dark-haired, broken boy to a gurney, then into an ambulance. A paramedic alternates between compressing his chest and breathing into his mouth. The van pulls off, the dull clump of tires on snow. The taillights flash red against the white.

First responders transfer Easton, a thick brace secured around his neck into an ambulance. He has to pull through. He has to help Wyatt survive this disaster. “Easton, I’m so sorry. We didn’t—”

“Fuck you,” Easton says as the paramedics slam the doors. The van spits chunks of snow from its back tires as it pulls away.

A police officer approaches us. “Ma'am.”

“Yes, Officer,” Mom says.

I stand in the cold and the snow, blood staining my hands, my coat, my twinning boots.

Ruby cries, still tucked securely in the car. I want to cry as well but I can’t find the air. Where has all the air gone? I hear a few ‘caws’ and stare at the sky. The crows stop circling the field and fly off for parts unknown.

I am not a rickety shed.

Will I survive the storm that blows through?

***

2

Healer

HEALER

Thirteen years later

I stand in front of the floor to ceiling windows on the 25th floor in the One Magnificent Mile office on Michigan Avenue, shiver from the chill of the air conditioning, and pull the thin cashmere sweater tighter across my chest. I stare out at the upscale bustling urban scene below me.

Madame Germaine Marchand sits behind the Louis XIV antique desk in the corner office of Ma Maison Agency. She slides an elegant manicured hand over her short silver bob. “Did you figure out who’s been tampering with your mailbox?” she asks.

“Not really. Maintenance is putting in another security camera. In the meantime, I rented one at the post office. Anyway, that’s the least of my worries right now. I talked to Mom’s shrink a few days ago. He thinks she’s stable enough to travel.” I stare out the window. To the right traffic is thick on Michigan Avenue, even more congested on Lake Shore Drive, brake lights more solid than flashing. To the left choppy, white-capped waves on Lake Michigan crest far below on this steamy, summer day. I love Chicago. It’s beautiful. It’s my home. And yet I’m ready to shake all the ‘city’ off, and blow out of here.

“That’s terrific, Evelyn,” she says. “Check mom out of the clinic and take her someplace pretty for a weekend,” Madame says. “A quaint B&B filled with antiques. A parlor where they serve tea with homemade scones and fresh jam.”

“I rented a lake house in Wisconsin for a month,” I say. “Her doctor said some down time in the country will help her brain reboot.”

Madame Germaine frowns. “The timing’s not going to work. I have a new client for you.”

“Time in Wisconsin will do my family good.” I say, hearing the irritation expertly contained in her voice; feel the manipulation in the thirsty vibes radiating off her. “Everyone needs to mix it up once in a while. Foliage. Farms. Even healers need healing. Vacation’s not a dirty word.”

“Time off with your family sounds like the opposite of healing. Do you ever just take a real vacation?” Madame assesses me behind her expensive, tortoiseshell cat- eye glasses. “Fly off to Rome or Paris or Aruba for ‘me’ time?”

“Wouldn’t that be a luxury?”

I used to despise Madame but over the past two years I’ve learned to tolerate her. She’s cold and manipulative, but she’s pushier than usual today. I tune out the faint sound of traffic far below me, tune out Madame, and silently count backwards: Three. Two. One. I open to the intuitive layer that lies beneath the surface. The empathic layer. The layer where I access feelings that belong to other people and sense them in my own body.

The first emotion I tune into is obvious: disapproval. Clouds of disapproval billow inside me but I know they’re not mine. Madame owns all of that. If I squint I can practically see disapproval roll off her shoulders like a miniature tank.

She’s not thrilled I’m taking a break from work. And yet, master chess player that she is, she pinches out a smile. “Fall will be a terrific time to take a holiday. You’ll catch the changing colors.”

“I’m not going in the fall,” I say. “I’m leaving next week. I don’t want to miss out on all the excitement of mosquito season.”

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