The Witch and the Gentleman

She was a good mom, too, and a good person. I sensed that about her. No, I somehow knew that about her. After all, according to her, we had been a type of soul mates throughout time and space.

Life is so very, very weird, I thought.

“So, what do you want me to do about your son?” I finally asked.

“Help him find the answers he needs to move on.”

“Except I hardly know what I’m doing.”

“The answers will come, dear, if you ask the right questions.”

“Fair enough,” I said, “and you can quit with that ‘dear’ crap. You look younger than me now.”

She smiled and nodded, and with that, she slowly disappeared before my eyes.

I stared down into the wine, shook my head, and, after a few minutes, said, “Okay, that did not just happen.”

Chapter Sixteen

I was at the park again.

It was a rainy April morning, which meant, at least in southern California, this would be the last rain we would see in nine months.

I liked the rain and didn’t run from it. In fact, I wasn’t even using an umbrella now. Such a rebel. I did, however, have a hoodie on. I wasn’t a total idiot and I had spent thirty minutes on my hair earlier this morning.

Such a waste, but that was the price one paid for living and working in Beverly Hills. Twice a week, I worked as a personal trainer at the Beverly Hills Gym. No, not the most ambitious name, but our clients were devoted and wealthy and paid good money for personal trainers. I liked good money.

So, I made it a point to look my best on these days. After all, I was my own best advertisement.

I checked my phone. I still had an hour before my first client. He was a big film producer. Actually, he was a small-time film producer, but a big man. Most important, he wasn’t a pervert, which I always appreciated.

So, I sat back on a bench that countless mothers had sat on before me, watching their children play in this small neighborhood park, complete with jungle gym and swings. Had this been any other day, kids would have been here, I’m sure, and mothers and fathers and grandparents. Their kids would have been dressed in designer clothes with designer shoes. This was, after all, Beverly Hills. And, being Beverly Hills, there would have been a fair share of nannies out here as well.

I was a new psychic. I had one extraordinary skill—remote viewing—a skill that did little good now. My other skills were still blossoming rapidly. I still didn’t know what to do for Peter.

Millicent had said to ask the right questions. So, what were the right questions? I knew an obvious one…

“Who killed you, Penny?” I asked.

A name didn’t appear in my thoughts. Nor did I hear it whispered in my ear, or on the wind, but was feeling…something. A tingling.

“Penny?” I asked.

I closed my eyes and listened to the rain drum along the concrete path nearby, listened to it slap the leaves above me. The same electrical buzz was alive on my skin, a buzz that I now knew meant the dead were near.

“Penny,” I whispered again, and now, I saw her in my mind’s eye. I saw her standing nearby, watching me. But the image quickly morphed into her painting of her dog, Sparky.

Penny didn’t make a full appearance, not like her grandmother. But I felt her nearby, watching me. Perhaps it wasn’t really her. Perhaps it was just an imprint of her. I wasn’t a medium, and unless a spirit made actual physical contact with me, I was having a devil of a time connecting with her.

I sighed. She was near. I could feel her.

“Who hurt you, Penny?” I asked. “Who?”

“I ask the same questions,” said a voice from behind me. “But, admittedly, I’m usually weeping when I ask them.”

I gasped and spun around. I knew the voice. It was Peter, standing behind me, drenched to the bone. He was wearing a suit and tie and his shiny shoes. I hadn’t heard him approach, thanks to the drumming rain and dripping water.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t sure who was sitting here, and by the time I saw it was you, I realized I might frighten you anyway.”

“No, it’s okay,” I said, although my rapidly beating heart told me it was anything but okay. Jesus H. Christ, the man nearly gave me a heart attack. “I’m a psychic, I should have known you were standing there,” I said, laughing lightly.

“You were trying to make contact with her,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

“Yes. Except I really don’t know what I’m doing.”

“Neither do I,” he said. “Do you mind if I sit?”

“No, please do.”

I scooted over and he came around and sat on the other end of the bench. The rain had, if anything, increased. Peter didn’t seem to mind. I watched as water dripped steadily from the tip of his nose. He looked lost, helpless, forlorn.

“I miss her so much,” he said. “Both of them.”

I nodded, watched a car drive by slowly, probably staring at the two loonies sitting in the rain.

“Do you…feel her at all?” he asked. “My daughter?”

“I do,” I said. “Or I thought I did.”

“Could you see her?”

“No, not yet. Although I saw her painting in her bedroom. But I suspect that’s just an imprint of her, a sort of scene replaying itself over and over in your house.”

A faint smile touched his lips. He looked past me, took a deep breath. “I would do anything to see her again.”

Ask the right questions…

“When was the last time you saw your daughter alive, Peter?”

“When she left for school that morning.”

“Who was the last person to see her alive? I’m sorry if these questions are hard.”

“No problem. I’ve answered them a million times, to the police, reporters and the private eye we hired.”

“And no one turned up anything?”

“We’ve turned up some things, but not enough to catch her killer. You should talk to a Detective Smithy over at the Beverly Hills station. The case is still open, of course, although I haven’t spoken to him about it in over a year. He knows everything. I’ll ask him to see you.”

I made a mental note of the name and we sat there together some more, in the rain, until I had to leave for my training appointment.

By the time I made it back to my car, started it, and looked back, Peter was gone. I cried into my hands, feeling his sadness, and then purging his sadness through my own tears.

It took me a while to get a hold on my emotions and when I finally did, I began to understand why the spirits couldn’t just hand us answers to life’s hard questions. We were obviously meant to seek answers and by doing so, raise new questions.