“I think I dreamed the whole thing.”
Courtney blinked. “Why do you think that?”
“It’s the only explanation.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Sure it is. I was in bed. I haven’t slept in, like, two days. I thought I was awake, but I wasn’t. I must have dozed off and dreamed the whole thing after I spoke with Gianluca.”
“What if you were communicating with her, even though she’s dead? I think you can communicate with her spirit.”
“No, I can’t, I don’t.”
“But you’re a medium.”
“Court, a medium is someone who can summon spirits and communicate with them. Talk to them, deliver messages to them and from them. I’m not like that.”
“Yes, you are, or you might be. How else do you explain the scream you heard in the garden? Or the fire?”
“I dozed off at the wheel, that’s how I saw the fire. And the scream, well, I think I heard that, but even so, it doesn’t mean that I can have an entire conversation with the dead person. That’s next-level mediumship.”
“So maybe you’re an entry-level medium?”
“I’m not.” Julia’s thoughts were jumbled, and her head pounded. “Helen is. She’s legit. The police consult her. She even said I shouldn’t hold myself out as an expert, she said that in the dream.”
“But she had to start somewhere. Maybe this is how.” Courtney moved her plate aside and hunched over. “Besides, Helen told you things you couldn’t know, like about the levels of consciousness. You couldn’t have dreamed that.”
“She told me that the first time I met her, too.”
“But how did you remember so well, after all this time?”
“Please, you think that can’t happen?” Julia snorted. “I was driving here and I remembered something about my father that I hadn’t thought about ever. He gaslit me, and now I’m gaslighting myself.”
Courtney frowned. “But you can’t dream an entire conversation, can you? It’s so detailed, so vivid.”
“Sure, why not? I dream things all the time that are vivid but aren’t true. I still have those dreams I’m in class and I didn’t study for the final.”
“But Helen said you were a medium, didn’t she?”
“Yes, but I only dreamed her saying it. She didn’t really say it.”
“What about before, when you met with her?”
“She said she thought I had some abilities, but I never explored or understood them. I never took the lessons.”
“Butyouthought you had abilities, back then.”
“I know, but that was a different time and place. It isn’t happening now the way it did before, and there’s other explanations. Helen even said people can experience premonitions and visions but it never happens again. So we don’t know what’s happening now.”
Courtney cocked her head. “What if Helen’s spirit is trying to help you?”
“If that’s true, why didn’t she just go directly into my mind? Like the scream did? Why do it in the form of a phone call?”
“You were thinking that you wanted to call Helen, like you formed the intention to call her, then her spirit knew you had that intention and began communicating with you.” Courtney hunched over. “You perceived your conversation with Helen as a phone call because you intended to call her, so it became something you understood, like a phone call.”
“I’m not buying it.”
Courtney’s pretty features softened. “Jules, let me ask you something. Isn’t it possible that you just don’t want to believe it, so you don’t?”
