“It was a reminder.”
“Like I’d ever forget.”
“You’d be surprised what people do when they’re terrified.”
She sniffed, burying herself further under the blanket. “I’m a little shaken. Not terrified.”
“I was going to say, you’re Octavia. You’re here in your living room, lying on a couch with a cup of tea within arm’s reach. And there’s a paranormal investigator, only a few feet away here with you. You are here. Do you feel it?”
Octavia hummed. “I’m here…but I knew that.”
“But do you feel it?” I leaned forward, pushing the recliner down to close some distance between us. “Your fear serves a purpose, whether that be to you or something outside of your understanding. I don’t know if you have rested enough to let your fear serve you, so I think it’s best if you try to distance yourself from it as much as you can.
“Fair enough…I don’t know how to do that, but maybe…” Octavia closed her eyes.
“Maybe?”
“You could distract me.”
My chest tightened, but I kept my voice steady. “How so?”
“Read to me?” She kept her eyes closed at the request, the corners softly wrinkled. The light from an old green lamp kissed her skin. Octavia looked smaller when she lay between shadows. Less willing to bite my head off at a moment’s notice.
“Read to you?”
“Audiobooks help me sleep and…I like your voice,” she whispered the last part, the words barely making the trek to my ears.
I couldn’t stop my smiling or the small boost to my ego. She sensed the growth of both, opening her eyes to impart a proper, disapproving frown.
“Plenty of people have nice voices,” she said.
“Yes, but you like mine.” I raised a brow. “And you aren’t picking up your phone for plenty of people.”
Octavia sighed but offered no more protest.
“What should I read?” I reached for my phone and opened the browser. I wasn’t an avid reader, but I was sure I could find something online for her.
“Your book.” Octavia pointed behind me to a half-full bookcase.
I pushed myself out of the recliner. It took focus to not limp (I didn’t want her to catch wind and worry about something new all over again). My book was on the bottom shelf. I tugged it out, flipping it open to find tabs and sticky tabs jabbed into pages upon pages.
“You weren’t kidding,” I murmured to myself with a soft laugh as I scanned through the notes. All of them were in her thin handwriting. Each word lightly written in pencil, as if she were preparing to erase her thoughts. Or maybe she figured someone else might want to erase them.
“‘Years of confirmation bias will lead to one thing in the end: a completely and utterly inflated ego,’” I read. “‘I wonder if it’s lucky she’s experienced these things and has come out on top. Or severely unlucky that she lives in a state of illusion.’”
I laughed while Octavia’s nose wrinkled.
“Don’t read the margins,” she said. “It can get mean.”
“No, no.” I shook my head and climbed back into my seat. “I like this. It’s like I get to be in conversation with you but without the filter.”
“I don’t filter…much.”
“That’s true.” I pressed my fingers to her writing, moving them as I read. “‘I wonder if I’d prefer living in an illusion? Aren’t the happiest people there? Would that be genuine happiness? Can we even prove what genuine happiness is? Like ghosts, it’s intangible’—see, you’re so stuck on this intangible aspect. It’s like you’re caught up in studying one branch when there’s an entire forest.”
“What’s the point of studying the entire forest if I can’t get the branch down?”
“You could spend your whole life studying the branch and not know everything there is to know. The point is to take what you can and move on.”
