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CHAPTER1
Artemis
Tears drip down my face in the cooler, foggy air. I shiver and try not to fall apart. The minister says the words out loud and then it’s all over.
She’s really gone. I can’t believe it but my grandmother, the woman who raised me and made every day better after my parents died is gone.
Now I have no one. It’s just me and my horrible affliction. Although my grandmother always told me it was a gift. Gift. Curse. It’s all the same to me.
Muttering voices hit my ears and I growl under my breath. “Hush up. I can’t deal with y’all right now. I have my own problems.”
I can’t help them if I can’t help myself. And actually what am I supposed to do to help them? I asked Grandmother over and over again. Since she didn’t have the gift she didn’t know. But she checked with people, eager to help me deal with it.
“Each spirit is different, chere. You just have to see how you can help them. It might just be listening to them. It might be telling a family member that they’re alright. It might be solving their murder for them. Thankfully, those ones seem few and far between. But you just do for them what you can and that is all you can do.”
She was my rock. The steady part of my life that I could always count on. Now she’s gone and it’s just me adrift in all the fears and anxieties that I can’t seem to pull back to a manageable fire instead of the huge conflagration that I’ve got going on right now.
Two people wearing turn of the century clothes wander past me and they try to speak but I don’t listen. I just can’t right now. It’s too much.
“I’m so sorry about your grandmother, Artemis. She was a wonderful woman.”
“Yes, thank you,” I whisper.
His hand touches my arm and I feel like backing away. I can feel so much in his touch. He’s sad about my grandmother’s death. But yet he’s got a christening later so he’s happy about that. Then he’s got the usual trials of day to day. What does he want for dinner? How should he take care of the parish festival coming up?
So many feelings push at my mind, swirling around in my own fears and forcing a quagmire of emotions to explode and expand until I’m barely able to see.
The fog around the cemetery suits my mood today. I’m lost and looking for something to anchor myself to.
Sighing, I lay a hand on the headstone. Gertrude Falconer. Beloved mother and grandmother. 1929-2022. Such a long life broken down to a few little words etched in stone.
Turning away, I force my eyes to stay down. I can hear the voices battering the block in my mind. Trying to push their way past my defenses. Trying to make me answer.
Screams and whispers fade away as I finally reach my car. My eyes close in relief when I close the door. It doesn’t block them out but it does mute the torturous crescendo in my head.
Driving home, my cell phone rings and I pick up as soon as I can. Pulled over to the side of the road, I answer, “Hello?”
“Hello, Miss Falconer. This is Nathaniel Greene. I’m the attorney for your grandmother.”
“Yes, I remember you. Is there something else we needed to take care of. I’m just coming from the funeral.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry I couldn’t make it but I had a court appearance for another estate that’s being contested.”
“That’s alright. It was a beautiful service.” Or as beautiful as a funeral for the one person I loved more than any other could be.
“I forgot to give you a letter that your grandmother wanted you to have. It’s rather important. Do you think you could stop by today and pick it and another package up?”
“Ummm. I suppose. If it’s important.”
“It is. Your grandmother was most insistent that you had to receive this package before Christmas if she passed away.”
“Christmas this year or any year?” I ask.
“I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”
“Never mind. I will be there shortly. Thank you for letting me know.”
“Of course. I am not entirely sure what’s in the letter and the package. She had them in a bank safety deposit box. I just picked them up this morning for you.”
