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Whatever. I wasn’t here to stay, just to crash for the week.
I dropped my duffle on the living room floor and made my way to the kitchen. I was pretty sure I’d left some beer in the fridge, and that was exactly what I wanted. To drink a beer and flip on the television, take in the last match between our long-time rivals--the Quilters--and their neighboring franchise--the Roosters.
There was a lot of random crap stuffed into the fridge, which made me wonder what the hell Aunt Nattie had been doing with my place in the eight months since I’d left it. I still paid rent every month, so I wasn’t crazy about her using it for much of anything, but then again, my rent was a fraction of what it should have been, and it was her house.
I pushed aside the abundance of vegetable matter and non-dairy milk choices—how did one get milk from an oat, I wondered—and let out a sigh of relief to find the six pack I remembered leaving still there, standing at the back of the space, waiting patiently for my return.
I’d have to talk to my aunt tomorrow to figure out what she’d been up to and see if I needed to offer her more money each month to keep the place the way I liked it. I didn’t come back often—there was little reason to besides my aunt and my cousins, who all had lives of their own. But I liked knowing the place was here, that it was still home.
I popped off the lid and took a seat on the couch, letting out a hearty sigh as I brought the television to life, and confirmed that those jerks, the Quilters, were suffering a pounding at the hands of the Roosters. All was right in the world.
CHAPTER3
Drea
The funny thing about small towns was that while you always felt like things should be close by, everything took forever to get to down little two-lane country roads. The drunken psychic’s place was no different. And despite what Paige said, she was not on the way home.
We trundled along the twisty little roads between Straddler’s and the psychic’s in the humid darkness of the late-May night, the three of us cool inside the air-conditioned bubble of my car.
“Ooh, there it is!” Paige shouted from the back, leaning forward between the two front seats and pointing at the little cottage tucked away at the side of the road.
“Got it,” I said.
“Hard to miss though, really,” April noted. She was referring to the enormous neon sign in the adjacent lot that was a likeness of the psychic winking and nodding above an arrow that pointed to her little house and the word PSYCHIC burning a hole in the darkness of the night.
I pulled into the driveway behind a new model Volvo SUV. The psychic was doing okay, I guessed.
“Here goes nothing,” I muttered, switching off the engine and opening my door. The outdoor air had me wide awake and somewhat trepidatious. After all, we were bothering an older woman after ten p.m. on a Saturday night. “Are we sure she’ll be open at this hour?” I asked.
“The sign is on,” April pointed out.
“She would definitely switch it off if she wasn’t open,” Paige agreed.
That was probably true.
“Come on,” April said, approaching the wide steps that led up to the front porch.
We stepped up to the front door, and just as I was about to press the doorbell, the door swung inward, revealing a woman who was probably in her late sixties with salt and pepper dreadlocks piled into a messy bun on top of her head. She wore a bulky dress that hid most of her figure and a wide smile that glowed beneath round spectacles. “Hello girls.”
“How’d you know we were here?” Paige asked, eyes wide. “We didn’t even ring the bell yet.”
April elbowed her sister-in-law. “She’s psychic, remember?”
“Ohhhh.” Paige hiccupped and then was quiet.
“A reading then?” The psychic looked right at me as she asked this, and a chill shot through me. How did she know we were here for me?"
“Yes please,” I said. “I mean, if you’re still open. It’s pretty late, and we don’t want to bother you.”
“No bother,” she said. “I knew you were coming. Follow me. Shut the door if you would, don’t want Bruno getting out.”
“Oh, do you have a kitty cat?” Paige asked.
“Bruno is a feline, yes, but he’s not quite what you’d refer to as a kitty.”
The psychic left it at that, and we exchanged glances behind her back as she led us down a brightly lit hallway to a little room off to the right with French doors. Her dress dragged on the floor behind her, and I was careful not to step on it as we trailed her into the room.
“Have a seat,” she said to me, pointing to a chair drawn up to a small table. “And you ladies can sit there.” An antique couch rested against one wall, and Paige and April headed for it.
