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Dan froze. “You gave me that ring on purpose?” Gary dipped his chin to his chest. “Why?” Then he saw the light. “It was a test, wasn’t it? You’re as skeptical as Lewis—you’re just not as vocal about it.” An iron band tightened around his chest, and his appetite deserted him. God, the only one who’d been honest with him was Riley.
Gary jerked his head up, his cheeks flushed. “Look, I’m not proud of what I did, but I had my reasons, okay? I don’t have a clue what Lewis has against… people like you, but believe me when I say you’re not the first psychic to cross my path. My experience has taught me to have no faith in stuff like this.”
“We’re all fakers and charlatans, is that it?”
Gary held up his hands. “Hey, I’ll admit it, I thought that. When Travers first mentioned bringing you in on this, I shot him down without a second’s hesitation.”
Dan reined in his bitterness. “And now? What about now?”
“Lewis probably thinks you had inside help, that someone told you about Cory, but I don’t believe that.” A shiver rippled through him. “I watched you. I saw how deeply you were affected by… by whatever you felt. You’re no fake.”
Gary’s words rang with sincerity, and Dan experienced an unexpected release of tension, leaving him weak and giddy. “Thank you. I meet so many people who think I’m a fraud. And even when I give them the answers they’re looking for, some of them still doubt.”
“When did you first know you could do this?”
Dan wiped his lips, then dropped the napkin onto his plate. “When I was nine or ten. I was always the one who could ‘find’ things,” he said, air-quoting. “Mom was forever misplacing her scissors, her reading glasses, her keys, and I’d tell her where she’d left them. I think my parents found it amusing… until the day they discovered it was more than guesswork.”
“What happened?”
“I walked into the kitchen one morning, and Mom was standing at the sink, staring out the window. I went over to her and hugged her, because it seemed like that was what she needed. That wasn’t what caused the upset that followed—it was when I told her it was okay, Aunt Jane would be fine. She gazed at me with a frown and asked me what I meant. I said Aunt Jane and Uncle Frank could always try again, and that she wasn’t to be sad about the baby.”
“Oh God. Had she miscarried?”
Dan nodded. “But what spooked my parents was that they hadn’t told me about it. Mom had only heard it from my grandmother less than ten minutes before I walked into the kitchen. There was no way I could’ve known.”
“What happened then?”
Dan could still see the kitchen, his parents on one side of the table and him on the other. They’d sent his older brother and two sisters outside to rake up the autumn leaves that covered the backyard. “They sat me down and asked questions. How had I known? Were there other things that I knew that no one had told me? I didn’t understand myself what was going on—how could I hope to explain it to them?”
“Did it affect your relationship with your parents?”
Another nod. “They don’t talk about it. When I was working with NYPD and Chicago PD, I didn’t tell them. My sisters think I’m weird. My brother? He’s much more laid back about it. When I moved to Litchfield, he asked if I’d gone there to get a job with Spooky World’s Nightmare New England.” Gary frowned, and Dan gave him an inquiring glance. “Your parents never took you there when you were a kid? It’s a commercial haunted park.”
Something flitted across Gary’s face, and then it was gone. “No, they never did. It wasn’t their kind of thing.” He gave a half smile. “Your brother sounds okay.”
“One Christmas he gave me a DVD ofThe Dead Zone, that movie with Christopher Walken about the guy who knows things?” Dan chuckled. “He said I’d like it because it was about people like me.”
“You live on your own?”
Dan cocked his head. “What you really mean is, am I single, married….” He held up his left hand. “Look, no ring. I don’t do relationships. I don’t even dofriendsall that well. High school was a nightmare, especially when word got out. I was ‘that creepy kid.’ I learned to keep my hands in my pockets and other kids at a distance.”
“Then it does work primarily by touch?”
He nodded. “Most of the time. I sometimes get visions. We all have weird dreams from time to time, right? I’ve learned to differentiate between the I-ate-cheese-before-bed weird dreams and the ones that mean something.”
What came to mind was a warm, damp chest pressed against his back, a slow rocking of hips, exquisite friction—and the scent of patchouli and cedar.
Gary mentions cedar and suddenly youknowwhat that other aroma was? Talk about wishful thinking.
Sometimes Dan’s inner voice could be a real bitch.
“I can understand why you avoided other kids.” Gary’s eyes were kind. “High school… ugh. Don’t even go there. But surely adults are more understanding.”
He arched his eyebrows. “Think about Lewis’s reaction, then say that again.” He drank some water. “To be honest, I’m wary of relationships.”And when was the last time I told anyone this much about myself?
Maybe it was because Gary was listening that Dan leveled with him. “The thing is, this… gift of mine—although there are times when it feels more like a curse—has made it difficult to get close to people. Imagine being intimate with someone you think could be important to you, and the next minute, your head is spinning because you got a glimpse of something youreallydidn’t want to see. I meant what I said to Riley. I can’t turn it on and off.”
Gary’s breathing caught. “That’s happened to you, hasn’t it?”
