Dream of Danger. Maggie Shayne

and his silver Jaguar were vanishing in a cloud of dust on my isolated road. I heaved an impatient sigh and turned back toward my front door. Amy followed behind me, her arms full of mail from the post-office box, because it was Wednesday, and Wednesdays were answer-the-fan-mail days.

      Except I had the vet. And the pages. I waited for her to trundle in, then closed the door while she dumped the truckload of mail on the coffee table.

      “So tell me about this Mel,” I said as I heeled off my boots.

      “What do you want to know?” She talked while she walked, straight through my giant living room, formerly off-white, currently a deep brick-red hue with gold petroglyphs stenciled all around the walls way up high. I liked color. The kitchen, also formerly off-white, was freshly yellow, with big fat sunflowers in every possible location. We’d done it last week, and I was planning to tackle the currently beige dining room next. I was thinking gold. Or maybe orange. How I’d lived in a colorless home for so long was beyond me. You’d think I’d have sensed the boredom, even blind.

      “Who is he? What’s he do for a living? How come I haven’t met him yet? How long have you been seeing him? Why didn’t you tell me? How the hell did he wrangle an invitation to Thanksgiving with the family already? Are you having sex?”

      She returned from the kitchen with two filled coffee mugs. The maker was programmed to turn on first thing in the morning so I didn’t have to mess with it, and her keen eye always detected whether I had a full cup or not. She handed me my mug and went to sit on the sofa to begin thumbing through my fan mail while sipping. “His name is Mel Brennan. He’s a lawyer. He travels a lot out of state, so I only get to see him a couple of times a month. I’ve been seeing him for six months. And you haven’t met him because I didn’t want to hear your creepy ESP analysis of his deepest secrets. I’d rather find them out the old-fashioned way. Did I miss any of your questions, Your Honor?”

      “Yeah. A hundred. And I’ve told you a million times, I don’t have freakin’ ESP. Also, ouch.”

      She smiled. “You can meet him later. He’s picking me up.” She looked at me looking at her and added, “Because my car’s getting serviced. Not because we’re shacking up.”

      “Are you?”

      “No. God, you’re nosy.”

      “Your mother’s in Erie. I like to think of myself as her stand-in. How old is he?”

      “I haven’t asked.”

      “You’re the worst liar in the world. He looks old.”

      “Define old.”

      I shrugged. “Forty?”

      “Forty’s not old.”

      “It is when you’re twenty-four.”

      She started a stack of fan mail, a stack of junk mail and a stack of possible business mail. “Why the hell don’t they just email you? Who writes on paper anymore?”

      “Old people. Like your boyfriend. How old is he again?”

      She rolled her eyes. “He’s forty-two.”

      “And I’m eighteen.”

      She eyed me. “You could actually pass for eighteen. Which pisses me off, because I probably couldn’t.”

      “Goth is ageless. No one can guess a goth’s age. And you’re a gorgeous goth. Thanks, by the way.”

      “You’re welcome. Thanks back.”

      “So he’s going to Thanksgiving dinner with your family. It’s that serious?”

      She shrugged. “He’s coming to Thanksgiving dinner. What are you doing for dinner tomorrow, Rache?”

      Sure, change the subject. “Probably going to Sandra’s, like always. My sister will cook more than ten people could eat. Jim will stuff himself and watch football. The twins will spend all day texting and griping about their identical eighteen-inch waistlines being endangered by their mother’s apple-and-walnut stuffing. And I’ll do my best to make myself useful.”

      She puckered her lips at me, bloodred today. “If you could do anything you wanted for Thanksgiving, what would it be?”

      I shrugged. “Call Mason and have him run a background check on your boyfriend.”

      “Mason.” She nodded like an ancient sage. “I knew it.”

      “Don’t even—”

      “You’d spend the day with him if you could. Wouldn’t you?”

      In a New York minute. The night, too. “I told you, Mason and I decided to go our separate ways. For now.”

      “Yeah, yeah. You need time to experience life as a sighted adult. He needs time to get over his brother’s death and help his nephews adjust to life without their dad. I heard all the logical reasons. I just don’t buy any of them.”

      “You really think you can distract me from my misgivings about your relationship by talking about mine?” I asked.

      “So it is a relationship, then!”

      I rolled my eyes at her. She pretended not to notice and tore open a fan letter. “Huh. This is a good one. She wants to know how to tell when she’s overstepping the bounds of the employer/employee relationship with her constant advice and concern for her personal assistant’s love life.”

      “Subtle you are not.” I yanked the sheet from her hand and read aloud. “‘Dear Rachel, I’ve just been diagnosed with a terminal illness. The end is going to be long and painful. You say every situation has a silver lining. Please tell me how to find the one in this.’ Jesus H. Christ.”

      “Jesus wrote you that?”

      I sent her a look. “No. It’s signed Marianna. I really hate the tough ones.”

      Amy compressed her lips, grabbed the laptop off the coffee table, clicked a few keys and then scrolled and scrolled. I tried to see what she was doing, but she turned the laptop away so I couldn’t, so I just let it go. Then she started typing and narrated as she went.

      “Dear Marianna, every single one of us has been diagnosed with a terminal illness. It’s called being human. For some reason we’ve all got this warped and twisted idea about death, that it’s the biggest tragedy ever and must be avoided at all costs, when instead it’s the natural transition into the most amazing existence imaginable. And then some. You might move into the afterlife from a dread disease, or you might step in front of a bus tomorrow. You might heal from whatever diagnosis you’ve been given and live to be a hundred and six. It happens every day. You also might make the most frightening experience of your life into the most deeply meaningful and spiritual part of your entire life. Ultimately, it’s up to you, and your higher self. Everything happens exactly the way it’s supposed to.”

      I blinked in shock. “Damn, you’re good.”

      She turned the computer toward me. “No, you are. That’s from The Truth About Death, Chapter two, ‘Terminal Illness.’ I’m just copying and pasting.”

      I saw that she’d opened the galley version of the three-year-old book. “I’m really very wise, huh?”

      “Mostly,” she said.

      “Then you should listen to me. There’s something off about Mel.”

      She closed her eyes. “I told you I didn’t want you to do that.”

      “Maybe if I spent more than ten seconds with him—”

      “I told you, you can meet him when he picks me up tonight.”

      “Okay.” I looked at my watch, sighed, pushed to my feet. “I have to go change. Myrtle has a date with the vet.”

      “‘Kay. I’ll have the fan mail dealt with by the time you get back. Ten pages after that.”