Slightly Psychic. Sandra Steffen

useless, her clinic as broken as she was. Taking a moment to note the dark circles beneath her friend’s eyes, she said, “Mom sent you, didn’t she?”

      “You know your mother.”

      Yes, Lila knew her mother. Rose Delaney had come barreling into Providence in her ’89 Buick as soon as the media frenzy exploded last fall. Despite the fact that she was five feet tall and wore house sweaters when it was ninety degrees outside, she’d parked herself in a rocking chair in Lila’s living room, a big stick within easy reach, just in case a reporter tried to come through the door. She’d taken charge of the phone, too, and had shaken her fists at the curious passers-by, pointing her finger and shouting, “Shame on you.”

      Lila hadn’t dared have the nervous breakdown she deserved, if for no other reason than for fear of further upsetting her mother. But the night she’d overheard Rose telling someone from the Leno show, “Be kind to my girl, she’s a sensitive, artistic soul,” Lila had pulled herself together and told her mother she had to go home.

      She should have known Rose would call Pepper. But Lila’s intuition had self-destructed, or as one late-night comedian had put it, her mother-board had crashed.

      “What are you really doing here, Pepper?”

      “I’m going with you. Where are you going, anyway?”

      “To Murray, Virginia, a little town in the Shenandoah Valley, but—”

      “Murray, Virginia, prepare to meet two fierce, badass, former Radcliffe girls!”

      Lila tucked her shaking hands into her pockets and refrained from stating the obvious: these days, she was about as fierce as a day-old kitten.

      She stepped into the drizzle and opened the car door. Pepper lowered the umbrella and slid into the passenger seat in seemingly one motion. The woman was liquid. At least one thing hadn’t changed.

      “You’re serious?” Lila asked before starting her car. “You flew three thousand miles to make this trip with me?”

      “Don’t you want me to come with you? Far be it from me to go where I’m not wanted.”

      Since when? Lila thought, but she said, “I’ll let you in on a little secret. Your arrival is the first thing that’s happened these past six months that has anything to do with what I’ve wanted.”

      Shaking her head, Pepper said, “If your mother had her way, heads everywhere would roll. She’d start with the media, move on to the police, and then to some DA who doesn’t believe in ESP. She has another fate in mind for your lying, cheating, no-good former fiancé. I never liked Alex.”

      Pepper didn’t like most people, a trait that stemmed from being born rich and never knowing whom she could trust. Such were the problems of the filthy rich.

      Casting one last look at the brownstone that had served as her home as well as the place she’d counseled patients these past ten years, Lila pulled away from the curb. It wasn’t easy not to cry, but she’d already cried a river in that house.

      “I believed I could help the police find that young woman,” she said.

      “The little hussy, you mean.”

      “I thought she was in trouble, and in pain. How was I supposed to know the reason she was writhing was because she was having sex with Alex?”

      “It was probably more out of boredom than anything,” Pepper said dryly.

      “You can’t imagine how much fun late-night comedians had at my expense.”

      “Want me to put rats in their closets and spiders in their pantries?”

      Lila hadn’t planned to smile. “You would do that for me?”

      “What are friends for?” Lila and Pepper had spread their wings in opposite directions after college, but no matter how many miles or months separated them, something clicked each time they reunited. It was the kind of relationship they both accepted and appreciated. Moving her seat back to make room for her long legs, Lila’s friend—perhaps the only friend she had left on the planet, said, “There are roughly five hundred miles between here and Murray, Virginia. That should give you plenty of time to tell me what happened. Start at the beginning. And, Lila, try not to leave anything out.”

      A horn blared. Lila jumped. And Pepper swore. In French. It was almost like old times.

      “The speed limit on Skyline Drive is thirty-five, lady!” the balding driver of a huge motor home yelled as he passed.

      Lila thought the horn was rude and the yelling was unnecessary. Gripping the steering wheel with both hands, she kept her eyes on the road and tried not to envision tumbling down the side of the mountain to a fiery death.

      “We were just lapped by a camper van,” Pepper said drolly. “How humiliating. You should let me drive. The last time was a fluke. Now that I’ve adjusted to being back in the States, I’m sure I’ll remember to drive on the right side of the highway.”

      Lila was tired, but she wasn’t that tired. Besides, there was no place to pull over. If she could have pried her hands off the steering wheel, she would have crossed herself. And she wasn’t even Catholic. “I’m no stranger to humiliation, remember? I’m going to be fine eventually.”

      “Damn right you are.”

      “This is just a setback. I’m relatively intelligent.”

      “Relatively? You have a degree from one of the most prestigious universities in this country.”

      “In my experience,” Lila said, “the two hundred million or so people living between New York and L.A. aren’t terribly impressed by Ivy League degrees these days.”

      “What’s this world coming to?”

      Now there was a question.

      “But, Lila, you and I both know you didn’t do any of it for recognition.”

      Lila shrugged, for none of it mattered anymore. Her visions were gone, her peers weren’t speaking to her, and no one wanted to be counseled by a woman who’d had no idea her fiancé was cheating. How could she have missed that?

      She glanced in the rearview mirror. The eyes staring back at her were dull and somewhat blank.

      The motor home took the next exit. Beyond it, the curves slackened and the highway began a gradual descent. The drive had been tedious and draining, but most of it was behind them, for they were over the mountains now, and were entering the Shenandoah Valley. Every inch of the descent brought a welcoming relief she hadn’t expected.

      The windows were down, and Lila was vaguely aware of a warm breeze and the lush rustle of leaves recently reborn. It reminded her that all was not lost. She had a destination and a place to live. The knowledge brushed at the emptiness. She had a place to live.

      “Tell me more about this windfall of yours,” Pepper said.

      “There isn’t much more to tell. It still seems incredible to me that Myrtle Ann Canfield left her property and all her worldly possessions to someone she never even met.”

      “Incredible? Maybe. Highly suspicious? Definitely.”

      Lila didn’t like the sound of that, but she drove on, her little car diligently pulling her U-Haul trailer, down, down onto the rolling valley floor. There, two-lane roads meandered through quaint small towns named Fishers Hill, Lacey Spring, New Market and Weyers Cave. Between each town, roads curved and dipped past historic Civil War markers and poultry farms and apple orchards awash in white blossoms. It was all so utterly charming it almost made her believe it might be possible to find peace here.

      She dug out the driving directions written in Myrtle Ann’s own hand, and followed them to Old Cross Road. A sign at the corner read Murray, Virginia, 2 miles. Below it, Welcome had been stenciled, as if in afterthought. And beneath that someone had tacked a handwritten cardboard sign. Parade Friday.