Shadow Notes by Laurel Peterson (cool books to read txt) 📗

picked the things in her litany I could actually disagree with. “You won’t talk to me. Did you expect me to sit idly by while people accused you of killing Hugh? And I’m not ‘dating’ Andrew Junior. We went out for dinner. Once.”

“You can’t do that again, Clara.” She said it without heat, not as if she were the mother of a recalcitrant teenager she was trying to control, but as if it were a given.

“Why should it matter? It’s just something to perk me up while I deal with my divorce. I’m not going to marry him. He’s too young for me anyway.” I smiled and Mother grimaced. I’d had dinner with Junior only because I wanted information, but I wanted to see what reason she would give to dissuade me.

“No. I can’t allow it.”

As if she had power to stop me. Besides, it didn’t matter. I would do what I wanted, anyway. The dreams had to stop, so I had no choice but to do what I thought was right, even going out with Junior again and peppering him with questions about Mary Ellen. I was not going back to that Zurich hospital.

“You’ll do what if I go out with him again? Restrain me physically from walking out the door? Really, Mother. And I will do whatever is necessary to get answers. I’m not doing it for fun. I’m doing it because my dreams need to stop, and the moment they do, I’ll be out of your hair again. So unless you’re going to surround me with armed guards, you’re out of luck.”

Mother was made of armor. “Oh, I know I have no real power over you, but other ways exist to make sure you don’t see him again. Anyway, you’ll just not do it, and then we don’t have to have this discussion anymore.”

Ramping up the argument, as much as it might give me a perverted ­satisfaction, wouldn’t gain me anything. Plus, I didn’t have the mental stamina for it at the moment. “What do you really want, Mother?”

“Get away from the Winters family, all of them. Quit the campaign, stop seeing Mary Ellen and Andrew Junior.”

“Why?”

“I’ve already told you why.”

“Tell me again.”

“No.”

She’d done that when I was a kid, too. She’d tell me once, then refuse to repeat it or explain. If I didn’t get it the first time, that was my problem, and it would be an even bigger problem if I didn’t obey, whether I understood or not.

“Do you know why I’m involved with the Winters family?” I asked.

“To spite me, I imagine.” She sounded resigned, stared at the wall past my shoulder.

I swung my feet to the floor. I really wasn’t ready for this. “It started there.” I stopped, started again. “No, that’s not fair,” I said as she looked at me. Her face was washed with incredible sadness and longing, as if none of her dreams had ever been hers to hold. “My motives aren’t so easily read. Part of me wanted to pay you back for father. I believed that if you had allowed me to talk about the intuition, I could have told you I dreamed his death.” She started to speak, but I held up a slightly shaky hand. “I know that’s not true now. My own fear kept me silent.”

“You were a child.”

“I was a young woman, and now I need to make amends by helping you. You’ve been accused of murder. In this town, who better to know you than your oldest enemy? I didn’t assume the information would come without bias, but I did assume there would be information and connections. Mary Ellen could get me in.”

Wearily my mother said, “At what cost, Clara? I can only imagine what that woman has told you to turn you against me. Not that she would have needed to work very hard.” She turned her head away, stroked the arm of the chair. “Has she succeeded?”

“You were a little wilder than I had imagined, if what she says is true, but I’m not here to judge you.”

“You do judge me, Clara. You judge me harshly for all my failings. Especially for your father.” She looked shrunken and tired in the chair, her bathrobe around her like an oversized blanket around a doll.

I stood up.

She looked wistful. “I’m sure you’re tired.”

“I’m beyond tired,” I said. “If we’re having this conversation, I need coffee. Are you coming?”

She nodded, trying to conceal her surprise. In the kitchen, I ground beans, rinsed the gold filter, measured water. Each second of ritual gave me more time to wake up. When the coffeemaker began its drip, I got out cups, sugar, spoons and milk. Mother suggested something to eat, but I shook my head, the surfeit of dinner still with me. When it was ready, I poured and sat opposite her at the table.

She spooned some sugar into her drink and stirred. When she began talking, she spoke toward the Subzero over my shoulder. “The intuition you have: all the women in the family inherit it. I have it, too, and so did your grandmother and great-grandmother.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“No one in the family talked about it. My mother told me what it was and how I could use what I learned from the intuitions, but that was it. I wasn’t to tell anyone, including other members of the family about the dreams and feelings.

“I didn’t listen. I was young, and it was a time when we did tarot readings for each other and talked about ESP. We bared our souls to friends and complete strangers. We thought we were being open and trusting, and I thought my gift could be used for the greater good. So I told Mary Ellen—my best friend—and I told Loretta Gardner, and somehow it got back to my mother. She grounded me for a month: I couldn’t call anyone, watch TV, listen to the radio, or go anywhere. It was worse than just being grounded, it was house