“You’re psychic, aren’t you?” she asked.
“Me? No!”
Sophie’s wide blue eyes studied me. “I was sure you were. I felt a connection.”
I frowned and saw the color deepen in her cheeks. She picked up her tray of cleaning supplies and reached for the vacuum. “I’ve got another room to do.”
I followed her across the hall to a room that had different wallpaper but a similar arrangement of bed and furniture.
Sophie snatched up a feather duster and began whisking it over frames and mirrors. She didn’t look at me.
“I would never have said anything,” she explained, talking a little too fast, “except I thought you were like me. That’s why I hoped you had seen the ghost. Psychics seem to attract other forms of spiritual energy-they’re like magnets to ghosts. And-well, that’s all,” she said.
I caught her peeking at me.
“Are you sure you’re not?” she asked. “You’ve never been aware of things that other people aren’t? You’ve never had an experience you can’t explain?”
“No,” I lied.
She shook her head. “1 read you wrong.”
“Except,” I said, “some, uh, strange dreams.”
“Miss Lydia says that dreams are shadows cast by truth shining on our darkest secrets.”
“Well, mine aren’t all that mysterious,” I replied. “1 can explain them-most of them.”
I told Sophie about my childhood visits to a house that looked like Grandmother’s and my recent dream of the dollhouse, along with my theories about seeing photos of Mom with the miniature house.
“You could be right,” Sophie said, sounding unconvinced.
“You have a better explanation?”
“You’re psychic-telepathic. When you were little, your mom was watching you play and thinking about herself as a kid at home. You picked up the images and made them your own.”
“I like my theory better.”
“Okay by me,” Sophie said agreeably. She lifted a sheet from a pile on a chair, and we went to work making the bed.
“Who’s Miss Lydia?” I asked.
“The old lady who owns the café next door. Jamie Riley’s mother.”
“Oh!”
“When I was little,” Sophie went on, “and Mom was working here at the Mallard, I’d go to Tea Leaves for my after-school snack. Miss Lydia liked me and talked to me a lot.”
“She sure doesn’t like me,” I said, then told Sophie about my introduction to the woman.
“Don’t be offended,” Sophie advised. “Miss Lydia doesn’t trust many people. A couple years ago she got in trouble for selling her herbal remedies at the Queen Victoria, the hotel across the street. Guests complained. A woman said she got sick, but that can happen with herbal stuff, just like it does with a prescription from a doctor. Anyway, now Miss Lydia only deals with locals and keeps thinking guys from the FBI are coming after her.”
“If she’s psychic, wouldn’t she know they aren’t?”
Sophie didn’t laugh and didn’t get annoyed. “No. Just because you’re psychic doesn’t mean you can see clearly.
Sometimes the more you see, the more confusing it is.
Images overlap and it’s hard to sort them out.”
We finished making the bed in silence. Sophie kept her head down as if she were deep in thought. When she looked up, her eyes were bright. “How about an O.B.E.?
Out-of-body experience? Some people do that, you know.
Their spirit breaks free of their body and travels around.
Maybe you were curious about your grandmother and came to see her as a child,”
“Without my body?” I said, looking at Sophie like she was crazy.
“Well, yes and no,” she replied. “Your body would be back where you left it. But if your grandmother were psychically aware, she’d have seen an apparition of you that looked like your body.”
I kept quiet.
“I’m making you uncomfortable,” Sophie observed. She stuck the vacuum cleaner plug in a wall socket. “This is all I have left to do. Thanks for stopping by.” She waited for me to leave, her finger on the trigger of the machine.
“Have you seen Sheer Blue?” I asked.
“The movie?” she replied. “No.”
“Want to go?”
She looked surprised, then smiled. “Didn’t scare you away, huh?”
“Not yet.”
“How about Thursday night?” she suggested. “We’re off school Friday.”
“Great.”
The vacuum roared to life and I left. As I walked up High Street, I wondered to myself what secrets were casting shadows long enough to reach into my dreams.
When I arrived home that afternoon, I found my grandmother sitting in the kitchen, idly watching her housekeeper fix dinner. Grandmother’s skin was so pale it seemed translucent, her hands clasped but in constant motion, as if she couldn’t keep them warm.
“Are you okay?” I asked, quickly setting down my purse.
“Has something happened, Grandmother?”