Leaving Time(18)

So how do I play the game? Good swamp witches are good detectives. I pay attention to how the things I say affect the client—a dilation of pupils, an intake of breath. I plant clues with the words I choose. For example, I might say to Mrs. Langham, “Today I’m going to present a memory you’re thinking of …,” and then I start talking about a holiday, and lo and behold, that turns out to be exactly what she’s thinking about. The word present is already lurking in the back of her mind, so whether or not she realizes it, I’ve just cued her to think about a time she received a gift, which means she’s remembering a birthday, or maybe Christmas. Just like that, it looks like I’ve read her mind.

I take note of flickers of disappointment when I say something that doesn’t make sense to her, so I know to back off and head in another direction. I look at how she is dressed and how she speaks, and I make assumptions about her upbringing. I ask questions, and half the time, the client gives me the answer I’m looking for:

I’m getting a B … Did your grandfather’s name begin with that letter?

No … Could it be a P? My grandfather’s name was Paul.

And bingo.

If I don’t get enough information from the client, I have two options. Either I can Go Positive—create a message from someone dead that anyone in their right mind would want to hear, such as Your grandfather wants you to know that he’s at peace, and he wants you to be at peace, too. Or I can “Barnum” the client, with a comment that would apply to 99 percent of the population but that she is bound to interpret personally: Your grandfather knows you like to make decisions carefully, but feels that occasionally you rush to judgment. Then I sit back and let the client feed me more rope I can run with. You’d be surprised how people feel the need to fill in all the gaps in the conversation.

Does this make me a con man? I guess that’s one way to look at it. I prefer to think of myself as Darwinian: I’m adapting, so that I can survive.

Today, however, has been an absolute disaster. I lost a good client, my grandmother’s scrying bowl, and my composure—all within the past hour—thanks to a scrawny kid and her rusty bicycle. Jenna Metcalf was not, as she said, older than she looked—Christ, she probably still believed in the tooth fairy—but she was as powerful as a giant black hole, sucking me back into the nightmare of the McCoy scandal. I don’t do missing people, I told her, and I meant it. It’s one thing to fake a message from a deceased husband; it’s another thing entirely to give false hope to someone who needs closure. You know where that kind of behavior gets you? Living above a bar in Crapville, NH, and spending every Thursday collecting unemployment benefits.

I like being a fraud. It’s safer to make up what clients want to hear. That way they don’t get hurt, and neither do I, when I find myself reaching into the next world and getting no response, just crushing frustration. In a way, I think it would have been easier if I’d never had a Gift. That way, I wouldn’t know what I am missing.

And then along came someone who couldn’t remember what she’d lost.

I don’t know what it was about Jenna Metcalf that rattled me so badly. Maybe her eyes, which were a pale sea green under the shaggy red fringe of her hair—supernatural, arresting. Maybe the way her cuticles had been bitten down to the quick. Or maybe how she seemed to shrink, like Alice in Wonderland, when I told her I wouldn’t help her. That’s the only explanation I can offer as to why I answered when she asked if her mother was dead.

I wanted my psychic abilities back so badly in that moment that I tried; I tried in a way I’d given up trying years ago, because disappointment feels like slamming into a brick wall.

I closed my eyes and attempted to rebuild the bridge between me and my spirit guides, to hear anything—a whisper, a sneer, a hitch of breath.

Instead, there was utter silence.

And so, for Jenna Metcalf, I did exactly what I swore never to do again: I opened up that door of possibility, knowing damn well she’d step into the slice of sunshine it provided. I told her that her mother wasn’t dead.

When what I really meant was: I have no idea.


When Jenna Metcalf leaves, I take a Xanax. If anything qualifies as a reason to break out the antianxiety medication, it’s this—a girl who hasn’t just made me think of the past but has cracked it over my head like a two-by-four. By three o’clock, I am blissfully unconscious on the couch.

I should tell you that I haven’t dreamed in years. Dreaming is the closest the average human gets to the paranormal plane; it’s the time when the mind lets down its guard and the walls get thin enough for there to be glimpses to the other side. That’s why, after sleeping, so many people report a visit from someone who’s passed. But not me, not since Desmond and Lucinda left.