Will copied Mikey, treating both of the ladies to a peck on the cheek. "Thanks for a good Christmas. Don't know what y'all are planning with those buttons and that map, but call if you need bail money."
"We're fixin' to find the treasure," Aunt Jessie said. "We've been looking all the wrong places."
Ah. The legendary Pickleberry Springs treasure. Will should've guessed.
"I had a vision," Sacha added. "And that's all we're telling the likes of-"
She suddenly stopped and stared at Will with a singular concentration that gave him a familiar creepy sensation along the back of his knees and neck.
"William." Her coal-black brows slanted together over her long face, but it was the tone more than his full name that got Will's attention.
He knew that tone.
The dramatic, voice-dropped-an-octave, I-had-a-premonition tone.
Always gave him a shiver. She was right as much as she was wrong, but she'd called a few big moments in his life.
You need to go to Colorado with your sister. There's something there you have to do.
Follow your dream. Follow it to the top. You have the gift, young William.
You'll see her again. Your story isn't over.
Will's shiver turned into a shudder.
Aunt Jessie turned to watch with parted lips. Mikey leaned back and tucked his hands in his pockets with his normal healthy dose of skepticism.
Sacha's dark gaze swept over him, lingering on his chest.
Right where Vera's strap was.
There went the shivers tickling Will's neck again. He latched onto the strap, half from habit, half from protectiveness.
"You need her gift," Sacha said in the freaky premonition voice. There weren't any candles lit like when she was over here doing a reading, but Will smelled the sickly sweet scent anyway.
His grip tightened on Vera's strap. "Been using her gift since you gave her to me." Two days after Will and Mari Belle moved in with Aunt Jessie, Sacha arrived with a doll for Mari Belle and Vera for Will.
Took him a few years before he was big enough to play her right, and another couple after that before he named her, but he never forgot where Vera came from.
"Not Vera." Sacha took his hand in both of hers, his calloused from playing, hers smooth and cool. "Her. You've seen her."
"Her?" Mikey said.
"Her?" Aunt Jessie whispered.
There was one her. There had always been only one her.
Will's jaw tightened. "Don't know what you're talking about."
Sacha pinned him with a dark stare.
It wasn't a you're lying stare, necessarily, though she'd always been able to see through him as well as Aunt Jessie could. Better, some days.
More like another of her I'm having a vision stares.
He had a flash of memory-several, matter of fact. Most of them fifteen or so years old, but another more recent.
All surrounding a blonde lady he couldn't shake out of his mind.
You'll see her again some day, Sacha had said fifteen years ago. You'll see her when you need her.
The shivers he got when she was right went deeper than his skin. They were somewhere inside, somewhere he couldn't reach.
"You need to go to her," Sacha said. "Now. For you. For Mikey. For the music."
Mikey cleared his throat. No secret what he thought of Sacha's visions.
"You need to go to her for all of us," Sacha whispered. She blinked once, twice, and then stood. As she always did after a vision, she turned and floated out of the house, flowery fabric swishing softly about her as though she hadn't dropped a psychic bomb on his life.
Will tried to shrug off the heebie-jeebies giving him goose bumps. He could say all he wanted that he didn't believe. She'd been wrong about his debut album going gold and that his house would burn down with something important in it-seven years and two electricians later, all was still standing in the Nashville burbs-but when she was right, she was on the money.
More than whether she was right or wrong, though, she shared her visions because she cared.
She always had.
She'd steered Aunt Jessie through three divorces and then introduced her to Donnie. Sacha had predicted that the dishwasher would get possessed by the devil, and a week later, the darn thing sprang to life with the door open and rained all over the kitchen. She convinced Jessie to take a spur-of-the-moment vacation to see Will in Nashville two days before a tornado wiped out the Pickleberry Springs Library where Aunt Jessie was supposed to be working.
"She in Nashville?" Mikey asked.
He was asking about Lindsey, and everyone in the room knew it. Will shook his head before he could stop himself.
Aunt Jessie stood and wrapped him in a hug. The top of her head barely reached his shoulders, but she squeezed tight as she did when he was little, like that's all it would take to banish evil and danger from the world.
"Be careful, my sweet boy," she whispered.
"We're going to Nashville, Aunt Jessie," he said. "Nowhere else."
She pulled back and frowned at him, but it was a wobbly, shiny-eyed frown. "You need to go where you need to go. Listen to Sacha. Trust her."
"All due respect," Mikey said, "but Will's got too many people depending on him for us to be anywhere but Nashville right now."
Mikey was half right. Will had a big crew, and they depended on Billy Brenton for their bread and butter. For their families' bread and butter. Will was supposed to be in Nashville, writing songs and getting in the studio, so he could keep his crew employed and have a reason to tour again next year.
But Billy Brenton needed to find his music again. And last Will checked, the music hadn't been talking to him in Nashville. Not for writing his own songs, not for finding anyone else's that worked for him.
The music hadn't talked to him anywhere except Bliss.
His palm was sweaty over Vera's strap, but her weight was comforting. She'd be there no matter what he did. She was always there.
"Sacha has never steered me wrong in my love life, and she's never steered you wrong in your career," Aunt Jessie said. "You go find that girl." She turned to Mikey. "And you. Watch out for my boy. You watch him good."
Mikey's steel gaze was flat and hard. "Always do, Miss Jessie. Won't let him do anything knuckleheaded. Promise."
Anything knuckleheaded like go anywhere but Nashville.
God willing, Mikey would deliver on that promise.
JANUARY WAS BUSY season for Lindsey at work. New year, new clients with new resolutions to get out of misguided marriages. If Lindsey had her way, there would be more clients coming in for prenups and adoption proceedings instead.
Of course, if Lindsey had her way, she wouldn't be able to see when couples shouldn't be together. But since she'd first started calling breakups in junior high, she hadn't been able to shake it. So she lived with it, and she corrected what she couldn't prevent, and she thanked her lucky stars she had a job demanding enough that she could bury herself in it.
But her job wasn't enough to keep the memories from nipping at her heels this week. She rubbed at her temples.
It had been ten days since Nat's wedding. Ten long, cold, overcast winter days spent at her carved mahogany desk in her dark walnut – paneled office, with the coffee-colored leather client chairs staring at her when there weren't unhappy divorcées-to-be sitting in them. Several of her fellow attorneys at the firm had asked about Nat's wedding-and Billy Brenton, of course-but otherwise, life went on as normal.
Except for the memories.
And the unusual guest who popped in late Wednesday afternoon.
"My dear Lindsey," an annoyingly authoritative female voice intoned from her doorway.
Lindsey's shoulders bunched in on themselves, but she forced herself to relax, sit straight, and greet Marilyn Elias with her best baby-eating divorce lawyer glare. "Marilyn. You weren't on my calendar."
Behind Marilyn, Lindsey's assistant made the universal I'm sorry, she steamrolled me gesture.
Marilyn stepped into the room and closed the door on Lindsey's assistant with a definitive click. "By the power vested in me as-"
"Cut to the chase unless you want me to start charging to listen to you," Lindsey interrupted. Marilyn was Kimmie's formidable mother. She was also president of Bliss's Bridal Retailers Association, chairperson of the town's annual Knot Festival, a direct descendant of Bliss's founders, the unofficial Bliss Propriety Police, owner of Bliss's most prestigious bakery, and a general pain in the ass. Most of Bliss feared and revered her. Nat called her the Queen General, or QG for short.
Marilyn was also Dad's unofficial quasi-girlfriend, which was the only reason Lindsey hadn't started counting minutes already.
Marilyn cleared her throat and eyed the brown leather chair across from Lindsey.
"It's clean." Lindsey waved a hand at the other chair. "But that one has the divorce cooties."
Marilyn's eye twitched over the forced smile plastered across her lips. "I had no idea you worked above ground."
"Closer to the man upstairs," Lindsey said. "By the power vested in God as God, he grants second chances through me. And speaking of second chances, Nat's wedding cupcakes were delicious. Now, are you here to lose a debate about my profession, or is there some other reason you've come to the dark side today?"