Remembrance (The Mediator #7) (43 page)

“Yes. It’s sort of a long story—”

“And I trust you’re going to tell me about it someday. Well, as much as Suze Simon ever tells anyone.”

I don’t know what made me do it. Maybe it was because I couldn’t believe she’d come. Maybe because we weren’t in her office, but standing in the backyard of the home I’d come to love so much, and feel so safe in. Maybe because it was my wedding day, and I felt so happy.

But I found myself looking into her eyes and saying, “Dr. Jo, I’ll tell you one thing, though I’m not sure you’ll believe it. Your husband Sy has a message he wants me to give you. He wants me to remind you to worry less about your patients, and more about yourself. He says you need to remember to get the tires rotated on your—”

Dr. Jo stepped away from me so quickly I thought she might stumble, so I put a hand on her elbow to steady her. All the blood had drained from her face, except for the scarlet smear of lipstick across her lips.

“What . . . how could you possibly—?”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to scare you. It’s just that you said you thought I suffered a trauma in my past, and I haven’t. Not really. I just speak to the dead.”

She reached out to clutch my arm. “I think I need to sit down.”

Jesse chose that moment to come over. “Is everything all right?” he asked.

“Not really,” I said. “Could you get Dr. Jo a chair?”

“Certainly.” He disappeared, then reappeared just as quickly with a chair, into which he helped Dr. Jo. “Is that better?”

She’d closed her eyes, but once she sat, she opened them again and looked at him kneeling beside her in the grass, then back up at me.

“I’m assuming
he
knows about this . . . talent of yours?” she asked.

“Oh, yes,” I said. “He has it, too. Way more than me, actually.”

“Of course he does,” she murmured. “Why did I bother asking? Well, go on. What did Sy tell you, exactly?”

“I’m sorry. It’s just that your husband won’t move on because he’s so worried about you. He’s very upset because you haven’t remembered to have your tires rotated—”

“That’s Sy, all right,” she muttered. “That car. That damned car.”

“I didn’t know how to bring it up with you. But I see him almost every day in the faculty parking lot. One of my stepbrothers works at a car dealership, maybe he could—”

Dr. Jo wasn’t listening. “That damned car. It was all he ever cared about.”

“It’s
you
he cares about, not the car,” Jesse pointed out.

She reached out in a dazed way to pat his cheek. “You’re adorable. But I think I need some alone time right now. And a drink. Would one of you mind . . . ?”

Jesse said, “Of course,” and took me by the waist to physically steer me not toward the bar, but away from it. “Was that really the wisest idea? Isn’t she your advisor?”

“And my therapist, yeah. But I think she needed to hear that. Why aren’t we heading toward the bar? She said she wants a drink. I wouldn’t mind another, either, after that.”

“I’ll have your stepbrother take it to her.” Jesse signaled to Brad, who was acting as de facto bartender at the de facto bar, a couple of saw horses we’d placed a board between, then covered with a red-and-white-checked tablecloth. “If she’s a therapist, he’s exactly who should be speaking to her anyway. He needs a little career counseling. He’s not going to be working for his father-in-law much longer, you know.”

I sucked in my breath. “What?”

“No. He was telling me last night. He’s hit up your parents for a loan so he can enroll in the police academy.”

“A cop?
Brad?
” Somehow, preposterous as it sounded, it also seemed strangely right. Brad had thrived after the babies were born, loving the structure fatherhood brought to his life. A job on the police force would provide him even more structure. “Wow. Ackerman family get-togethers are about to get even more interesting.”

“Yes. In the meantime, there’s someone here who wants to speak to you.”

“Who? I can’t talk to anyone else, frankly. I’m in too much shock. Besides, I’ve already spoken to everyone, except the one person I most want to talk to. You.” I turned to put my arms around his neck. “I’ve barely had a minute alone with you all day. What do you think of my dress? You’re the only one who hasn’t told me.”

He reached up to take the empty champagne glass out of my hand and place it on a picnic table.

“I have an opinion on it,” he said, “and you’re definitely going to hear it, but not now.” He removed my arms from his neck and spun me around to face Father Dominic a few yards away, still sitting tucked beneath a blanket in his wheelchair beside an outdoor heat lamp we’d rented.

“But I’ve already talked to Father D,” I whispered. “Several times, as a matter of fact. And Sister Ernestine. She completely loves me since I got Father Francisco arrested. She says I’m hired . . . on conditional probation, of course, but that’s fine by me. So since I’ve done all my obligatory chatting to the sweet old people, can we please just sneak—”

“Susannah,” Jesse said, basically steering me until I was in front of a giant wearing a long black leather trench coat who was standing beside Father Dominic’s wheelchair. “Do you remember
Jack Slater
?”

I had to crane my neck to look into the giant’s face. When I did, I saw that it bore only the slightest resemblance to the child I remembered babysitting so many years earlier at the Pebble Beach Resort and Hotel.

“Jack?” I heard myself ask in a voice that sounded nothing like my own, it was so squeaky.

The giant smiled. “Hi, Suze,” he said in a strangely youthful voice. He held out a massive right hand. He was wearing fingerless gloves in the same black leather as his trench. “Congratulations to you and Jesse.”

I slipped my hand into the giant’s and allowed him to pump my fingers up and down. Glancing surreptitiously at Father Dominic, I saw him grinning, though after such a long day—Dr. Patel had only granted him permission to leave the hospital for a few hours—I imagined he had to be feeling overwhelmed.

“Thanks, Jack,” I said, feeling a bit overwhelmed as well. “You look . . . different.”

“I know,” he said with a chuckle. “Weird, right? Hey, it was really decent of you both to invite me.”

This sobered me up even more quickly than the sight of his giant teenage hand. Jesse and I exchanged glances.

“Uh,” I said. “No problem. We’re so glad you could come.”

But of course we
hadn’t
invited him. I hadn’t wanted Paul to discover we were getting married—we’d had enough trouble from him to last a lifetime.

So I’d taken care not to allow anything about the event to be posted online, and I’d
especially
not sent an invitation to Paul or his younger brother, Jack, though I’d felt badly about it.

“Er, yes, Susannah,” Father Dominic said, looking slightly embarrassed. “Wasn’t it nice of Jack to come? And all the way from Seattle, where he lives now.”

I gave him a dirty look. Now I knew who’d invited Jack.

“Yes,” I said. “So nice.”

“I see that my brother isn’t here,” Jack said. “I asked him if he was coming, and he said he wasn’t sure. Did he not get invited? He hasn’t caused any more trouble, has he?”

“No, not trouble, exactly,” I said, while beside me I saw Jesse set his jaw. I couldn’t hear him grinding his teeth over the sound of the music, but I was sure that’s what he was doing.

Now we knew how Paul had found out we’d moved up the wedding date, despite the care I’d taken.

The box had arrived via FedEx earlier that day, along with a card from Paul wishing us “many years of happily wedded bliss.”

Inside the box was a framed notification letting the applicant know that, per their request, 99 Pine Crest Road had been determined eligible for the National Register of Historic Places, due to its being associated with “events that have made a significant contribution to the broad pattern of history” and with the “lives of persons significant in our country’s past.” As such, the property could never be torn down or altered in any way.

The request had been made by the Carmel-by-the-Sea Historical Society four months earlier. The notification was dated the day
after
Paul would have begun demolition on my house . . . if I hadn’t stopped him.

I thought that Jesse and I had already had more than our fair share of miracles. But I was happy to take this one, too.

Jesse took a great deal of satisfaction in prominently displaying the notification over the fireplace in the front parlor. An official seal—the same as the one on the wall outside the Monterey County Jail, another historic landmark in which Jesse had spent time—would be following, according to the notification, as soon as it could be engraved.

To give Paul credit, I don’t think he could have found a better wedding present . . . then again, the text he’d sent me later probably expressed his true feelings about my marriage:

Insulting as it was, it was nice to know he was feeling better. It meant that while his jaw might have been broken, his heart never truly was—if he had one, which I wasn’t sure.

I’d already decided, however, that it would be best not to reciprocate with a framed copy of the results of the paternity test I’d paid an extra thousand dollars (out of my own pocket) to have rushed during a holiday week.

Paul’s probability of paternity for the triplets (or Child A, B, and C as they were referred to by the lab) had come back at a whopping 99.999 percent certainty . . . not that I’d ever doubted it, nor had any intention of telling anyone else, save Jesse. It was just a nice piece of insurance to have in case I ever needed it in the future.

“Yeah,” Jack was going on. “Paul and I aren’t very close anymore. Not that we ever were, really. I basically only see him at shareholder meetings.”

“Oh?” Father Dominic asked. I could tell that the old man was thoroughly enjoying himself. Bored from having been cooped up in the hospital for so long, even a normal wedding would have been very exciting to him. But this one was of particular interest to him. “Did your grandfather leave you a stake in his company?”

“Oh, no, not at all,” Jack replied. “Gramps didn’t leave me a dime. I bought into Paul’s company with my own money. I design video games. Turns out I’m pretty good at it. Who’d have thought
I’d
be good at anything, right, Suze?”

He laughed at himself in a self-deprecating manner that was completely unlike his brother. The laugh, however, reminded me eerily of my stepnieces.

“Video games?” I echoed. “I thought you liked to write screenplays.”

“What? No. Well, sort of. See, it’s a bit stupid, actually. You’ve probably heard of one of them.” Jack said the words aloud even as I mouthed them along with him. “
Ghost Mediator
.”

Jesse looked astonished. “That’s
you
?”

Jack laughed some more, shaking his head as if he couldn’t believe it himself. “I know. Weird, right? I mean, I know we’re supposed to keep the mediator thing a secret, but I never expected anyone to see my game, much less take it seriously. I submitted it to a contest. Honestly, I never expected to win. They’ve even made a stupid TV show based off it.”

“I’ve heard of it,” I said woodenly.

“I know, it’s really bad.” Jack looked a bit deflated by my lack of enthusiasm. “It’s taken off, though, internationally, and I get a ton of residuals. That lady who stars in it—”

“She’s fake,” I interrupted. “Her readings aren’t real.”

“Yeah, I know. But people really seem to like her. I try to give a lot of the money to charity. Animal shelters, mostly, but children’s charities, too. Hey, I could give some to the hospital where you work, Jesse. That would
really
annoy my brother.”

“That sounds wonderful.” Jesse slapped Jack on the shoulder. “Keep up the great work.”

Of
course
Jesse would say this.

“Thanks.” Jack looked around shyly. “So, I don’t suppose there are any, uh, girls my age here? It’s cool if there aren’t. I know it’s asking a lot.” His gaze was following Gina, who looked amazing, as usual, but had just finished dancing with Jake. Both were smiling at nothing. Gina had been doing a lot of that lately, not only because her romantic life was improving, but because she’d landed a plum role in Carmel’s outdoor production of
Pippin
. Local theater wasn’t exactly Hollywood, but it was better than nothing.

“Not her,” I said to Jack. “She’s too old for you. And I think she might be taken.” I looked around, noticing that Adam and CeeCee were having one of their epic debates over by the cake table. Then I spotted Becca.

“You know what?” I smiled. “That girl sitting over there by my stepbrother David, looking bored? She actually likes
Ghost Mediator
.”

Jack brightened. “Does she? Oh, great, maybe I’ll go say hi. Thanks again for inviting me. I’ll talk to you later.” He was smiling as he made a beeline toward Becca, casually sidestepping his nieces, who were teaching Dr. Patel’s children how to play “flower girl” (in their version, it was played by violently hurling pinecones at one another).

“So,” Father Dominic said, hardly bothering to lower his voice. “The boy doesn’t know those girls are his brother’s children?”

“Shhh!” I glared at Jesse. “You really
did
tell him everything.”

“Of course. You told
her
everything.” He pointed at Dr. Jo, who’d recovered from her shock and was enjoying cake and champagne with Becca’s father and stepmother. I couldn’t tell if she’d met them before—perhaps because they’d set up an appointment for family counseling—or if their meeting was merely felicitous.

“Not
everything
,” I said with a glower. “Thanks a lot for inviting assorted randos from my past to my wedding reception, Father D. Who else can I expect to show up? If you say the Backstreet Boys, I won’t be held responsible for my actions.”