Salem's Sight (19 page)

Just as I was closing in on the prize,
the man turned. Gun in one hand, a bag of money in the other. We
locked eyes and I stopped breathing.

I didn’t want to die. As much as I
complained about how much my life sucked and how unfair it was, I
really wasn’t ready for it to end. A million things flooded my
mind. Every significant event from riding my first two-wheeler to
my dad’s death flashed before my eyes. Somehow, in that split
second, I had time to consider them all.

“
Salem,” Mom yelled. My
head jerked toward her. Damn it. She wanted him to hear her voice
so he’d focus on her instead.

My heart beat double time. She wanted
me to run. As if I could leave her. My stomach clenched. I knew
what was coming next. No, no, this couldn’t be
happening.

The madman swiveled toward the sound
of her voice, his arm outstretched, gun jerking back as it
fired.

Pop, pop, pop.

Everything happened in tandem. The
impact pushed her back as the door burst open. The policeman fired
at the gunman. The clerk covered his head and dropped down to hide
behind the counter. The gunman shrieked as his weapon sailed out of
his hand like a Frisbee and clattered to the floor.

Familiar arms circled my waist and
tackled. “I told you to stay outside,” the officer yelled to Robby.
“Now don’t anyone move.” He slapped handcuffs on the criminal and
shoved him down on the floor.

My mother hadn’t made a sound. The
familiar silence sliced through me tearing out my heart. Wildly, I
tried to move, but Robby had me pinned. I screamed louder and
louder not even realizing that I was the one making the
sound.

Robby pulled me close, rocking me in
his arms and trying to turn my face away from my mother. She was
lying face down in the aisle crumpled and contorted. A small pool
of blood was beginning to form. It inched its way down the lilting
floor like it was trying to reach me.

No, no, dear God. This can’t be
happening. Not again. I can’t lose another parent. My head ached.
My heart shattered.

I tried again to make a break for it,
but Robby just held tighter. “Wait, Salem.” His voice cracked and
he paused. “Let him check her injuries first.”

Who was he kidding? I knew Rob thought
she was dead as well I as did.

“
He’ll know what to do. If
you touch her you could make things worse.”

Intellectually, I knew Robby was
right. But let’s face it, when a family member is shot right in
front of your eyes, you don’t exactly think straight.

Emotion ruled, swatting intellect like
a fly. Tears dripped down my face. My body trembled like enveloped
in ice. My shrill yelling stopped and a deep mournful wail erupted
from the center of my soul. I had let my mother down, let my
grandmother down too. I was too late.

CHAPTER
sixteen

The headstone, a pitch-black onyx,
like a moonless night, encompassed my spirit. It drew me in away
from the rest of the world and I cautiously continued my approach.
When I was close enough to touch it my legs gave out and I sank to
the ground.

For a second I thought about what lie
beneath, but couldn’t keep my thoughts there. I couldn’t face that
– the remains. Bones.

Nothing but bones. The person no
longer resided with the remains. If nothing else, that much I
learned from my grandmother.

The spirit soared away from the body
and maintained contact with the physical world, even if most of the
people left behind were unaware of it.

Not me. I had assurances.

My breath had been labored sounding
like an asthmatic in desperate need of an inhaler. I needed to calm
down and face the stone in front of me. I reached out and splayed
my hand across the smooth dark stone and the cold instantly
penetrated the layers of my skin.

It was like the cold of death could
somehow reach through the stone, and creep into the
living.

I had been allowing myself to be a
sacrifice from the accident, stifling myself, preventing my
development from guilt and fear. No more. From this day forward
things would change. They had to.

I leaned forward and embraced the
stone, hugged the temple. That’s all it was. A place. A place to go
to remember. But I didn’t need to go there to remember and to love.
The love would always be inside me. That was the key to surviving
grief – not letting go of the memories. Keeping the love as alive
as it had been while the person was still living.

I heard the soft footsteps approach
telling me it was time to go. A gentle hand on my shoulder said
more than any words could. I looked up and nodded.

“
I’m ready, Mom.” I put my
hand in hers and the mere contact calmed me.

She looked at the stone wistfully. “We
can come back periodically, but he’ll always be as close as our
hearts. Love doesn’t just stop.”

“
I know that now and I know
it wasn’t my fault he died. I’m just glad I didn’t lose you too. I
don’t think I could have handled that.” And deep down I knew I
wouldn’t have. I would have remained stagnant, crippled from
self-imposed guilt.

Mom hugged me and I leaned in
welcoming her warmth. “Good thing I have a daughter that’s
psychic.”

“
It’s not like I stopped
you from getting shot.”

“
No, but it could have been
a lot worse than a shot in the arm. At least it was only
superficial. Who knows what would have happened if you hadn’t shown
up.”

But we did know. She would have died.
Somehow through my grandmother and who knows what else, I was able
to control my psychic ability and get to my mom in time. That
helped erase the guilt I had over surviving when my dad
didn’t.

It gave me courage.

“
Are you sure you’re ready,
license girl?”

I’d made it through a five-minute road
test. Now I needed to conquer the reality of driving every day.
“Ready as I’ll ever be.”

Mom unzipped her worn-out
so-last-season Prada purse and fumbled for a few seconds searching
for the keys. When she found them she held them out in the open
palm of her chapped hand.

I reached for them, my fingers
lingering a second before I picked them up. I took a deep breath
and gathered my strength. “So am I driving all the way to the
airport?”

“
Only if you want to. Let’s
see how you feel. If you’re ready for the highway, go for it. If
not, there’s no shame in pulling over at Kandy Korner. It’s only
one block before the interstate entrance ramp.” Mom slid into the
passenger seat and I plopped down on the driver’s side. We sat
silently for a second. “Or we could stop there anyway,” Mom said.
“A little chocolate courage couldn’t hurt.”

“
Chocolate peanut butter
fudge?”

“
You read my mind.” Mom
raised her eyebrows and I laughed at her little joke. “Are you
anxious to get home?” she asked changing the subject.

Home. Here we were back in North
Carolina where I’d spent most of my life and the second she said
home I envisioned Rhode Island.

“
As anxious as you are,
although staying with Grandy Bee isn’t making me as crazy as it is
you.”

She countered with a phony laugh and
gently slapped at my arm.

“
Yeah, I’m ready to get
back. I miss Skyler. Do you think Robby is taking good care of
him?”

“
Would you have allowed him
to cat-sit if you thought he wouldn’t do a good job?”

I fastened my seatbelt and turned the
key while she was speaking. “No, I wouldn’t have.”

“
So in other words, you
also miss Robby?”

I grinned as I put the car in drive
and slowly stepped on the gas. “Guess so. Um, now that I’m driving,
when do you think I’ll get my own car, used of course.”

“
You’ve been driving now
all of fifteen seconds.”

Okay, so it was worth a try. Without
taking my eyes off the road I continued, “Hmmm, I don’t know. I
sort of had this vision of this really great car…”

She looked at me intently, gauging my
face and then recognized the lie for what it was. “Oh honey, that
wasn’t a vision. It was a fantasy.”

Even being psychic couldn’t undermine
that mom radar. Some things never changed.

****

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lyn Stanzione has a BA in Secondary
Education from Arizona State University and an MA in English from
the University of Rhode Island. She works full time teaching
writing.

A student once complained about the length of an assignment to
which Lyn replied with her normal catch phrase, "You could write a
book about that." His reply, "Why don't you," changed her life. By
the end of the school year Lyn completed her first work of fiction
and joined Rhode Island Romance Writers. She now cannot imagine a
life without the characters that are her constant
companions.

Lyn resides in Rhode Island with her two wonderful teenage children
and two crazy cats.

Sneak Peek at Book Two
of the Salem Series

Salem's Sacrifice

Chapter One

I have to admit I was a little
surprised when my shrink called and practically begged for me to
meet with him. I mean, at this point we were down to only
occasional visits. But you’re probably wondering why I see a shrink
at all.

Well, it started after the car
accident last year that killed my dad and left me psychic. Yup,
that’s me, the girl most likely to end up telling fortunes in a
carnival. Only my ability works in a sort of funky way. And I still
haven’t confided the psychic part to my shrink. See, he also
happens to be my boyfriend’s father and since he seems to like me
and is also a nonbeliever, I just sort of decided to leave that
little bit out.

It’s not lying. Much. I mean,
everyone’s entitled to a little bit of privacy.

As a matter of fact only a few people
know about my ‘ability’ because hey, who wants to be known as the
local freak? Mostly, people think of psychics as people who can see
the future. And I can, well… sort of. But like I said, in a funky
sort of way.

I guess what I mean is, I can’t
control it, or maybe it’s better to say I can’t control it enough.
I can’t just look at someone or hold their hand like they do in the
movies, and have all this stuff shoot into my head.

For the most part, images drift into
my dreams and take over like giant cumulus clouds blocking out the
blue of the sky. Or that’s how it started anyway. I’d wake up and
know the dream I had was going to happen for real, unless I did
something to stop it.

That’s what happened when I saw this
creep shoot my mom. I knew it would turn out to be real so I had to
focus on the images. After a while they started to pop up like
computer instant messages even when I was awake. Finally, luckily,
I realized it was a robbery in a convenience store and consequently
managed to save the day before I ended up an orphan.

But in the past few weeks,
it was like the computer in my mind lost its Internet access and I
was hoping that maybe the images were just gone away. Just like my
grandmother did. Well, not that I wanted
her
to go away, but since she was a
ghost and hanging out my room it was sort of the right thing to do.
I missed her though.

Grandma was psychic too. When she was
alive that is, although technically I guess you could say she’s
still psychic, but other than me, who does she talk to? And maybe
the things she knows now, she knows because she’s dead. I mean,
maybe all dead people know what’s going to happen next.

Anyway, few people knew about
Grandma’s ability and Mom never really believed her, so she had a
tough time admitting it when it turned out I was also a
freak.

But like I said, my shrink didn’t know
and since it wasn’t really necessary, I wasn’t about to drop the
bomb. We had dealt with my real issue, which was my dad’s death.
And anyone living through that kind of car accident could use a
shrink just to have someone to vent to. And I liked talking to
Robby’s dad, so I don’t know why this visit was making me
nervous.

I peddled faster then slowed almost to
a stop when I hit Main Street. Talk about instant loss of momentum.
In spite of the fact it was still fall, Christmas items were
already being put out in the store windows. I felt my heart clench.
This would be the first Christmas without my dad. It’s weird but
you think you’re cured, that you’re healed and you’re living a
normal life, and then you see a stupid Christmas tree and Bam!
You’re emotionally beat up. Bruised and suffering all over
again.

And this time it wasn’t because I
blamed myself. At least I was pretty much cured of that. I just
missed my dad. And I knew, really knew the hard way, what dead
really meant.

The strange thing was I knew Doctor
Martin could relate because his wife, Robby’s mom, died from cancer
last year and this would be their first Christmas without her
too.