Shattered Dreams: A Midnight Dragonfly Novel (12 page)

The chill was immediate—and bone deep. My grandmother had quickly crossed herself the second I told her about Sunshine. At the time, I’d thought it was because of the dog.

“And then your dad comes running in,” Aunt Sara was saying, “trying to calm everyone down.”

With the image I could see him all over again, as he appeared in my dreams, standing in the distance, watching, the haunting mix of warmth and sorrow in his eyes.

“It was hard on him,” she murmured. “The two women he loved most could never find any common ground other than you.”

Throat tight, I looked back at the tranquil glow of the larimar, stunned by the warmth radiating like waves of sunshine from my palm, blazing up to my fingers and my arm.

“Tell me more,” I whispered, closing my fingers around the stone. I squeezed it, not tightly, but more like the way a mother might hold a child.

“She took her gift seriously—” my aunt started, but I looked up abruptly.

“Gift?”

“My word,” she said, and again, her voice was sad. “Not hers.”

“What
did
my mom call it?”
Curse
was the word that came to
my
mind.

Aunt Sara smiled. “Responsibility.”

Not so sure, I swallowed hard and looked back inside the trunk, found myself reaching for a worn composition book.

“She’d been taught that it was her duty to help people,” she added. “Her grandmother said everyone was here for a purpose. We all have roles to play. And if she or her daughter or your mom could give insight or warning, then that was what they were here to do.”

The firstborn daughter of the firstborn daughter …

“Was she open about it?” I asked. “Did she tell people about her dreams?”

“Not really. At least, not everyone. It was like she lived two lives. At work she readily shared her gift, but at home she was just a mom and a wife.”

“At work? What kind of work?”

“In the French Quarter,” Aunt Sara said. “In Jackson Square, where the psychics gather.”

I’d seen them, the so-called spiritual advisers. I’d walked by them Saturday night before we’d headed for the house on Prytania. Tourists flocked around the tables, where mostly women sat with flashlights, tarot cards, and crystals.

Like the ones in my mother’s trunk.

“She took people’s money?” Not sure why the thought bothered me, I flipped open the notebook in search of … something. I had no idea what. “Like those 1-800 Dial-A-Wackos?”

Aunt Sara sighed. “Trinity Rose. That sounds like something your grandmother would say.”

Probably because she had.
Whenever one of those late-night infomercials came on, Gran had muttered under her breath and changed the channel. Sometimes after she’d gone to bed, I’d lowered the volume and watched—and cracked up at the absurdity.

I wasn’t laughing now. Trying to take it all in, I thumbed through what turned out to be more of a scrapbook than a notebook, page after page where my mother had taped pictures of crystals and rocks, accompanied by handwritten notes.

About two-thirds of the way back, pictures gave way to charts and graphs.

My name jumped out at me.

TRINITY ROSE MONSOUR

NATAL CHART

Some of the information I recognized, such as the notation of my astrological sign, Aries. But the chart went on to map out my Moon (Gemini) and something called my Ascendant (Scorpio), a list of all the planets, something called houses and a midheaven (Leo). Scrawled, handwritten notes filled the margins:

Strong personality

Self-willed

Stubborn

Restless/Cannot stand still

Impulsive

Violent

I blinked, but the words didn’t change. Some of them … yes, they made sense. Even my completely by-the-books grandmother had called me stubborn, and it was no secret I had a hard time standing still. When I was younger, Gran had called me her little whirlwind. Later, I’d become Hurricane Trinity.

Impulsive … yes. Not one of my better traits. But violent? And then a bit further down, my mother had jotted another word, this one totally bizarre.

Occult

I glanced up. “What is this? A map of my life?”

Aunt Sara frowned. “Your mother did them for all of us. I’m not sure it’s really a map so much as a guide.”

And what was the difference? I didn’t ask that question, though, instead I flipped through the following pages, where I found charts for my father (sun sign Libra) and Sara (sun sign Scorpio), and a whole lot of people I didn’t know, concluding with a man named Jim Fourcade (sun sign Libra). The writing in his margin seemed messier than the others, more hurried.

“Who’s this?” I asked.

My aunt glanced over, her eyes flaring before returning to normal.

Yup. She was about to lie.

“A friend of hers, I think,” she said. “Maybe a client.”

Sure. That’s why the last word my mother had written on that page was
Sacrifice.

The rest of the notebook was blank.

For several minutes I sat with the blue larimar clenched in my hand, the journal open in my lap, and my aunt sitting quietly next to me. And all the while I couldn’t help but wonder. My mom had known things. She’d seen things about people and tried to help them. Warn them.

And now I was seeing things …

“Did it ever make a difference?” I asked, looking up from the notebook. “The things my mother saw, the bad stuff. Was she ever able to stop anything?”

Aunt Sara’s eyes met mine. “Sometimes.”

Which meant not always.

“What about…” Horror and grief moved through me at the same time. “What happened to her?” I said. “Did she see that, too? Did she know she was going to die?”

I’m not sure I could imagine anything more devastating than seeing your own death, knowing it was coming and not being able to stop it.

Sure, terminally ill people probably realized what was going to happen, but my mother hadn’t died of an illness. It had been an accident. What would she have seen? How much would she have known? I couldn’t help but think how terrifying it would be waking up each morning, wondering if this was going to be the day …

Or maybe she’d known all along. Maybe she’d known the exact day and hour.

That thought was equally horrifying.

Aunt Sara looked at me, her expression so tender and sad my chest started to hurt. “She always said she’d never see you grow up.”

I wasn’t a crier. I don’t know why, I just never cry. Not even when Gran died. It was like there was a tight lid somewhere inside of me, holding everything in.

But kneeling in that room lit only by lamps and memories, in front of my mother’s trunk, my throat closed up, and my eyes filled. “What do you mean
always
?”

Had she known for that long?

“From the time you were itty bitty,” Aunt Sara said. “One day I found your mama rocking you, holding you so close with the strangest look on her face. At first you were so still, I thought something terrible had happened.”

The stinging in my eyes made me blink.

“Then I saw you were at her breast, but she was crying.”

I didn’t even try to stop my own tears. They spilled over my lashes and slid down my face.

I made no move to wipe.

Actually, I didn’t move at all. I’m not even sure I breathed.

“I kneeled beside her and asked what was wrong. I remember it so clearly, because she wouldn’t look at me. It was like I wasn’t even there, and when she answered, it was to you and not me.”

“To me?”

“‘
My precious little baby,’
she said.
‘How will you ever forgive me?’
”

Oh, crap. The larimar had been doing such a good job of keeping me warm. But my blood temperature dropped all over again. “Forgive her for what?”

Aunt Sara reached inside the trunk for a small pink blanket and wrapped it around her hands. “She never would say. All she said was, ‘Mama’s gonna miss you,
mon petite ange
. Mama’s gonna miss you.’”

Swallowing hurt. “It sounds like she blamed herself.”

“I think she did,” my aunt said. “Can you even imagine?” She broke off, shook her head. “Knowing what she knew and knowing there was nothing she could do.”

The silent tears became quiet sobs. I’m not sure who moved first, my aunt or myself, but before I could take a breath I was in her arms and she was holding me to her, rocking me. Rocking …

Like a mother rocks a child.

Like my mother had rocked me.

When she’d realized she was going to die.

*   *   *

It’s called precognition.

Stories date back to ancient times, from the druids of Ireland to the Oracle of Delphi, mind-bending accounts of dreams and prophecy that foretold future events with uncanny accuracy. World Wars I and II showed up in sixteenth-century writings, as did the assassination of JFK. In the 1940s three young children in Portugal warned of the attempt on Pope John Paul II’s life. Every major event was there, seen ahead of time, all the way up through 9/11. And beyond.

I sat at a small table at the back of the school library, staring at my laptop. Even the Bible, some scholars said, contained as much prophecy as history.

Sliding the hair from my face, I couldn’t escape the irony of my grandmother discounting my mother’s abilities, but accepting the Book of Revelation.

The only difference was the source.

Glancing away, toward the window overlooking the courtyard, I lifted a hand to my temple and rubbed. Aunt Sara and I had sat in front of my mother’s trunk until after midnight. After that, sleep had been impossible.

Questions bombarded me. Questions about my mother and her family, the visions they’d had—the visions I had. Tomorrow night there would be a candlelight vigil at the school. Chase and the police and even Jessica’s parents kept saying (hoping?) it was possible she’d left on her own. And would return on her own.

The vigil was designed to show her how much she was loved.

I wanted to believe that. I wanted to believe them. But I could not forget what I’d seen in the shadows of my dreams, the way she’d begged me to help.

Getting through the morning had been torture. I’d considered calling in sick, but knew that would only give Amber more ammunition against me. So I sat in class after class, trying to pay attention, while my mind raced to make sense of all that I’d learned the night before—and to learn more.

And then there was Chase.

All through chemistry I’d felt him watching me. I’d sat there at my small desk, as aware of him as if we’d been standing body-to-body.

I’d never meant to tell him so much. I still couldn’t believe I’d unloaded on him about my parents and the fantasies that lingered after all this time, of being a family. I’d never spoken of that to anyone. That I would tell Chase, now, in the midst of what was going on with Jessica …

I might as well have stripped off every piece of clothing and stood before him naked.

Instead I’d given him even more. I’d opened the door, and let him inside.

“Don’t be scared.”

“I’m not—”

“Then what’s that I see in your eyes?”

Hating the burn that lingered still, now, almost twenty-four hours later, I turned back to the computer and opened another window. Into the search engine, I typed six words: New Orleans Teenage Girl Goes Missing.

No one wanted to answer my questions, but I could do so on my own. Amber had mentioned two other girls who’d gone missing in the past year or so.

My search yielded over fifteen million results.

Apparently disappearing in New Orleans was not all that uncommon.

It took trial and error, but after a few minutes I hit pay dirt. Michelle DuPont and Addison Roubilet went missing six months apart, to the day. Quickly I did the math—nine months since Addison vanished.

Jessica’s disappearance didn’t fit the pattern.

But of course, you needed more than two data points to establish a trend.

Both girls had been eighteen. Jessica was sixteen. Both girls were blonds. Jessica had dark hair, like mine. Both girls had been out with friends, one never returning from going to the bathroom, the other disappearing in a massive New Year’s Eve crowd in the Quarter. Jessica had been out with friends.

One week after each went missing, their parents received a brown box in the mail.

Nowhere did any article indicate what they contained.

Frowning, I jotted a few notes, ending with:
What was inside?

“Shoes.”

The word, the unnaturally quiet voice, went through me like a raw current. I twisted around to find him lounging behind me, those long bangs of his against his eyes but failing to hide the shadows.

I wasn’t sure how he’d found me. I hadn’t told a soul I planned to spend lunch in the library.
“What?”

“What was returned to their parents,” Chase said. “Their shoes.”

ELEVEN

Their shoes?

The words hung between us, a sobering reminder of all that lay at stake. Only the drone of the overhead lights broke the silence, amplifying the stillness. I’d seen the librarian when I walked inside the dimly lit building, but not since I’d sat down twenty minutes before.

I wanted to look away, to tear my eyes from Chase’s and glance toward the shelves of books and clusters of empty tables, but I could no more have moved than I could shove away the awful image of a parent receiving their child’s shoes in the mail.

“That’s so messed up,” I whispered. “Who would do that?”

His mouth flattened into a hard line. “Like you said—someone seriously messed up.”

The thought made my stomach twist.

“Psychopaths don’t feel what we feel,” he said, glancing beyond me, to the newspaper article on the screen of my laptop. “When my mom worked for the D.A., there was this case…” For a second, he seemed to go somewhere else. “It messed her up for a long time,” he said. “For sickos like them it’s all about the challenge. The game.”

I cringed, hating that he was right. The box with the shoes had been the last either set of parents had heard or seen of their daughters.