Heidi Beck
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all. Perhaps my childhood room had been teeming with ghosts after all, but I didn’t have the power to see them. All that energy, all that fear, had been wasted. Just as it would be wasted now, if I let myself fall prey to superstition.
I worked doggedly until closing time. There was plenty to do. But when it was time to go, I could not turn out the lights and leave. Even though I knew she was not really there, still I hesitated.
There must be a way to test what Kayla said she saw. I was Olivia’s mother after all. Why should I not be able to communicate with my daughter if she was there? Why else would she be there except to be with me?
I thought about digging out the yellow pages, and looking for a psychic, but I had always mistrusted the ones I had seen on television, and I did not want to be one of those foolish souls clutching at anyone who would tell them what they wanted to hear about their dead. I did not want to give someone else that kind of power over me, did not want the desperation in me tapped and released.
No, I decided, I would try a method of my own devising. No one would know. I would maintain ownership of my foolishness.
I walked to the children’s section, tripping clumsily on a stone mushroom. “Damn.” My voice echoed loudly in the shop. Would I have used such language if Olivia were there? “Darn.”
She had been looking at the Flower Fairies book with Kayla. I stared down at it, still on the little table where it had been left by Kayla and then by me. Had Olivia turned the pages herself? Or was she unable to manipulate her environment? Feeling stupid, I wrote her a note, telling her to do something, anything, to the paper if she would like to talk to me, that I would find a way.
Of course the note had not moved by the morning. In the cold light of day it seemed pathetic, lying there on the table, written in clear dark letters that a child could easily read. But when I picked it up and crumpled it quickly, I felt as if a cold breeze had whispered by me. I looked up, expecting the door to be open and the chimes to shudder, but it was closed and silent. The sensation was no doubt the result of my own overwrought imaginings. The only cold I felt then was the self-pitying trickle of a tear running down my cheek.
That night, before I left, I opened a pack of tarot cards. They were fairy-themed. I stocked them in the shop but had never used them. Rifling through the deck, I was unsure what they could tell me, or how they could connect me with my daughter. The images of gnomes and sprites and pixies did not speak to me and I did not see how Olivia could speak to me through them. But several slid out of my hands onto the floor. The first one I picked up said “Death.”
It frightened me and I put the cards away.
Why did I feel fear when I tried to find Olivia? Kayla was not frightened. Clio did not seem frightened for her. Why should it seem fearful, to try to keep her company? Wasn’t this somehow what I had wanted all along?
“Forgive me if you are here, Olivia, because I cannot see you.” I whispered this, but I didn’t really believe I was talking to her. If I did I would never be able to leave the shop.
When I did finally go, the door seemed to resist closing and locking, or maybe it was just my clumsy cold fingers struggling with the keys.