Desire in Frost (4 page)

Teddy and Robin returned. I could see Teddy stealing glances at me in the rearview mirror every so often as we drove. All I could see were his eyes, but I could still tell he was frowning. Each time I looked at Robin, he met my gaze with a scowl. At first, I almost thought he was mad at me, too, but it was so hard to tell with Robin.

Emma and I texted for a while, but I didn’t tell her about what had happened. I felt reserved about the whole situation mostly because I was mad at myself about being misguided by my abilities. For the most part, texting Emma helped take my mind off it even though we didn’t talk about anything important—and I liked it that way. It was an easy way to escape my worries. After a while, she had to go, and I was once again left alone with my thoughts.

Relief overcame me when we finally arrived at Teddy’s parents’ that evening. I could get out of the confined car and away from the scrutinizing glances—and perhaps clear my mind.

Teddy’s parents’ house was a quaint one-story home with the sand literally at their back door. A woman with salt and pepper hair and a big smile emerged from the house. She rushed toward us with her arms wide open as we all piled out of the car. Teddy embraced the woman and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

“Teddy,” she smiled. “I’m so happy to see you!” She turned to me since I was closest to her. “You must be Crystal,” she said. I expected her to shake my hand or something, but instead, she pulled me into a hug. “You can call me Gail. Oh, and Robin!” She circled around to the other side of the car to greet her grandson, leaving me a mere split second to react.

A half smile formed across my face. Gail’s upbeat emotions and cheerful grin felt like a refreshing shift to my otherwise depressing day.

“Crystal,” Teddy said, pulling me to full attention. His voice was soft again, but I could still hear a hint of something in it that told me he wasn’t over what had happened earlier. I turned back toward him and found an older man standing next to him. “This is my dad, Wayne.”

I forced a smile. “Hi.”

And then he hugged me, too. Wayne and Gail greeted my mother for the first time, and then they led us into their home for the grand tour, which wasn’t much because it was only a two bedroom house. Mom and Teddy were going to stay in the guest room while Robin would sleep on the couch, Gail explained.

“Where do I stay?” I asked.

Gail led me to an enclosed porch at the rear of the house. “I hope this will do,” she said kindly.

I looked around. The porch was small, but it was decorated tastefully with shell picture frames and a matching clock. The air was warm, and I could hear the waves crashing against the shore just out the window. There was an air mattress set up for me, which practically took up the whole porch, but I was happy to have my privacy.

“I love it,” I told her in all honestly.

After we unpacked the car, Gail called us to the kitchen for dinner. I sat next to Robin and breathed in the sweet aroma of freshly baked dinner rolls.

Once we were all settled in our spots and we’d said grace, Teddy cleared his throat. “Mom, Dad,” he addressed. All eyes turned to him in anticipation. I watched his face twist into a nervous expression just like the night he asked my mom to marry him. “I have some big news.” He paused. He wrapped an arm around my mother and looked deep into her eyes.

Her gaze met his, and they locked onto each other. I loved seeing them together like that. It made me feel warm inside knowing that this was a part of my family. Teddy’s soft expression made it seem like he was less worried about what had happened earlier, and that helped calm me down, if only slightly.

The room went quiet for several long moments while Mom and Teddy exchanged a silent conversation—the kind I still wasn’t completely able to decipher myself.

My mother finally broke their stare and shouted in excitement, “We’re getting married!” Then she extended her left hand and showed her ring to Gail and Wayne. I noticed Robin sneak a glance at it, too.

Gail leapt from her chair and said something in such a high pitch that I couldn’t quite understand her. She hugged both of them. Excitement emanated from the room as each face around the table filled in with a smile. I smiled at the announcement, too, even though I was there when Teddy proposed.

I twisted the owl pendant he had given me at the time around my fingers and thought back to that night. I liked how things could be so simple at times. Wayne and Gail asked a lot of questions of my mom, and she told them about her shop, Divination, only she left out the part about some of the things being useful to real psychics. We then talked about the wedding as we ate, and I let the happiness of the moment sink into my heart, hoping to keep this moment in my mind as I faced the inevitable trials of my psychic powers.

***

After we cleared our dishes, I finally found a moment alone with my mother. “Do you want to walk down to the beach with me?” I asked, hoping she would get the hint and accept my offer.

She smiled in reply.

My mother followed me down the stairs that led to the beach. I sat beside her in the sand and dug my exposed toes into it. Neither of us spoke for a long time. I grabbed a handful of sand and watched it fall through my fingers and back to the earth. Silence stretched between us as I mentally worked up the courage to confide in her.

“Mom,” I finally spoke, but I didn’t meet her gaze. “Have you ever used your abilities to help someone? I mean, to really help someone, like I did with Kelli and Olivia?”

“Oh, sweetheart,” she said sympathetically, running a hand down through my blonde hair. “Is this about Hope? You’re afraid you’re not doing enough to help her, right?”

I knew my mother was intuitive, but she’d also told me that her psychic visions and feelings didn’t work with her family members. That’s how I knew she was speaking out of her motherly instinct, the one that taught her to understand me so well and to pick up on my emotions in a snap. I didn’t always like when people could read my moods because it made it hard to lie, but at times like this, I was grateful my mother knew me well enough to understand me.

I lifted my head to look into her eyes. “That’s just it, Mom. I haven’t done
anything
to help her. I mean, I know I should use my gift to help people and everything, but it’s just, sometimes I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“I know, sweetie.” She ran a hand down my head again the way she always does when she’s trying to comfort me. “Believe it or not, I do know how you feel. I’ve been called on to help people in the past, too.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. At least I wasn’t in this alone. “Really?” I asked, almost in admiration. My mom had been helping me over the past few weeks alongside Emma as I discovered more about my abilities, but only now did I realize that I didn’t know that much about hers. I knew she could see pieces of the future and that she could find things through touch, but she hadn’t told me much about her past as a psychic. Suddenly, I wanted to know.

“Who have you helped?” I asked.

“A few people,” she answered vaguely.

Now I only felt like she was making me beg for information. “Like who? And how did you help them?” Maybe if I knew more about the people she’d helped, I could understand better how to help Hope and anyone else who came along.

“There was this guy once,” she explained. “I had a dream—a vision—that he was going to die. For the longest time, I never knew what my dream meant. I didn’t even know the guy at the time. In the end, my dream helped save his life.”

I smiled at the thought that my mom was a real hero. Maybe I could be a real hero to Hope, too.

“Was it hard for you, you know, when you found out you were psychic?” I asked.

“That’s where I have some regrets,” she admitted. “You know my mom didn’t have the gift but my grandma did. My grandma had always spoken to me about it, so when I started realizing that I had it, it wasn’t completely confusing. My mom hated my grandma. I think she felt left out that my grandma and I were both psychic and she wasn’t.”

She sighed and then continued. “So I always thought it had skipped you like it skipped my mom. I didn’t want to have an awful relationship with you like my mom and grandma did, and I wanted you to live a normal life. But now that I know you have the gift, I regret never telling you about it.”

She’d mentioned this to me before, but she’d never delved into so much detail.

“I’m trying to be there for you as much as I can, sweetheart, but if there’s one thing I remember when I was growing up, it’s that I needed my space a lot of the time to think things through, so I’m trying to give that to you.” Her hand came to grip mine in comfort. “But to answer your initial question, yes, it was hard for me, too.”

I let this information sit in my mind for a minute, and then I moved onto a new question. “Have you ever saved someone who was abducted or kidnapped?” I asked, hoping her insight could help me here.

“Kidnapped? No, I haven’t.” She paused for a moment. “But with my experience, I’ve learned that psychic abilities can work in mysterious ways. You’ll see what you need to see when you need to see it.”

I thought about this for a second. “I don’t know, Mom. Like you said before, maybe I’m just missing something. Maybe I’m supposed to be seeing something, but I’m just not. It gets really hard sometimes. Like tonight around the dinner table, everything was so happy and simple, and then the happy moment ended and my thoughts drifted back to Hope. And I feel I’m working myself up over something I have no control over, but at the same time, I feel guilty if I’m not worrying about her.”

“Sweetie, I know you’re scared, but the best advice I can give you is to stop worrying so much, face your abilities head-on, and wait for the answers to come. You can’t control when or how you’ll get answers, but you can control how you interpret them and use the information.”

With that, my mother kissed me on the forehead and left me sitting on the beach alone. I could tell she left me so her last statement could sink in. So I let it.

Stop worrying so much
. I repeated my mother’s advice in my head while I walked back up the stairs to the house. I decided I needed something to take my mind off everything psychic related to actually make this possible. Just then, I spotted Robin exiting the back porch and coming my way. I figured a little criticism and snarky comments from him might do the trick. Or maybe there’d be enough human left in him that we could actually enjoy each other’s company.

“Hey,” I greeted.

To my surprise, Robin actually smiled at me in response.

“Where are you headed?” I asked.

“Actually,” he said, running his hand through his hair, “I came out here looking for you. I don’t really know what happened earlier today, but you seemed pretty upset about it. I just wanted to make sure you were still okay.”

I almost fell back down the stairs I’d just walked up. Robin was concerned about me?

“I am okay,” I assured him. “Want to . . . I don’t know . . . walk down the beach or something?” I didn’t understand why I couldn’t formulate my words correctly or why I wouldn’t meet his gaze.

“Sure,” he said, once again taking me off guard.

“So,” I started when we finally reached the sand. “I, uh, saw you texting a lot on our way down here. Is that, like, your girlfriend or something?” Why was I asking him this? I wasn’t actually interested if he was single or not, was I? Or maybe I was just wondering because if I found out he was single, it would probably give him an excuse for being so bitter because, you know, he didn’t have anyone to keep him company.

He laughed. “Or something.”

Oh. So he did have a love interest.

“And you?” he asked. “You’ve been texting your boyfriend, too?”

I laughed so loud it was almost embarrassing. I quickly snapped my jaw tight. “Me? A boyfriend? No. That’s just Emma and Derek. They’re my best friends.”

“Derek, huh?” Robin said in thought. “So you two aren’t — “

“No!” I practically shouted. “I mean, I think he kind of has a thing for me, but I know Emma likes him. I could never date a guy my best friend likes.” I tucked a strand of stray hair behind my ear.

We both went silent for a few moments until I spoke. “Don’t you think the ocean is really pretty here?” The sun was already setting, but there was just enough light to enjoy the scenery.

He gazed out on the water. “Yeah, it is really pretty.”

“I kind of want to stick my toes in it. Do you think it’s cold?” I crossed ahead of him and approached the water. A small wave crashed at my feet. I squealed. “Yes, it’s cold!”

Robin laughed from behind me.

“Aren’t you going to stick your feet in?” I asked.

I glanced back at him only to notice that he was wearing long pants and still had his socks and shoes on. His sweatshirt hung unzipped around his shoulders. He shook his head. “No, I’m okay.”

“You don’t like the feeling of sand in your toes?” I asked, playfully digging my feet into the white powder that lined the beach.

Robin shrugged. “It’s okay, I guess. Just not for me.”

We walked along the beach until we couldn’t quite see Wayne and Gail’s house anymore. We eventually hit a pier next to a park, and lights from nearby houses illuminated our way until we made it to the end. We dangled our feet off the side and sat mostly in silence as we watched lights glitter off the water.

“This is nice,” Robin said. Something about his tone seemed awkward, like he was forcing himself to be kind to me.

“Yeah,” I agreed because I didn’t know how else to respond. The hairs on my arms rose in response to the chilly air. I hadn’t realized how cold it would get as soon as the sun set. I was still dressed in the shorts and t-shirt I wore on our way down here.

“You look cold,” Robin pointed out.

I nodded. “I’ll be fine, though.”

“Are you sure? Because you can have my sweatshirt if you want it.” He was already shrugging it off his shoulders before I could refuse.

I eyed him as he held it out to me, not daring to touch it.

“What?” he asked.

“Why are you being so nice? You’ve, like, never been nice to me.”

He sighed. “I’m not being nice. Just put the sweatshirt on.”

I didn’t know where in his world he thought sharing his sweatshirt with me didn’t constitute as “nice,” but I couldn’t reject his insistence. I took it and wrapped it around my shoulders, comforted slightly by its fresh smell.

We didn’t talk about anything important while we sat there, and I was surprised that he hadn’t asked more about what happened earlier. Eventually, we figured we should head back. At the house, we went our separate ways. It was only when I was crawling into bed that I realized Robin
had
taken my mind off Hope, if only briefly.

***

I opened my eyes to a room full of people. I wasn’t sure how I got there. Practically everyone was dressed in black, and a few people were crying. I spun around to take in the scene. Chairs were lined up in rows on each side of the room, and I was standing along the center aisle. Almost every chair was taken. My eyes moved toward the front of the room, and that’s when I saw a casket sitting there. It was closed and had a flower wreathe sitting on top of it.

For a moment, my breath caught in my chest as I thought about my father. And then I saw the picture of
him
, the man with green eyes who I saw in the mirror earlier that day. It was positioned near the casket and nearly took my breath away.

Oh. My. God,
I thought, fixing my eyes on the photo. A strange vibe called to me from behind, willing me to look away. I turned slowly to investigate what exactly was tingling my senses. A woman with tears in her eyes sat in the back row. Her large red bun and black hat seemed to conceal the source of my feeling until she shifted and I spotted the man I was sure the strange vibe was coming from. His eyes were dark under his brows, and his hair was cropped short. My breath actually left my chest this time when I realized he was the same man in the picture Teddy had shown to the desk attendant at our motel.

His eyes shifted and focused on something toward the front of the room. I followed his gaze, and I had to swallow a lump in my throat before I could start breathing again. My eyes fell upon a little girl with short brown hair and big chocolate eyes who was fidgeting at the front of the room. For a moment, I was dumbfounded, completely paralyzed.

I regained as much composure as I could—which honestly wasn’t much given the circumstances. “Hope!” I tried to say to get her attention, only nothing came out.

Suddenly, I understood what was going on. This was Hope’s dad’s funeral. The ghost I saw in the mirror and at the gas station was her dad, Scott, not Hope’s abductor. And the man in the back was her uncle Jeff. I looked back at him again, studying his face. His eyes were still fixed on Hope.

“What did you do to her?” I wanted to shout, only there still wasn’t any sound. No one reacted to my being there, but I already knew they wouldn’t since I was looking into the past. But I didn’t care. I was too overcome with anger and frustration. I clenched my hands into fists, and my body shook in rage. All I wanted to do was find Hope, and now I was staring into the eyes of her abductor. I was sure of it. That must have been what Scott came to warn me about—about his brother.

But I still needed answers. “Where is she?” I said, quietly at first to myself. Then, even though I knew no one would respond in a dream, I gritted my teeth and shouted the question at the top of my lungs.

A blood curdling scream tore me from my vision and jolted me awake. The scream continued, and only then did I realize it was my own.

My mom and Teddy rushed into the room.

I covered my face in embarrassment. I had never awoke from one of my nightmares screaming so loud and terrified like that before. Or was it anger? I couldn’t fight it. A sob broke from my chest, and then suddenly, I was bawling into my hands. I curled my knees to my chest. My mother knelt beside my air mattress and wrapped her arms around me. Footsteps echoed outside the room just before Wayne and Gail hurried in to see what was wrong.

“Is she okay?” Gail asked.

“She’ll be fine.” I could still somehow hear Teddy’s whispers over my sobs. “She just gets nightmares. It’s fine. You can go back to bed. We’ll handle it.”

“Poor thing,” Wayne said before he left.

Teddy closed the door to give the three of us privacy. I felt the mattress shift when he sat down and rubbed my shoulder for comfort. Even though I was crying, I was glad he was back to his sympathetic self.

My breath came in shallow heaves at first, but when I regained control of my body, I inhaled a deep breath to calm myself. “He took her,” I finally said.

“Who, sweetie?” my mother asked. “Who took her?”

“Jeff,” I said. “At the funeral, he was watching her. He was planning something. I just know it.” I couldn’t be wrong again. I just
couldn’t
.

“Well,” Teddy said, “he
was
our main suspect.” I could hear it in his tone that he was forcing himself not to add,
But he’s already been cleared
.

I took another few deep breaths to ease my cries. “I’m sorry to worry you guys.”

“No, it’s okay. We don’t mind, Kiddo,” Teddy assured me. “When you feel you have something you need to talk about, you know you can come to either of us, right?”

I met his gaze and nodded. I knew he was being honest with me, but I still wasn’t sure how much he trusted my latest instinct. “Yeah, I know that. I just—there’s no reason to worry you. The vision wasn’t all that scary anyway. I think I was more angry than anything.”

Mom and Teddy stayed to console me for quite some time, and then they said their goodnights and headed back toward their bedroom. I knew they were going to discuss the incident in private. Knowing they were just on the other side of the wall from me, I took advantage of this. I pressed my ear to the wall. Through muffled whispers, the only thing I could make out was Teddy saying, “My gut is still telling me it wasn’t Jeff.”

I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to trust my own intuition or his.