Talking bones, p.13
Talking Bones, page 13
“Yes.” She nodded. “If you continue to pursue this new life, your name will get linked with all kinds of weird and wonderful scenarios that will make the business world extremely uncomfortable.”
He nodded. “That’s what he’s afraid of.”
“And it’s justified,” she agreed. “So, ultimately it’s up to you and how you choose to live your life. Most people who go through something like your accident and then subsequent healing go through a life-changing reassessment of how they want to live. I can’t say that what you’re doing is anything different than what I would expect.”
“That’s what I tried to explain to my brother, but he just wasn’t hearing it.”
“So, you need to finish this deal and be done with it.”
He smiled. “Isn’t it nice to think of everything in such simple terms?”
“Life isn’t simple at all,” she argued. “I find it to be messy, dirty, and dark. Sometimes it can be fascinating and fun and enlivening, but it is never, ever simple.”
He burst out laughing. “You’re certainly not simple.”
“I’m a hell of a lot simpler than Dr. Maddy.”
“I don’t know,” he countered. “Talking to her wasn’t anything like trying to talk to you.”
She shrugged. “Why should it be?” she murmured. “I’m staying in the shadows, while Dr. Maddy is well and truly out in the public forum. She has done incredibly well for herself—and not just for herself,” she admitted. “Everything she does is for others. That selflessness is really what has made her so incredibly popular.”
“And she doesn’t have that same stigma?”
*
“She did when she first started out, but her results are—” She stopped and considered her words. “It’s people like her who validate us. I’ll put it that way. Everything she does seems like it’s been touched with gold. She’s had losses of course. She’s had people choose to cross over, even though she’d done everything she could to keep them on this side. But, as she will tell you, once people make that choice, it is truly out of her hands. She can’t do anything about it then. But trying to explain it to the families is a whole different story because then they feel this horrible guilt that, if they could have been there or could have done something way different, something better, it might have made that other person want to stay.
“We don’t always understand the journey of our soul, what it is that our souls are here to do, and what lessons we may have come for. Maybe it was a quick hop, and they wanted to get out in, say, eight years, and so they took this lifetime so they were done, gone, and dead within so many short years. But we don’t know any of that from the outset. It all makes people very leery, and, since Dr. Maddy can save so many, they all want to know why she can’t save their loved ones too.”
“I never thought of a soul not wanting to be saved.”
“Your friend didn’t want to be saved,” she stated bluntly.
Gage sucked in his breath and stared.
“I told you that before—and about the fight that you had with him. I’m pretty sure he thought you should go with him.”
“And that may be true, and he was really angry. But I would hate to think that anger would have translated into a desire to kill me.”
She snorted. “You do realize that love and hate are two sides of the same coin?”
He tilted his head. “I hope you don’t mean love in the way that it sounded like you meant it.”
“I definitely do,” she stated. “Did you not know?”
“Know what?” He stared at her, and she watched, as the color shifted and slowly drained away from his face. “You really didn’t know he loved you, did you?”
He slowly shook his head. “No idea, not in that way,” he added carefully.
“Well, for a lot of people, there is no that way,” she noted. “Love is love, and, whether or not it results in a physical relationship, doesn’t really matter.”
He took a long slow breath, his gaze both horrified and fascinated, as he stared at her. “You’re just guessing about that, right?”
“Meaning, am I actually talking to him and getting confirmation about how he felt about you? No, I’m not talking to him directly,” she confirmed, “but there is guilt all over your energy.”
He shook his head. “No, that’s because I lived, because I survived, and he didn’t.”
“Yes, and because, deep inside, you knew that he wanted more from you than you could give. Isn’t that what the argument was about?”
He frowned. “You know what? I don’t even remember most of what we were arguing about. It seems stupid now. I think it was about an old relationship and business.”
“Exactly.” She nodded. “An old relationship and business. He was a business partner too, wasn’t he?”
“Yes.” Gage frowned. “He definitely was.”
“And is his estate cleaned up?” she asked curiously.
He looked at her and shook his head. “No, not really, it’s all tied up with lawyers.”
“Why?”
“Something to do with my business and the fact that he basically left me everything, even though he had a wife, although they were separated, they were working it out.”
Skylar smiled, as she nodded. “And yet a separated wife hasn’t got the same punch as a longtime best friend, does it?” When he remained silent, she added, “And because she thinks you might have had something to do with his death, is that it?”
“I imagine she does,” he guessed, “but then she’s always been after his money, so I don’t think any of the reasons why I might be fighting against her lawsuit, or the will for that matter, would make any difference to her. … She got a hell of a life insurance settlement, millions in fact.”
“The more people have, the more they want,” Skylar noted automatically. “Particularly if she’s always been jealous because she couldn’t compete with you for Linden’s affections.”
“What? No, it was never like that.”
“Not for you perhaps, but it could have been for him. And that would certainly explain her ill will toward you and the feeling that you owe her.”
He winced. “Is everybody so greedy?” he asked, as he stared at Skylar in instant dismay. “Is there really no such thing as honor and virtue left in this world?” He felt sick and terribly confused.
She looked at him and pinned him in place. “You tell me. Did you have any?”
“Yes. I did. I do. I will.” He stared at her and frowned. “It’s like there’s this old world and the new world.”
“Well, there definitely is this old world within the new world. There’s before your accident and after the accident. You’ve changed. You don’t have any choice, and you’ll be much more aware of all that now because of Maddy.”
He stared. “What does Maddy have to do with this?”
“Because you’re now connected, and Maddy can only function at the level that she functions at if she comes from a completely pure space of love. And now that you have that Dr. Maddy energy inside you, the corporate business world really won’t suit you.”
She watched as Gage slowly sagged into the single chair she kept in her store.
“Good God,” he murmured. “So that’s why I feel like we need to be more philanthropic and should be giving away more money and helping those who need it?” he asked. “My brother is beside himself because I keep talking about sharing more.”
“Of course he is. He doesn’t have the same new mind-set that you have, and, for that, you should be grateful for Maddy because, although she is part of the reason why you’re here with us still, it wouldn’t be happening unless you really wanted it to. Of course now you care, whereas before you cared, but it was much more distant.”
He nodded. “I had no idea my life would take this kind of a flip.”
“And your brother didn’t either. He was only focused on keeping you alive, but that focus on keeping you alive will now be about trying to keep you from giving away all your money.”
“He already is,” he noted thoughtfully. “Who knew?”
“Well, at least now that you understand that aspect, when you get these urges,” she explained, “you’ll know to make sure that you’re dealing in reality. Dr. Maddy is very realistic, and she has a lot of businesses that she runs, only because it’s a fact of life that she has to have money to keep these centers open. She has to have the law on her side to keep lawsuits at bay. She has to keep the bureaucracy moving in her favor. Otherwise these centers shut down.”
He nodded slowly. “You don’t think about somebody with a gift like that dealing with those kinds of headaches, do you?”
“No, and she does have a solid team around her, but that’s not the same thing as what you’ll deal with, as you slowly acclimate to this new way of thinking.”
“And is it my way of thinking?” he asked. “Or am I taking on her beliefs and ideas instead of my own?”
“I think this is probably always who you were,” Skylar stated. “But I’m sure you probably worked at it and easily managed to keep it deep inside your psyche, so it wasn’t as prevalent. Were you always fighting your brother to give away money?”
“Yes, I was actually”—staring at her in surprise—“so I guess really all Maddy did was amplify it.”
“All she did was release it,” Skylar corrected quietly. “It’s not about amplification. You are who you are, but now you have a little bit of Maddy with you, and that won’t stay suppressed. So that little sprinkling of her energy just amplified those parts and pieces of you that already wanted to be more altruistic anyway.”
He sighed. “My brother won’t like this.”
“It doesn’t matter what your brother likes,” she stated. “Let him do his thing, and you do your thing, and make sure you have enough money to do what you want to do with your life, free of the constraints that you had before, which no longer fit. Those people from your old world and those pressures they add to your days will be on your shoulders for a little while, before you figure out how to get free of them all. But, at that point in time, when you actually realize what that freedom will be like, when you step into your true self,” she noted, “you’ll never go back.” His fascinated stare locked on her features as she threw up her hands. “Look. I’m just passing you information. Do with it what you will.”
“I will,” he agreed, “but that information is absolutely fascinating. I feel like I haven’t even lived before.”
“Well, you have, but now you’ve got a whole new world ahead of you,” she added, with the gentlest of tones. “Who you become will be something that’ll be interesting to watch.”
He slanted her a gaze. “Does that mean you’re okay to stay in touch?”
She shrugged. “I don’t really have a choice now.”
And then he got it. “Because of the other day, when you had to heal me, right?”
She nodded. “Correct.”
“Wow. All of a sudden I’ve collected this whole pile of people around me, without even meaning to.”
“And whether we particularly wanted it ourselves,” she noted, with a wry tone.
“I guess that’s another aspect that I didn’t consider either,” he murmured. “I do thank you for my life though.”
“And Dr. Maddy and apparently Stefan too,” she added, shaking her head. “When a lineup like that comes to you, it’s like a golden team. So you need to make sure you do everything you can to not squander that gift.”
“I hear you. But what about this entity that she mentioned may have come back with me?”
“If that actually happened, then you need to trust that she’ll find a solution for it,” Skylar stated.
Just then the door opened again, and she looked up to see the store filled with tourists. By the time she dealt with them, and the store had emptied out again, Gage was sitting beside the cash register, ringing up orders for her.
She looked at him, smiled. “You’re handier than I thought.”
In a humble voice with a twinkle in his eyes, he replied, “I aim to serve.”
She rolled her eyes at that. “Uh-huh.”
He pointed out the gyros sandwiches that he had slipped out at one point and picked up for them for lunch.
She smiled, snatched one up, and started eating. “At least you bring food,” she admitted, “and you do work when you’re here.”
He laughed. “I also went on a graveyard tour this morning.”
“Oh, how was that?”
“Interesting,” he replied, “but kind of flat.”
“Yeah, well, you won’t always get the private tour that you got last night,” she noted wryly.
“Do you go out every night?”
“Not every night,” she replied, “just whenever the call gets to be too strong to ignore.”
“Does Dr. Maddy and Stefan know what you do?”
She nodded. “Most of us who work in the ethers know about the others. We all stir energy, and energy that obviously gets stirred can impact them too. So, it’s important for them to keep track of what I’m doing, just as I understand that all this healing is happening over in her corner of the world,” she explained. “And should I ever need to be healed, that’s where I would be calling for help.”
“So, you really do have help, if you need it.”
“Yet I haven’t needed it to date,” she reminded him.
“I get that, and I do feel better to think that they would be there for you, should you ever need such a thing.”
“You have no idea,” she muttered.
He tilted his head, ready to ask more questions, but more tourists walked in. By the time they left, he was trying to bring up the subject again, but she wouldn’t bite. “What are you doing after work?” he asked.
“Hopefully going upstairs to crash.” She yawned. “I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep last night.”
“No, I didn’t either,” he shared. “I did try a couple drinks though.”
“Well, you might find booze affects your energy thereafter now too.”
“Yeah, I wondered,” he admitted. “I don’t drink much anyway, something else my brother never really approved of.”
She looked at him in surprise. “He actually wants you to drink?”
“It’s part of big business schmoozing,” he noted. “And being somebody who’s starting to pull back from that, it was just one more thing that bothered him.”
“Your brother needs to learn to let go.”
“No, I think, in this case, he probably just needs to learn to take over,” he said, with a smile.
“Are you okay with that?”
“I think so. I mean, I no longer want to do it, so I need somebody to do it instead, and he is the one who has been there and who understands the business more than most. So he would be a great CEO. However, I prefer to sell the company. So my brother could be the transition agent, although the company offering to buy ours will probably never offer him a permanent job, instead wanting all their own people in those positions instead.”
“Good, it sounds like a perfect solution then.” She stopped, then frowned and asked, “Does he have anything to do with this Jonesy business?”
“I have no idea. Well, he’s the one who tracked Jonesy to your shop,” he noted, “and that information came from a private investigator he had hired. And from Jonesy himself it seems, per the note in his jacket pocket, which the cops found.”
“Right, let’s never forget that Jonesy is a character in his own right.”
“And what the hell is with these stupid tarot cards?” he asked. “A lot of elements are here that are just getting very confusing.”
“That’s how it works,” she stated. “Lots of confusion and finally, if you’re lucky, some answers emerge.”
“And if there are no answers?”
“Then you live with the fact that you won’t get any answers, and that’s just the way life is,” she replied, “particularly in this field. Some people want to know why their loved one died, but there is no answer sometimes. Others insist on justice because somebody has been killed, yet there is no answer. There are just a lot of questions.”
“That’s the worst part, if you ask me,” he murmured.
She nodded. “It can be.”
“Have you ever tried to help anybody find answers?”
“Yes. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.” And, with that, she turned, then looked at him and said, “It’s time for you to disappear again.”
“Meaning, you’re no longer hungry?”
“Meaning, you’re a distraction, and I need to get to work.”
“Nobody’s in here.”
“No, but now I have to clean the place out,” she noted, “and your energy is part of what I need to clean out.”
His jaw dropped, but she shrugged. “People come in here because the energy is fresh and clean, and they always see new things because it’s not covered in the bits and pieces of everybody else’s energies,” she explained. “So, I clean the energy out of here on a regular basis. I’ve already done that once today, but it’s full again,” she stated crossly.
“I never heard of dusting energy before.” He chuckled at his own attempt at humor.
“That’s because you haven’t been around long enough in this new world.” She smiled. “Go find some touristy thing to do in the meantime.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He hopped to his feet and headed toward the door. Before he stepped outside, he turned and asked, “Are you okay to go out for dinner tonight?”
She looked at him. “Do you really not have any plans outside of sitting here and bugging me the whole time that you’re in New Orleans?”
“Well, at the moment, I’m thinking about relocating because this certainly seems to be more my kind of place.”
She stared at him, horrified, yet intrigued at the same time.
“And some of the people are definitely more my kind of people.” Then, with a wicked grin, he turned and left.
She wasn’t even sure what to say to that, but Thomas wouldn’t stay quiet about it for a single moment.
