“Amanda Lee?”
I wanted to shake her, but then she blinked, leaned forward, her breathing harsh. She could only shake her head, gasp for oxygen.
Out of pure worry, I did the last thing she’d wanted me to do. Automatically, I touched her, only meaning to try and ghost-heal or something. To do whatever I could to help her.
But that’s not what happened at all.
Because of the visceral car crash, her defenses were down for a splinter of time. At even a slight touch, I zoomed right in.
For the first time ever, I crashed through the black wall she’d erected around her emotions, just like I was bursting through a bank of dark ice.
In my empathy, the whir of her thoughts circled my vision. It was like she was in shock from the car accident. She’d brushed right by death, and moments of remorse had taken her over.
Standing over a grave, touching the headstone.
Thinking of blond hair, blue eyes, a secret smile that said, “Someday they’ll all know.”
Thinking of the one voice that had mattered more than anyone else’s before it’d been silenced.
Her voice…
Unlike most times when I’d been jarred out of a human, this exit was slow, like I had lost heart and was trudging away from the person who’d taken it.
Numb once again, I hovered over Amanda Lee, waiting for her to tell me why she’d been lying to me about knowing Elizabeth Dalton.
11
After a few minutes, Amanda Lee let her hand fall away from her chest.
She was still shaking. “I’m going to guess that you know.”
I wanted answers too much to fly off the handle. “You were friends with Elizabeth?”
She sent me a lowered glance, like she was trying to puzzle out just how much I’d gleaned from my empathy. There was a bit of accusation there, too, but she wouldn’t dare chide me for accidentally going where I shouldn’t have gone with her.
Instead, she merely rubbed her arms, probably still cold from my empathy. “I should have been sure about what I was doing. Should have waited for a vision or feeling to tell me that this exercise wouldn’t get out of control. I knew you were trustworthy, but that obviously wasn’t enough. I was too eager. You’re important to me, and I wanted to see that you were going to be okay during intense hallucinations.”
“This isn’t an explanation I’m hearing.” My tone was so even-keeled that I barely realized it was my own.
She was still quaking. So was her voice. “I was going to tell you everything.” Then she swallowed. “Eventually.”
My laugh was cutting, electric blades. “You’re just going to talk in circles, aren’t you?”
“I…” She let out a beaten sigh. “You have to understand. I was so afraid you’d leave me. I didn’t want you to think that I was too close to this case, that I lacked perspective.” Her gaze was devastated. “You’re the only one I have in all this, Jensen.”
The only ghost.
The only friend?
“Jon,” I said. “He doesn’t exist. You don’t have a friend who asked you to look into Elizabeth’s murder for him.”
She shook her head.
My ghost-heart began to crack, especially as she stayed on her knees, just like she was about to beg me to understand.
I thought of that photograph Jon had been in. The dignified older man, the way he’d been standing next to Elizabeth.
“But I saw that picture of him with her,” I said.
“He was her last cousin, and he passed away two years ago. They were at a wedding, and I found the picture in her private effects after she died. She… left what she had at my house. There was no one else to claim her belongings.”
Something I’d heard in Amanda Lee’s thoughts rushed back to me.
“‘Someday they’ll all know,’” I repeated. “That’s what Elizabeth told you once. What does that even mean?”
Amanda Lee turned her face up to me again, and in the moonlight, I could see in her the greatest pain a person could have. Heartbreak.
It took me a second. Maybe two. Then…
Oh.
Her eyes got misty. “We met online. A book readers’ club. She loved mysteries, so did I, and we started up a friendship. I’ve told you I’m not one to get out much. I always find myself lying to people about my abilities because they never understand them—they’re always a joke. ‘Can you tell me my future?’ ‘Can you use your divine powers to tell us who Jack the Ripper was?’ It never stops.” Her voice had gone too hoarse, so she had to take a moment. Then, “It’s so much easier to keep to the house, to the computer, where you don’t feel that you have as much responsibility to another person as you would if you met face-to-face.”
Her smile wobbled. “But Liz was such a force of nature, so easy to talk to and so persuasive, that I wanted to come out of my shell. I told myself, just this once, I would give friendship a try. And we met for coffee nearby. Much to my surprise, coffee turned into dinner. And it went from there.”
My head was swimming with questions, most of which were probably too indelicate to ask.
So I played dumb. “You’re telling me that you’re out to get justice for your best friend, then.”
Amanda Lee gave me a look that could’ve been pity for my naïveté.
See, when I was alive, I didn’t know anyone who was a homosexual. They were people on TV who protested against politicians because of their stance on AIDS. They were the focus of jokes in movies and from kids who lisped and minced around for a laugh.
Amanda Lee was right—I was knocked for a loop.
“You come from a different time,” she said, no doubt vibing what I was thinking. “I told you that I withheld the truth about knowing Liz because I didn’t want you to think I was too close to this case. But I also wasn’t sure what you would think of me after you found out that we were…”
She couldn’t even say it.
“Someday they’ll all know.”
Was she more afraid of what I would’ve thought about her relationship with Elizabeth, or was she more fearful of saying it out loud?
“You and Elizabeth never told anyone?” I asked.
“No. Neither of us was ready to come out. This was a first for us.”
She was still gauging how I was taking the news. Truthfully, I was still digesting it.
“Were you afraid of how other people would treat you?” I asked.
“I was.” Amanda Lee wiped a hand over her face. “Lord knows why. I don’t have a family left who would care. And my neighbors? Hardly. I wasn’t ready to admit who I was. Liz was closer to that point, though. She wanted to reveal everything to the world.”
Amanda Lee had been ashamed of being in love with another woman. And now she was ashamed of that shame.
How awful. I was still wary of her and her lies, but I felt sorry for her, too.
Even in my frustration with Amanda Lee, I made an attempt to make her feel better about Elizabeth, at least. “It sounds like she loved you a lot.”
She pressed her lips together, nodding. The soft part of me wanted to put my hand on her again, to comfort her, but I knew I would just make her cold.
When she was ready to talk again, she said, “Liz didn’t even care that I was older than she was. And she accepted everything about me—my shut-in tendencies, my out-of-the-ordinary abilities. But it seems those psychic talents didn’t help her in the end. They didn’t show me what would happen that night.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” I said flatly.
Her eyes were red now as she fixed a gaze on me. “Oh, I know very well whose fault it was. And when Liz told him that she’d broken up with him to be with another woman, he flew off the handle. He ultimately showed her well and good that he wouldn’t ever stand for being cast aside, especially in this way. His manhood couldn’t take it.”