Page 32 of Solstice

“Thanks, Jason.”

He wandered into the kitchen with their cocoa cups, blowing out candles on the way. Dori went to the machine and poked the button.

“Hi, Doreen. This is your old boss, Marie Brown, from Mason-Walcott. We’ve acquired another publishing company and we’d like to offer you a position—as publisher. You’d be making significantly more than you were the last time you worked for us, but we have to hear from you soon. Call me and we’ll discuss the details.”

Dori stood there staring at the machine as Marie’s voice recited her telephone number. “Wow,” Jason said.

She jumped, because she’d been so distracted, she hadn’t heard him come up behind her, and turned to face him. He had two fresh mugs of cocoa in his hands, and a sad look in his eyes. “This is what you’ve been waiting for, isn’t it? The job offer of your dreams?”

She nodded slowly.

“So, you’re going to take it?”

“I don’t—Jason, I don’t—”

He shook his head and bent to set the mugs down. “Don’t. It’s okay. I get it.” He walked past her to scoop up his pile of clothes from the floor.

“No, you don't get it. Goddess, one minute you’re telling me all these things I never knew, and the next minute I get what I thought I always wanted handed to me. My mind is still spinning. Can’t you even give me time to sort this out?”

He looked at her, and the emotion in his eyes was so powerful it made her throat close up. He looked heartbroken. As if he already knew what her decision would be. But he didn’t say that. Instead, he gave her a sad smile, came to her, touched her face. “Sure I can, Dori.” Leaning closer, he kissed her cheek. “I’m gonna clear out of here, let you sleep on all of this. Okay?”

She swallowed hard. “Okay.” Walking with him to the door, Dori found herself fighting the ridiculous impulse to throw her arms around him and beg him to stay. But she couldn’t do that to him. Not until she figured things out.

He stomped into his boots, pulled on his coat, opened the door.

“Good night, Jason.”

“Goodbye, Dori.”

Then he was gone.

Chapter Nine

Dori didn’t go to sleep. She turned off the lights and sat in front of the fire, staring into the flames and searching them for help.

What had she lost by leaving the city? Money, yes, she’d lost a lot of that. Friends? Well, maybe not. Friends weren’t friends if they vanished so easily. She’d sold her precious crystal ball. But the Witches of old hadn’t needed four-hundred-dollar gazing balls to see into the future. They hadn’t needed much at all. A bowl of water. A dark mirror. A leaping flame.

She relaxed her mind, let her vision blur, her body go slack. She focused her thoughts on her life, her future; saw herself picking up the phone and returning Marie’s call; heard herself accepting the offer; and let herself sink into the future.

The images came floating like bits of a dream, one following another. A beautiful apartment. A new Mercedes. Respect and admiration. The Wiccan community gathering around her once again. It all seemed lovely. Except that in each of those flashes, she saw herself alone. She saw the longing in her eyes, the loneliness. The same heartsick loneliness she’d been feeling since she’d come back here—no, for even longer than that. She felt herself wishing she were somewhere else. With someone else.

Drawing a breath, she closed her mind to the visions, cleared them away and began again. This time she started by clearly visualizing herself phoning Marie and refusing the offer. It was a difficult visualization to manage—saying no to something for which she had been waiting an entire year. But then she relaxed again, and again the images came to her. Stubbornly, slowly. But they came.

She saw herself on the boat in the summer, taking tourists around the lake, telling them all Uncle Gerald’s old Champ stories. Smiling. She saw herself expanding the business, adding an inn, maybe a restaurant, a bigger gift shop. And smiling. And in every picture that came, Jason was with her.

She saw him sitting across a candlelit table from her, at Sister Krissie’s Bar and Grill, the best restaurant in Crescent Cove, holding her hand. And she nearly gasped at the matching gold bands they wore. She saw him get up and come around the table, lowering his hand to rest it on her belly—a belly that was huge and round and filled with new life.

Dori gasped and her body went rigid. The visions faded.

She tried to ground and center but couldn’t quite make it work. But she did know one thing. There had been no sense of loneliness in that second vision. No sadness in her eyes. There had been bliss, pure joyful bliss.

She reached for the phone, snatched it up and dialed Jason’s number.

His voice, when he answered, wasn’t sleepy. Maybe he’d been lying awake, too? He didn’t say, “Hello,” he said. “Dori?”

“Come back, Jason. Please, come back to me.”

There was the briefest pause. Then he said, “I’m on my way.”

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