Page 62 of Nothing Less than Magic
She closes her eyes again. “He’s there with you. Lights. I see shining lights. You’re walking.” She shakes her head. “Give me a second. I’ve lost it. Wait, wait, it’s back. He calls you by name.”
“He did. But so what? He saw my license. My name is printed right there on the front.”
Misty ignores me and continues to remain in her trancelike state or whatever she’s doing. “The man, the police officer. He knows your father. Christopher. Is that the officer’s name?”
“No, it was something that started with aJ.J. Toomey.” I remember, because I looked at the brass plate on his uniform. “My father’s name is Christopher. Chris. He went by Chris.”
“Ahh. Well, they know each other. Or knew.”
“How?” What are the chances that a cop in Ghost would know my late father, a former LAPD sergeant?
“I don’t know,” Misty says. She releases my hands and opens her eyes.
“If he knew my father, knew he was dead, why would he tell me to pass on my regards to him? It seems cruel, or at the very least, insensitive.” I’m still not buying it.
“He may not know that your father died.” She passes me the cheese platter, but who can eat at a time like this?
“I still believe it was a case of mistaken identity,” I say. “He thought I was a different Chelsea and mistook my dead father for the other Chelsea’s living one.”
“Perhaps.” But she’s just appeasing me, I can see it in her eyes, in her body language.
Yet, there’s the whole Christopher thing to work out. How would Misty know my father’s name, other than to have done a full vetting of me beforehand? Which is highly possible, but also highly unlikely.
“Shall we move on?” she says.
“Yes, let’s do Lolly now.” Because that’s what I really came for.
Misty swirls her wineglass and takes a sip. “I’ll see how far I get. But your sister is a puzzler. You, on the other hand, have opened up some. It’s the exercises. I’m sure of it.”
I’m not, but it won’t help my cause to contradict her, so I flash a wan smile.
She sees right through it, because she shakes her head. “I can tell you think so, too. Give me a little time to recuperate before we start in on your sister. Unfortunately, I’m not a machine.”
She gets up and begins doing these weird squats in the middle of the living room. Then ballet pliés. They’re rather good. Graceful.
“Did you used to be a dancer?” I ask.
“Not professionally. But I took a lot of classes.”
It’s then that I notice her flowy, stretchy yoga pants. For reasons I can’t pin down, they look familiar, like I’ve seen the print—a succession of dog paws—a dozen times before. Which is strange, because it’s not at all a common pattern.
“Where did you get those?” I point to her pants.
“I made them. Why?”
“They’re lovely. Really different.”
“I can make you a pair if you like.”
I don’t have a ready response. Really, as cheerful as the print is, I would have no place to wear something like that. But I don’t want to hurt Misty’s feelings. She’s obviously proud of the pants, and she probably put a lot of work into making them.
“Then they wouldn’t be one of a kind,” I say.
“No, that’s true, they wouldn’t be.”
I can see she’s giving her offer second thoughts. “I can make you a different pair.”
“That’s very generous of you. Thank you.”
