Page 24 of Just for Her
“A chiver?”
“Half-chill, half-shiver,” I explained and attempted to lighten the situation. “My grandmother used to say that happened when someone walked over your grave. Nice visual, huh?”
He didn’t return my smile. “Does that happen often?”
“Thankfully, no. At least, not anymore.”
“Explain, please.”
It wasn’t something I normally talked about, but Paul was looking at me as if he was genuinely interested, and for some reason, my automatic defensive mechanisms weren’t operating at full capacity.
“I’m not sure I can really. It’s just a feeling I get sometimes before something bad happens.”
He didn’t laugh or blow it off, like I’d expected. “Like a premonition?”
I shook my head. “More like a warning.”
“How does that work?”
I paused and sipped my iced tea, wishing I hadn’t been softened up by smoldering dark eyes and mouth-watering barbecue. “It sounds crazy.”
“Tell me anyway.”
I exhaled. “Let’s just say, I tend to be very aware of my surroundings.”
“There’s got to be more to it than that.”
“There really isn’t.” I liked knowing who and what I was dealing with. It gave me a sense of control in any situation. I told him as much.
“Most people think they’re aware, but they aren’t,” he challenged. “Eyewitness testimony is one of the most unreliable sources of information there is.”
He wasn’t wrong. I saw it all the time.
It had even been the subject of a lecture in one of my classes. In the middle of the class, a man ran in, grabbed the professor’s briefcase, and ran back out. The whole thing took less than a minute. Afterward, we were all asked to write down a description of the man and our account of what had occurred. The results had been astoundingly different.
Myeyewitness account had been dead-on. I had even been able to correctly identify the masked “suspect” as one of the professor’s TAs based on the way he’d moved.
Because I paid attention.
“All right. Without turning around, tell me about the people sitting behind us.”
I didn’t take offense. He was a lawyer. He wanted evidence.
“Directly behind us is a woman with a dog. She’s thirty or so, slim and attractive. Shoulder-length brown hair with blonde tips and a red headband. Red leggings and a lightweight gray hoodie. Her dog is a Lab–German shepherd mix, probably around eighty pounds or so. She’s been looking over this way ever since we sat down, like she knows you or something.”
His eyes widened.
“Farther back and to the left, two small children are hiding behind a multiflora bush, giggling, while their mother pretends to search for them. One’s about four, the other about two. The mother is young, early twenties at most. Shall I keep going?”
“That’s incredible. What other superpowers do you have?”
I knew he was teasing, but the praise was welcome all the same. He seemed genuinely impressed with my keen powers of observation, and that made me feel good. Most people just thought I was paranoid and weird.
I decided to take it a step further.In for a penny, in for a pound.“I’m good at reading people too. In fact, I can create a fairly accurate profile of someone within the first few minutes of meeting them. Sometimes, I don’t even have to meet them. I can simply observe them for a short time and justknow.”
“Are you ever wrong?”
I shook my head. “Not to my knowledge.” I wasn’t bragging, just being honest.
