What she does next shocks the shit out of me. She sets a joint between her lips and lights it and then sets the corner of the papers on fire and drops them into the black metal bowl of the pit. As if I’m not there, watching her, she leans back on the lounger to look at the stars and takes another drag off the joint.
“You remember I’m part of a drug task force with the FBI, right?”
Without looking at me, she quips, “You know I’m not Pablo Escobar, right?”
Since she’s not looking at me, I don’t have to hide that I’m suppressing a smile. I decide I’m not going to press her about it because I think the papers in the fire pit might have something to do with her needing to relax. “What’s with the papers?”
Ignoring the question, she takes another drag off her joint and stares up at the sky. “Have you seenMen In Black? Specifically, part three.”
I shake my head once. “No. I don’t watch much TV.”
She smiles. “Figures. Well, there’s this character, Griffin, who is multi-dimensional and can see every possible dimension there is.” She rolls her head on the lounger to look at me, the smile still on her face. I think it may be the pot relaxing her, because I don’t think I’d get a genuine smile any other time. “He’s my favorite character.”
Rolling her head back to center to look at the stars, she goes on, “Anyway, I always wonder if there’s any truth to that, you know, dimensions where there are people still alive that might not be in others.” She seems to sober some. “Just wishful thinking, I guess.”
Realization washes over me. She just unintentionally let down a wall. Walking to the other lounger that’s opposite the fire pit, I sit down and look at her. Her eyes are heavy, definitely high, and she’s relaxed.
“What’s with the papers you just burned?”
Her eyes flick in my direction, and then she looks at the ashes in the metal bowl. “Just conversations with my mom.” She huffs a small laugh before she rolls her head and looks at me again. “Don’t worry, I know she doesn’t talk back. But I know she’s listening.”
Flipping through the info in my head that I read about her, I try to remember how old she was when her mom died. I think she was seven or eight.
Sitting across from me is a woman who didn’t get to have a relationship with her mom.
That’s the reason for the attitude and the metal fucking walls.
She takes another drag and laughs again. “But what really blows my mind is, just hear me out, what if those dimensionsever overlap some, like if there’s a ripple somewhere, like a butterfly on the water? If a dimension with a live person overlaps a dimension that same person doesn’t inhabit anymore, could that be how we see ghosts? And can they see us?”
She sighs and stops talking. When we were in the house earlier and I watched her playing with the babies and talking to her siblings, I saw a side of her she doesn’t show other people. The soft side.
So, there is a heart under all that difficult piss and vinegar she likes to throw my way. Something in my chest snaps into place and warms, something that I have been ignoring since I met her.
Rolling her head in my direction again, she stares at me. “What is it with you and the staring? Don’t you know it’s rude to stare?” She snaps her fingers. “Oh yeah. They teach you that at FBI school, don’t they?”
I smile and nod my head. “They do teach us that, right before they teach us how to stay silent so the other person will break and talk first.”
She actually laughs, it’s a beautiful sound, and nods in agreement. “I knew it.”
With a small breath, she says, “Agent?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you just here for protocol? Or do you really think someone is after me?”
I look over her features, she’s been putting on a show of not being scared, but she really is. “The hope is that if I’m here, we don’t have to find out.”
Her eyes are locked on mine as she considers what I said. After a few moments, she nods and lets her head roll back to center as she looks up again. “Okay.”
Sometime in the night, an ear-piercing scream jolts me out of sleep, and I grab my gun and run to the hall. The bedroomdoor flies open, and Kinley falls flat on her ass, her bare legs and feet sliding on the hardwood, and scrambles backward like a crab away from her door.
Her eyes are wide with terror, and the panic is making her hands and feet work against each other.
Moving quick, I stoop and grab her around her ribcage and pull her back to my front. At first, she fights me, her hands clawing at my arm and her heels kicking my legs. Turning sideways to move her away from the room, I look through the door and only catch a shadow of a body going out the window.
Her sharp elbow slams into my side, and a silent “Oof” escapes my lips from the sting between two ribs.
Moving my mouth close to her ear, I walk toward the living room and softly say, “Hey, it’s me. I’ve got ya.”
