“Please,” she said as she drew near, “don’t disappear this time.”
Wendell’s smile deepened, revealing teeth that were remarkably straight and white.“I’ll try not to, Sheriff.Dreams are fickle things, though.Neither of us has full control here.”
“You know who I am,” Jenna said, stopping a few feet from him.
“Of course.You’re Emma’s sister.”He paused, correcting himself.“Piper’s sister.Twins, separated for too long.”He studied her face with clear, knowing eyes.“I finally understand it, know both of your names.You have her eyes.Or she has yours.Hard to say which, with twins.”
Jenna nodded, glancing around the garden.Rows of tomato plants stood laden with fruit, their stalks secured to wooden stakes with strips of cloth.Beyond them grew peppers, their glossy skins reflecting the sunlight in shades of green and red.Squash vines sprawled at the garden’s edge, yellow flowers open to the morning air.
“You’re still watching over her, aren’t you?”Jenna asked, turning back to Wendell.“Even now.”
“I made a promise,” he replied simply.“I knew someone would come for her eventually.I just had to keep her safe until then.”He thrust the hoe into the earth and gestured toward the porch.“Would you like to sit?These old bones appreciate a rest now and then, even in dreams.”
They settled on the porch steps, the worn wood smooth beneath them.Wendell removed a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his brow, though Jenna noticed he wasn’t actually sweating.
“How did she come to live with you?”Jenna asked.“Piper, I mean.”
Wendell folded the handkerchief carefully before returning it to his pocket.“She found me.Or perhaps we found each other.”His gaze turned distant, seeing beyond the garden to memories only he could access.“I was working the land, as you saw me just now, when she appeared at the edge of the property.Thin as a rail, clothes hanging off her, eyes wild with fear and exhaustion.”
He shook his head, the memory clearly painful.“She didn’t speak for three days.Just ate what I gave her and slept.When she finally talked, she called herself Emma.Said she didn’t remember much beyond that name.”
“But you took her in anyway,” Jenna said.“A stranger.”
“She wasn’t a stranger to me.”Wendell’s eyes, pale blue and penetrating, met Jenna’s.“Not in the ways that matter.I recognized what she was immediately.The same way I recognize what you are now.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know exactly what I mean, Sheriff.The communications you have with the departed.The visitations in your dreams.The knowing that goes beyond what others can perceive.”He gestured between them.“This conversation we’re having right now.”
Jenna swallowed hard.Few people knew about her ability to communicate with the dead through her dreams.Only Jake, Frank, and now her mother and Piper.
“You have the same gift,” she said as understanding dawned on her.
“Mine goes a bit further than yours,” Wendell replied.“Always has.I can sense things in the waking world that most can’t—energies, intentions, the presence of those who’ve crossed over.And I can sometimes reach out to the living who share similar gifts.”A sad smile crossed his face.“It’s why I lived alone for so many years.The world gets mighty loud when you hear more than you’re supposed to.”
“And Piper?Her abilities are like mine?”
“Similar, yes, but also different.”Wendell picked up a small stone from the porch step and turned it over.“Your sister was lost when she found me.Not just physically, but in her soul.The voices and visions had overwhelmed her, convinced her she was a danger to those she loved.She was looking for someone who could help her make sense of what was happening.And she was drawn to me, just as I was drawn to her.”
“Did she tell you anything else about where she’d been all those years?”Jenna leaned forward, hungry for any information that might fill the twenty-year void in her sister’s life.
Wendell’s expression grew troubled.“Not much.Just fragments.She spoke of living on the streets sometimes.Of shelters and kind strangers.Of running whenever the darkness found her again.”He sighed deeply.“She mentioned a place called the Lost and Found Collective, and someone named Jill who helped her escape from some bad people.But the memories were jumbled, like pieces of a puzzle tossed in a box without the picture to guide them.”
She recognized those pieces—the woman named Jill she had rescued from human traffickers back in July, who had mistaken Jenna for her sister before slipping back into incoherence; the commune called the Lost and Found Collective … But these fragments from Piper’s past paled against Wendell’s previous warning, the urgency in his voice when he’d spoken of danger still hunting her sister.
“The last time I saw you in a dream, you said Piper was still in danger.You mentioned darkness before you disappeared.What did you mean?”
Wendell was quiet for a long moment.
“It’s hard to put into words,” he finally said.“Your sister’s gift is...difficult.While yours manifests primarily in dreams, letting the departed come to you in a controlled way, Piper’s communications often happen when she’s wide awake.And they’re not always with the dead.”
“What do you mean?”Jenna asked.
“Piper is sensitive to violence, to rage, to darkness in the living.She feels it like a physical presence.When someone nearby harbors murderous thoughts or has committed violent acts, she experiences it—sometimes as voices, sometimes as visions, sometimes as physical pain.”Wendell’s voice dropped lower.“She feels it happening, Sheriff.Present tense.In the here and now.And that’s far more terrifying than communicating with the peaceful dead.”
Jenna thought of Piper’s sudden trance-like state at their childhood home, her utterance of “Red is for rage” just before Jake’s call about Derek Sullivan’s murder.It hadn’t been coincidence.
“That’s what happened the day I brought her home,” Jenna said.“She sensed a man’s murder.”
