What Lies Below by Barbara Taylor Sissel

Author:Barbara Taylor Sissel [Taylor Sissel, Barbara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781503950115
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Published: 2018-05-15T04:00:00+00:00

16

Psychic.

It was so wrong, calling her that. A total lie.

Now it was out there. Again. Her picture and her name associated with that label. The one thing Gilly dreaded most.

She brushed her teeth, fuming, elbow jerking, wondering if she had grounds for a lawsuit. Didn’t what was reported in the news have to be accurate? If you were going to be labeled in some way, shouldn’t you be consulted first? Didn’t the media have to get permission before they paraded your photo across the television screen? That girl at Bo Dean’s the night before—the one who had recognized Gilly—she was just the start. Everywhere Gilly went now, she’d have to be prepared. People would comment, give her looks. That’s her—the psychic. The weirdo. The fake, the fraud. And on and on it would go, and no matter how she responded, she would be an object of interest, or pity, or revilement. She would lose her privacy. Her very life would be up for discussion, debate, and judgment.

But that wasn’t the worst that could happen. Gilly met her glance in the mirror. The worst would be if the media dug into her past and discovered she had taken someone else’s child before. Then, digging further, they would find out why. They would dig Brian and Sophie right out of their graves and talk about them, Gilly’s family, and what had happened to them as if they knew. Gilly would be forced to relive it again. And again. The demons would come, and this time she wouldn’t have the will to fight them. She just wouldn’t . . .

Come home. Her mother’s plea surfaced in Gilly’s mind. She imagined it, sleeping down the hall from her mom in her girlhood bedroom, the two of them having dinner at the table in the kitchen. They would do the dishes after. It would be fine as long as their talk never dipped below the surface. Gilly remembered her mother’s happiness the day Gilly had been awarded her degree in architecture. Finally she had done something normal: she’d managed to graduate from college. Even Gilly’s dad had come to the ceremony. After years of Gilly’s weird dreams and dire predictions, her drama drama drama, as her dad characterized it, here was something to be proud of. Something her parents could talk about related to their daughter that didn’t elicit advice to get Gilly to a shrink.

The day of her wedding had been another occasion for joy. Her mom and dad had loved Brian.

Now you have someone in your life strong enough to keep your feet on the floor.

Her mother had bent toward Gilly’s ear and whispered that to her as she’d fastened the row of tiny buttons on the back of Gilly’s wedding gown. No doubt she and Gilly’s dad had felt gleeful, handing Gilly off, relieved of the responsibility for her, the constant concern. They had never known what to do with her. The only difference between them was that her dad had left, pretty much washing his hands of her, while her mom had stayed.

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