When in Doubt, Add Butter by Beth Harbison

Author:Beth Harbison
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781250015020
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2012-07-17T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

“You have to quit,” Penny said the minute I told her what had happened with Peter Van Houghten. “Ask Lynn. She’ll agree with me. You have to quit.”

We were sitting on the sofa, having mocktails. Penny always insisted that she didn’t mind if I went ahead and had wine when she couldn’t drink, but it felt rude. So instead, we were drinking seltzer with cranberry and a twist of lime, which she declared unsatisfying just about every time she sipped it.

“I can’t afford to.”

“You can’t afford not to!”

I sighed. “Be real, Pen. I don’t have the kind of reserves that can keep me afloat indefinitely while I look for another job. Willa, tough as she might be, was a godsend. I can’t expect to get that lucky every time. Besides”—I set down my glass and she poured more into it—“that’s just how some men are. You know it and I know it. There’s no guarantee that that won’t happen again with someone else. In fact, there’s pretty much a guarantee it will.”

“Yeah.” She sipped thoughtfully. “Remember that Bernard Liski guy I worked for down on Connecticut? Older than dirt and made a stinking, gross attempt to kiss me.”

“Then told you that you were mentally unstable when you quit, right?”

“That’s the one.”

“See? There are a million of them out there.” I leaned back against the embroidered pillows my grandmother had made for both Penny and myself to put in our hope chests when I was twelve. Now it was a “hope not” chest. “Anyway, Vlad didn’t mention anything about me finding a new job, so I don’t think it’s in the stars right now.” I gave a laugh.

“Excuse me? Who is Vlad?”

“You know. Vlad Oleksei. The psychic? Well, the guy I work for who turns out to be a psychic? Come on, I told you about that!”

“You did not! Vlad Oleksei is a psychic?” She leaned forward, as much as she could with that baby in her, wide-eyed. “How do you know that?”

“The other night when I was there, he pulled me into his office because he had something important to tell me. Or warn me about. Actually, I’m not totally sure because it ended up being pretty nebulous, whatever it was.”

“Wait a minute. Wait just a minute. Tell me everything. Every single detail.”

I told her as much as I could remember. It was the oddness of the whole thing that had stuck with me more than the details of his predictions. Like I said, I didn’t believe in that stuff.

Penny, on the other hand, did. “You’re going to have a TV show. I know it. Now you have proof positive.”

I laughed. “Okay, despite the fact that you know me, and you know I have never so much as liked having my picture taken, you’re going to twist the words of a psychic into meaning I’ll have a TV show rather than consider the possibility that the guy’s not right?”

“Um, hello? He’s psychic.”

“Well…”

“How much does he charge?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t charge me anything.

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