Danger Signals. Kathleen Creighton
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along the back of his neck as she leaned forward and peered into his face. One frail-looking hand clutched his with surprising strength. “Do I know you?”
“No, Gran,” Tierney began, but the old lady had already jerked around to transfer her anxious hands and worried frown to her granddaughter.
“I don’t know him, do I? Who is he? What is he doing here? Is he lost?” On that last word, her musical voice dropped to a cracking whisper. “I believe he’s lost, Isabella. Go and get him some tea. And some biscuits. He’s probably hungry, young boys are always hungry, you know…”
Chapter 2
“Yes, Jennie, darling,” Tierney said soothingly as she put her arm around her grandmother’s shoulders and gently turned her toward the kitchen, “I’m sure he is hungry. Why don’t you go and find some biscuits to go with the tea. And some sandwiches would be nice.”
She didn’t look at the detective. She was too busy bracing against the fractured emotions—confusion, fear, grief and anger—that radiated from Jeannette in waves at times like these. She couldn’t worry right now about what he might be thinking. She’d felt his sharp flash of recognition before the barriers slammed shut like storm shutters, but no doubt the clamor of Jeannette’s emotions would have overwhelmed his anyway.
She left her grandmother opening cupboards and muttering to herself and went back to the living room, bracing for the inevitable questions. The suffocating blanket of sympathy.
She found Detective Callahan where she had left him, hands in his pockets, jacket askew, watching her with thoughtful, compassionate eyes.
You’re right, Jennie, darling, lost is a better word than missing. He’s lost those pieces of himself.
“That will occupy her for a while. She won’t remember such a complicated task,” she explained with a small smile of apology. “She’ll sit down at the table and try to pick up the threads, which will be upsetting for her. To avoid it she’ll go somewhere inside her mind, somewhere in her past where she was happy. That’s where she spends most of her time now.”
“Alzheimer’s?” the detective asked. She nodded, and he murmured, “I’m sorry.” The sympathy was there, but muted, as all his emotions seemed to be.
Except for those bright flashes, like strobe lights in the dark. “So am I. I wish you could have known her the way she was. She was…something.”
“She still is.”
She threw him a quick, grateful glance and thought, He has the nicest eyes. Kind eyes. An instant later she saw those same eyes narrow and become slightly less kind.
“Who is Isabella?”
“You don’t miss much, do you?” she said lightly, stepping past him to open the door. “That’s my mother’s name. Gran calls me that when she’s…confused. Which is why I call her Jennie, then—she doesn’t understand why I would call her Gran when as far as she’s concerned she’s my mother.”
He followed her onto the landing. “Jennie? Not Mom or Mother?”
“Evidently,” she said, without looking up as she closed and locked the door, “that’s what my mother called her.”
“Evidently?”
“I haven’t seen my mother since I was three.”
“Ah.” His tone was flat, but she felt a wave of something warm, almost like kinship wafting after her as he followed her down the stairs. At the bottom he glanced at her before reaching past her to open the door—a gesture of gallantry she suspected must be automatic for him. Someone had taught him manners, and taught them well. “Something we have in common, I guess.” She threw him a curious look and he gave her back his wry smile. “I don’t remember my mother, either.”
She couldn’t know what a rare thing it was for him to talk about that stuff—at least he didn’t think she could. He sure as hell didn’t know what made him do it.
“I never said I don’t remember her,” she said as she passed him. “My memories of my mother are quite vivid, actually.”
“From when you were three? Is that part of the…” He waved a hand, trying to think of a term that wouldn’t be insulting. “Your psychic thing?”
“In a way, I guess.” She smiled at him in a gently forgiving way. “I’ve gotten all the memories I have of my mother from Jeannette.”
It took him maybe three heartbeats to get it. Then he said, “Ah” again—a bit more sardonic, this time. “Your grandmother has it, too, then? This…”
“Gift?” They were passing through the gallery, and he saw Tierney pause to touch the watercolor painting of Multnomah Falls. He saw tension in the lines between her eyebrows and wondered if she had a headache. “Days like this, it’s hard to think of it that way.”
Then she seemed to shake it off, whatever the darkness was, and moved on. “My grandmother’s…abilities, or whatever you want to call them, are different from mine. I am what is known, in the psychic world—” she cut her eyes at him in a droll way that made him chuckle “—as an empath. There’s probably a word for what Jeannette is, as well, but I don’t know what it is. She just…knows things. About people. Like she knew you aren’t really Irish. Plus, she and I have this special connection, I guess, because we can share memories. Normally, I don’t really see actual images, but with her I can. Used to, anyway.” Her face seemed to cloud over. “I used to see them—her memories of my mother—like photos in an album. Color photos, clear and bright. Now…well, now they’re sort of fragmented, like a jumbled jigsaw puzzle.”
I have memories like that.
The thought came to him with a flash of surprise, like what his mother used to call a lightbulb moment—from the comics, she’d explain. He heard himself say, “I know what you mean.” And frowned, because he hadn’t meant to voice the thought out loud.
Tierney glanced up at him, smiling her gentle smile.
Yes…I think you do. That’s what these flashes I keep getting from you are all about. We’ve a kinship, you and I, whether you like it or not. The truth is, neither of us had a chance to know our parents.
“How old were you when you were adopted?” And she wondered, even as she asked it, how she’d found the audacity to probe into the personal business of so guarded and resistant a man.
She was greatly surprised when he hitched a shoulder in an offhand way and answered her. “I don’t know—six, I think. Maybe seven.”
“Really? You weren’t a baby, then. What happened to your parents?” But this time she knew at once she’d gone too far. She saw his jaw tighten, and he didn’t answer right away. She muttered, “I’m sorry,” putting up a hand as if to stop herself. “Forgive me, please. I’m not—It’s none of my business, I know.”
The detective let out a breath, frowning. “No, it’s a legitimate question, considering the conversation.” He paused, shifting his car keys from one hand to the other and back again, then turned to her. “They’re dead, that’s all I know.” His grin appeared, tilted in a way that made curious pleasure-ripples course through her chest. “Believe me, as a police detective it irks me no end to have to admit that. I’ve tried—” He broke it off with a shake of his head, seemed to hesitate, then turned to the gallery door.
“Do you remember them?” Tierney asked softly. “Your parents?”
She was unprepared for the sudden surge of emotion, followed by a withdrawal so abrupt it was almost violent, like a slap in the face. She stepped back reflexively, and so almost missed his reply, spoken in a quiet voice and without turning.
“I don’t remember anything from before I was adopted.”
Still