A Gift of Time (Tassamara) (11 page)

She stabbed her fork into a piece of spinach. The salad dressing was unexpectedly warm, rich with flavors of bacon and caramelized onion. It was delicious, but she’d lost her appetite. She let the fork drop.

“We were engaged. I’d graduated from college and he’d finally gotten the job he wanted as a deputy sheriff in Tassamara. And I had a premonition. Of his death. Or rather, of finding his dead body by the side of the road.”

“Oh, Natalya,” Akira murmured. “I’m so sorry.”

Natalya forced her lips into an expression resembling a smile. “It was a long time ago.” She went on, keeping her voice steady. “I recognized the uniform, so I wanted him to quit his job. I knew it would be near a forest. We could have moved away, lived by the ocean, maybe the desert. We argued. And argued, and argued. And then we broke up.”

Positioned side-by-side as they were, it took only a slight motion of her head to turn her face away from the sympathy in Akira’s eyes. But she could feel her presence, warm and comforting, and it compelled her to add the truth. “Not really. He dumped me. Told me we were through and I should move on with my life. He didn’t want to see me any more.”

She took a sip of tea. Her head was throbbing now, a pained tempo beating in time with her pulse.

“He wasn’t willing to try to stop himself from dying?” Akira sounded incredulous.

“I like to say the future I see is a possibility. That our choices are our own. That we make our destiny. But when I see the future, it comes true.” Natalya could hear the bitter undercurrent in her own voice. “I try to make changes sometimes. It doesn’t usually work. One way or another—sometimes because of what I do—the future always happens as I see it.” She looked back at her future sister-in-law and added, “At least until last night. Funny timing, isn’t it?” Her chuckle held no amusement.

“That sucks,” Akira said, as Max returned to the table. He set a plate containing grilled chicken and roasted vegetables down as he slid into his seat.

“I didn’t hear yelling,” Natalya said, keeping her voice light.

Max snorted, but his expression was glum. “She says she’s cooking what her inspiration tells her to cook and if I don’t like it, I can order off the menu like anyone else.”

“At least she didn’t tell you to get out of her kitchen.”

“Oh, she did that, too.”

“But what good is it to see the future if you can’t do anything about it?” Akira ignored the interruption, sounding irate on Natalya’s behalf.

“Ha,” Max responded.

“Excellent question.” Natalya pushed her salad bowl away.

“Nat and I have differing opinions on this,” Max said, poking at the chunks of roasted squash on his plate. “I see it as an early warning system, a chance to prepare.”

“I see it as the ruin of every birthday surprise and twist ending.” Natalya tried to infuse her tone with humor. She didn’t want to stir up old arguments with her father about the usefulness of their foresight. He was comfortable using his ability, while she thought she’d done her best to ignore hers. It was disconcerting to discover how much she relied on it.

Max snorted. “The strength of your ability does come with disadvantages, my dear.”

“Every twist ending?” Akira asked. “You mean you always know how movies will end?”

“I’ve got a brain filled with spoilers,” Natalya said dryly.

“How do you know them, though?” Akira asked. “I assumed you had visions. Or maybe precognitive dreams.”

“I use the word vision sometimes, but for me, it’s closer to memory,” Natalya answered.

“What I have is more like extremely good intuition. I’ve learned to trust it,” Max responded. “Generally, I see possibilities. Likely futures, potential outcomes. Usually they’re related to hard facts. Semantic memory, conceptual in nature. Natalya sees what will be. Her signal comes in much clearer than mine, if you will.”

“How does that work?” Akira’s eyes narrowed, her intellectual curiosity clear.

“Ask me again in a few more years.” Natalya shrugged. “I spend a lot of time looking at brain scans, but I haven’t solved the puzzle of how our minds work. Yet.”

“But your foresight is like memory?” Akira prompted.

“I remember the future the way most people remember the past,” Natalya explained.

“Does that mean you know the next thing I’m going to say, the next person that’s going to walk in the door?”

Before Akira even finished her question, Natalya was shaking her head. “I’m not experiencing the future. I just remember it.”

“I don’t get it.”

Natalya gestured at the door behind them. “Do you remember the last person to walk in?”

Akira turned and let her gaze skim over the patrons at the restaurant. The booths that lined the walls were three-quarters full, mostly with families or teenagers, while the smaller tables held couples. A few middle-aged men sat together at the long counter, while a younger man sat alone at the other end.

“No idea,” she admitted as she turned back. She tilted her head in the direction of the counter. “I said hi to the guys from the quantum teleportation project when I came in so I know they were here, but otherwise I didn’t notice.”

“Right. It’s called selective attention. Memory requires three steps—we experience, we record, we retrieve. What you don’t notice, you can’t remember.”

“Most of us can’t remember much of anything,” Max pointed out. “We forget what we had for breakfast, much less every conversation we have.”

“I remember experiences that haven’t happened yet as if they were memories,” Natalya continued. “Sometimes vague or fuzzy, sometimes without the context that would help me understand what I’m seeing, but only ever when it’s something I would have remembered anyway.”

“But can you see anything you want to? If I asked you a question, something like—”

“Don’t!” Natalya interrupted Akira sharply. As Akira drew back, looking startled, Natalya repeated herself in a gentler voice. “Please don’t. I try not to see more than I have to.” She forced a smile, rubbing her temple. The tension was turning the pounding in her head into shooting pains running up her jawline. “It causes a lot more trouble than it’s worth.”

“But you know everything about your future?” Akira still sounded doubtful. One hand curled around her abdomen protectively, as if she were considering the advantages and disadvantages.

Natalya shook her head. “No. My foresight gets triggered. Something—a smell, a feeling, a thought, a question—brings the memory to my conscious mind. But it’s not all encompassing. Or constant, thank God. My worst nightmare is to develop hyperthymestic syndrome.”

“Hyper-thy-mes-tic?” Akira sounded the word out. “From the Greek? Speed memory?”

“Vast memory, I think. It’s a neurological condition, possibly caused by a defective frontostriatal circuit. It’s characterized by an enlarged temporal lobe and caudate nucleus, which affect—” Natalya paused at the blank look on Akira’s face. Right. Akira had a PhD and a fondness for science, but she wasn’t a medical doctor. “People with it remember every detail of their lives. Random actions can trigger a flood of memories. One patient described it as living life with a split-screen, always half her attention caught by her memories of the past.”

Akira wrinkled her nose. “That doesn’t sound fun.”

“Not so much, no.” Natalya tipped her head from side to side, trying to ease the tension in her neck.

With a loaded plate in one hand, a coffee pot in the other, Emma swung by their table. As she slipped the plate in front of Akira, she glanced at Max. “I don’t mean to be rude, Mr. Latimer, but Maggie’s not mean. Well, maybe a little mean. But not, like, mean-mean.”

“She’s torturing me,” Max complained. “I wanted bacon and eggs.”

“Yeah, but it’s not like she plans what to make for people, you know?” Emma said. Max frowned but Akira gave Emma a nod, and, encouraged, Emma continued. “When she doesn’t know what to make she gets cranky, but with you, she does know. It’s good stuff, too, not like that time with the turkey sandwich. That time, she was mad. It was, like, symbolic, that turkey.”

Natalya looked at her father’s plate and her eyes narrowed. Emma had a point. Max’s food looked and smelled as delicious as everything else Maggie cooked, despite its simplicity. Okay, maybe not quite as delicious as Akira’s blueberry waffles, but still quite tasty.

“But that’s not turkey,” Emma finished. With a satisfied nod, as if she’d said what she wanted to say, she headed off to refill the next table’s coffee cups.

“When did you last have a checkup, Dad?” Natalya asked. Maybe there was a subliminal meaning to the heart-healthy, low-sugar food Maggie was feeding Max.

“A checkup?” His gaze slid sideways. “Oh, it’s been a while.”

“How long a while?” she asked as he turned his attention to his plate.

“Let me see.” Busily, he sliced into his chicken, working with more precision than strictly necessary. “I suppose, uh, I suppose it would have been before your mother passed away.”

“Dad!” Natalya protested. Her mother had died several years ago, and her father was fast approaching his sixties. “Regular checkups are basic self-care.”

“She scheduled that stuff for me,” he said, hunching his shoulders like a scolded schoolboy. “I guess I should do that, huh?”

“I guess,” Natalya answered, a touch of sarcasm in her voice, before frowning. This conversation should have stirred up foreknowledge for her. Mentally, she poked at the hole in her memory again.

“What is it?” her father asked. His eyes went vague and unfocused for a moment or two and then he shook his head. “I don’t see anything. Did you just—”

“No,” Natalya interrupted him. “Nothing. But my foresight isn't working, I told you that. You should still schedule a checkup.”

“You know, the longer I live here, the more I realize why no one gets too bothered when I see ghosts,” Akira said, cutting up her waffle. “Do you really think Maggie is somehow psychically choosing a diet for Max based on data she couldn’t possibly have?”

Natalya lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Why take chances?”

Max cut off a bite of his chicken. “I suppose she’d give me bacon and eggs if I insisted. But I like being surprised by my food.”

“Does Maggie surprise you?” Akira asked Natalya.

“Not usually,” Natalya admitted. “It’s hard not to think about eating when you sit down at the table. With such an immediate experience my foresight is—well, was—quite clear.”

“Was,” Max repeated. “Where did it go?”

“No idea.” The ice was melting in her tea, the water condensing on the sides of the glass. Natalya drank a little more of it, wondering how long it would take her to get used to the loss. Would it be permanent? Was her foresight gone forever? As she set her glass down, the corner of her mouth quirked up. If only she could see the future…

Akira said thoughtfully, “I wonder…” before letting her words trail off and putting a bite of waffle in her mouth.

Natalya tilted her head, waiting for Akira to finish her thought. In the purse by her side, her phone buzzed. Sliding her hand into the purse, she touched the phone’s plastic, and then gave a sigh when she realized she didn’t know who was calling.

“Do you mind if I get this?” At her father’s shrug and Akira’s head shake, she pulled her phone out. She didn’t recognize the number, so frowning, she answered it.

“Nat, good. I’m glad you picked up.”

A little jolt of recognition shot down her spine at the sound of Colin’s voice, followed by a flush of heat. If she’d known who was calling, would she have answered? She didn’t know, and the uncertainty put bite in her tone as she asked, “How did you get this number?”

“Your brother.”

“Which brother?” Natalya needed to know who to scold. If she wanted her ex-boyfriend to have her unlisted number, she’d give it to him herself.

“Lucas. Apparently Zane called him?” His tone held a question.

Natalya closed her eyes. What had Zane told Lucas? She supposed it depended on what Akira had told Zane, and what Rose had told Akira. If her father wasn’t sitting across the table, she’d ask, but that wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have under her father’s interested eyes.

“I managed to talk him out of flying home to kick my ass without pulling out my badge, but just barely. You might want to give him a call.”

She managed to bite back a groan with an effort. Clenching her teeth, though, sent tendrils of tension pain spiraling into her head.

“But that’s not why I’m calling. Where are you?”

“At Maggie’s,” she answered automatically, distracted by her headache. Then, “Why?” she asked suspiciously.

“Excellent. I need you. Can you get back here?”

“You need me?”

“Yeah. No,” he corrected himself. “Kenzi needs you.”

“What’s going on?”

“Just get over here. Please.”

“What’s happening?” There was no answer. “Colin?”

But the line had gone dead.

Shifting from foot to foot, Colin knocked on the front door of Nat’s cottage. As he waited for her to answer, he realized what he was doing and, disgusted, forced himself to stand still. He’d knocked on doors to serve divorce papers and foreclosure notices, evict tenants, break up domestic disputes and arrest violent criminals. It was ridiculous to feel nervous. Nat wasn’t going to shoot him, after all. But when she yanked open the door, he wasn’t so sure.

“Anything?” she demanded, not bothering to greet him.

“Not a clue,” he admitted.

“It’s been three days.” Nat kept her voice low, but her accompanying glare was heated.

“I know.” For seventy-two hours, ever since he’d persuaded her to rescue Kenzi from the system, he’d been reassuring her. Give it a day. One more night. Just a little longer. But it was getting increasingly difficult to pretend a confidence he didn’t feel.

“What are you doing about it?”

“We’re trying, Nat.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I’ve had deputies running the plates of every car at the campgrounds and recreation areas, searching for one that’s been abandoned. We’ve had people scouting all the back roads, all the trails. By now the rangers must have shown her photo to every registered camper in the area, looking for someone who recognizes her. But we’ve got nothing.”