At a bare stretch she tried again, and again it came, the images in Justin’s mind sharp in her own: she was crouched over Juniper’s brown and white mane instead of Danny’s bay neck.
But when she tried to go deeper, seeking the depths she sensed so clearly, she was stopped by a cool, waiting-to-see feeling: Justin knew what she was doing.
Justin was watching her. Shocked, Bethany pulled Danny up and turned to stare.
They sat regarding each other silently. The horses fidgeted. Bethany did not know what to say, she did not know how to handle this. Justin’s blue eyes were as clear as the sunlit sea. Not angry. Not even shocked.
Then slowly something began to pull away, to fold back as if a veil were being drawn aside, and a raw part of Justin’s mind began to show itself: something, Bethany perceived, that had lain long dormant. It began to take form, to open out and grow in depth until it seemed to fill Bethany’s own mind completely. It was like music, but music she could touch. There was great hurt in it. And sadness. But beneath these there was a many-faceted, comforting knowledge of something fundamental and huge, something so steady that it held the sadness back. This was what she had seen, this was what had shown itself behind Justin’s eyes, this was what she had probed in to find—
But now that she had found it, she felt only ashamed and dismayed, as if she had invaded Justin’s privacy quite beyond the boundaries of forgiving.
“I’m sorry,” she said at last, so inadequately. The horses pawed, and she pulled Danny’s head up.
“Could you see why the sadness is there?” Justin asked at last, very simply.
“No, I couldn’t. I don’t want to.” She wanted to turn and ride away, to get away. “Please, I—”
Justin settled her with a calm long look, so that Bethany became silent. “When we were small,” Justin said, “I stayed away from other children, except my sister Kathleen and your mother. I could not touch other people’s thoughts so easily as you do, but I would see things happen. I was hurt many times before I learned to hide this, and later to stifle it. When I was twenty, I was engaged to be married. You may have heard Marjory speak of it.” She gave Bethany only the bare facts, but the thoughts behind them, the emotions released, were overpowering. “I flew back to New York for the wedding, and Mark drove out to La Guardia to meet my plane.
“He was killed in a wreck five minutes before my plane landed.
“I saw it happen, Bethany. Sitting in that plane I saw it happen, and there was nothing I could do.
“I’ve never told anyone except Papa. After that the visions were stilled, for when they began again I stopped them. With pure, outraged will, I stopped them. I didn’t want to know, not anything, not ever again.”
Bethany sat staring at her, shocked, and cold with guilt. She had probed where she shouldn’t have, she had opened a wound that was not hers to touch. Her desire to comfort Justin was overshadowed by her feeling of having pried, having thrust herself in where she had no right to be. She put out her hand, wanting to say something but not knowing what to say, feeling terribly uncomfortable and inadequate.
“Maybe this was necessary,” Justin said at last. “Maybe you can’t go through life hiding part of yourself.” She looked at Bethany solemnly. “I had shut it out so completely that I knew nothing about it when my sister Kathleen died.” She studied Bethany with open curiosity. “But you must have hidden your own talent—only not so deeply. Not from yourself. But from others? Bett can’t know,” she said with absolute certainty.
“She does, though, sort of. I mean, she knows about when I was younger, though at the time I think she really didn’t want to know. When she asked me recently, I lied to her; I said I wasn’t like that any more. Maybe that was wrong of me, but she was very relieved.” Her eyes searched Justin’s. “She didn’t want to know, Justin. How could anyone want not to know something? Reid says people refuse to see what’s right in front of them, that they stick their heads in the ground like moles. I think he means his grandfather, though.”
“Reid seems like a bright boy, don’t underrate him. That remark could have more meaning than you imagine.”
They rode in silence for a while, the horses nudging each other, and Danny trying to snatch at passing bushes. Bethany looked at Justin with curiosity. “Did your sister Kathleen have—was she able to do what you can do?”
“No. Never. Perhaps if she had been, if we had had that kind of tie between us, I would have known more about what was going on in her life. Papa always blamed himself for Kathleen’s death, though he was not to blame. There was a young man she wanted very much to marry and Papa wouldn’t give his permission; he had done some criminal things, and Papa was torn up that Kathleen wanted him. She didn’t marry him, but months later she died of pneumonia, and Papa always felt that if he had permitted the marriage, well, that different things would have happened in her life, that somehow she might not have gotten sick.”
“Oh,” Bethany said, not knowing how to give comfort. “That must have been awful for him. Awful for everyone.”
“And I knew nothing about it,” Justin repeated. “I might have been able to—well, to do something. Gotten other doctors. She was so far from home.”
“Does Uncle Zebulon blame you, do you think?”
“I don’t know whether he’s ever thought about it. If he has, he must blame me in a way, though he would never admit it even to himself. He seems— He knew I had this ability until Mark was killed, and I used to think he was sorry that I did. It wasn’t anything he said, just—oh, a kind of sadness sometimes that I thought centered around me. A kind of reluctance that’s hard to explain.”
“Did Aunt Bett know? When you were growing up?”
Justin studied her. “I don’t think so. What makes you ask that?”
“Sometimes I think there’s something she might tell me. But then she never does—something that bothers her.”
By the time they stabled the horses, storm clouds had blown in heavily and it was beginning to rain. That night, though rain usually soothed her, Bethany slept fitfully, dreaming of Justin, confusing herself with Justin so that it was she who saw Mark’s accident. It was late in the night when she woke groggily to hear sirens; the rain had stopped; she was asleep again at once, hearing sirens in her dreams. In the morning she was tired and depressed, and didn’t want any breakfast—working at the stables had advantages; rising before everyone else, she didn’t have to eat if she didn’t want to. When she had dressed, she found Colin awake and went in to sit on the edge of his bed. He looked up at her as if he, too, had had a bad night.
“Didn’t you hear the fire engine last night?”
“I—I guess I did. What was it?”
“We set fire to the barn last night doing a seance; a candle fell over. Ma thought I was in bed. Jack was burned getting Ciel out.”
Her heart lurched with fear. “How bad?”
“His arm and his side. He’s all right; he’s home and walking around, but all bandages. I called Aunt Selma to find out.”
“Did he—did he tell her how it started?”
“Aunt Selma didn’t say anything. I don’t know. Bethany, I just got out and ran home, I didn’t even wait to help them—”
She put her arm around him. “No one was hurt. No one was badly hurt.”
“But they could have been—”
She could see the inside of the barn, could imagine Jack and Colin there trying to put out a fire that must have eaten hungrily at the too-dry hay, licked at the timbers; she could see the flames blaze up red, everything red. She bowed her head on her knees, feeling sick and dizzy, and red seethed in her mind, fire— then a red door and symbols painted in blood. Red serpents and blazing candle flames filled her mind, as if all the world were suddenly flaming red that swirled and changed and centered down on something that held all of her attention: in the field of flame and blood a picture came clear suddenly and hung for a moment; it was of two birds done in red, pockets done in red cloth applique. She sat up, staring at space: red in a window, a bird in a tree done in red applique with her own reflection shining through it, a red applique picture that was the same kind of cloth work as the pockets on Justin’s jacket!