sister and mother responded in unison.
“You’re squandering your gifts,” Blossom said, pointing her spoon in Riley’s direction.
They were crowded around the battered green table that once had been a respectable natural oak until her mother got into her painting furniture phase. Roger was chowing down on the salad. The kids were eating tuna salad sandwiches, leaving the rest of them to stir the bitter sludge of cabbage casserole around their bowls.
“Mom, give it a rest,” Riley said wearily.
“I’m just saying if you would have been tuned in, you would have realized what a huge mistake Griffin was in the first place,” Blossom insisted.
“Thanks, Mom. That’s exactly what I need to hear right now.”
“Sometimes the words that hurt the most are the ones you need to hear the most,” Wander said with an uncomfortable amount of eye contact.
“Listen to your sister,” Blossom insisted.
“Don’t listen to either of them,” Roger said. “You’re fine just the way you are. Now, show me how to turn on the security camera again. I wanna see if Strump noticed all the bras I threw in the tree.” He pushed his phone in her direction.
“Whose bras did you throw in what tree?” Blossom demanded.
“When is the last time you even had a vision?” Wander asked Riley. “Repressing these things can be dangerous. You might think you’re protecting yourself, but you could just be bottling up all that power until one day it implodes.”
Riley opened the app on the phone and thought of the barista. Then she thought about Nick the candy guy… and that hideous bedspread… and the feel of him between her legs.
She cleared her throat. “Can we please talk about something else?”
“I started making my own sketch paper,” Raphael announced cheerfully in his rumbling baritone. His textured afro gave him an extra four inches in height on an already tall, gangly frame.
“Good for you, sweetie,” Wander said placidly.
Riley met her sister’s gaze across the table and raised an eyebrow. Wander gave a little eye-roll. Under all those essential oils and box braids was a judgmental human being who Riley loved dearly. Maybe they didn’t see eye-to-eye when it came to psychic abilities, but they were family. And surviving a free-range childhood together had made them friends, too.
“Have you done any interesting readings lately, Blossom?” Raphael asked.
“Well, you know I can’t ethically divulge details. But I did have a reading that revealed a breach of trust. A week later, my client caught her husband with another man. Not that there’s anything wrong with being gay. It’s beautiful and normal to love all people,” she said, loud enough for her granddaughters to hear before lowering her voice again. “She threw him out on his keister and then chucked all his stuff out on the porch.”
“That must have felt very empowering,” Wander said.
Riley felt a greasy, lingering shame in the pit of her stomach and thought of the envelope back at her place. The one that arrived like clockwork every month. Could she have predicted this ending to her story? And if so, would she have even believed it?
7
10:30 p.m., Wednesday, June 17
Riley trudged up the stairs of the ancient stone mansion.
After dinner with her family, she had printed out the municipal laws for her father so he could figure out a new legal way to piss off the neighbor. Then she’d spent an hour playing with her nieces while her mother did a tarot reading for Raphael encouraging him to channel his creativity.
She had just gotten to the third floor when the bathroom door opened.
“Oh, come on, Dickie,” she groaned. “Can’t you at least wear a bathrobe?”
“Nope,” the man said, shuffling his skinny, naked ass toward his room. “Gotta air out the boys.”
Riley gagged and clamped a hand over her mouth. Her neighbor’s wrinkly white left butt cheek sported a middle finger tattoo. Classy. “Yeah? Well, air them out behind closed doors,” she called after him.
He slapped the tattoo and walked through his open door. In an instant, Dickie’s naked ass was replaced by something else. The hallway shifted on its axis, and Riley slapped a palm against the wainscoting to keep from pitching over.
Her nose twitched violently, and she felt herself falling through fluffy, cotton candy clouds.
“What the—”
But the falling sensation lurched to a stop. The pastel clouds thinned just enough, and she found herself peering at Dickie’s open door.
But it was dark now. And he was wearing a robe—thank God—and calling someone a cocksucker. He stepped back to slam the door, but there was a