She supposed she shouldn’t have been shocked when the nightmares started. All this emotional turmoil was bound to weaken the hold she had on all those “germs” in her system, other people’s memories and thoughts that surfaced in her dreams. She saw herself as a bus driver, unable to stop a student from stepping out in front of her bus. She saw herself as a teenage boy, thrown into a closet while her father screamed prayers in Lithuanian. She saw herself being hung in some cattle town in Kansas, accused of rustling by a screaming crowd of prairie folk.
Her mother had handed her that hangman’s rope when she was four years old. Bernadette had stolen it from the “Traveling Wild West Museum” with the Fenster Carnival Show to test whether Cordelia had the sight or an active imagination. Cordelia had screamed so hard that she passed out, and she’d never been able to shake that feeling of the rope closing around her throat, fighting for one last breath. It had haunted her dreams in times of stress for years, which was pretty typical of Bernadette’s parenting techniques.
Still, it was Brendan that Cordelia pitied. She thought her gift was uncomfortable, but to see people dying and know that you couldn’t—and shouldn’t—do anything to stop it? And he was right; if he stopped every death he saw, the universe would be all out of whack with people running around with unfulfilled fates. Of course, it was hard to rationalize that when she thought of Mrs. Bruhl in her widow’s weeds.
This shared secret and her self-imposed exile had put distance between them, and she was sorry for it. The way he touched her, unafraid and easy, was something she was left craving like a drug—not because he was the only man she’d met who could touch her so casually, but because she wanted Brendan touching her. Brendan of the musical voice and the soft eyes, who was considerate and kind, who did his duty even when it hurt him. Her mother had convinced her she would never have that. She’d even kissed his cheek! The last time she’d kissed anyone was…
Nope, thinking of Alex Carver and her abiding teenage love for him would not help her focus.
A sudden knock at her door jerked her out of her deep thoughts. While the idea of socializing after spending so many days without human contact seemed like a mountain she had no interest in climbing, she was also aware that the person at her door could be her boss. It didn’t seem wise to just leave Jillian standing there. So she glanced in the mirror and straightened her hair, praying that Jillian wouldn’t hold a pair of yoga pants and a ten-year-old hoodie against her.
She opened the door to find a heavyset woman with a glorious crown of silver hair braided on top of her head. She was wearing neatly pressed gray pants and a faded floral blouse bearing a name tag reading “Bonita.”
“Can I help you? Are you making a delivery?” Cordelia asked.
The woman grinned at her. “No, but Jillian told me I might want to stop by for a visit. I’m Bonita De Los Santos.”
Cordelia arched her brows. It struck her as unusual that Jillian would be sending people to her house. Jillian seemed to be a stickler about professional etiquette.
“Shake my hand, Cordelia Canton,” Bonita insisted.
Cordelia shook her head. “Oh, I’m sorry, I don’t do that.”
“Because it’s cold and flu season?” the other woman asked with a smirk.
“No, really, I—"
The woman rolled her eyes and took Cordelia’s hand firmly in hers, shaking it. For once, Cordelia was not overwhelmed by images, but treated to an orderly slide show that trickled into her mind. She saw Bonita sliding packages into the various mailboxes at the post office. She saw Bonita holding envelopes and divining the contents of various bills and letters, writing it off as her God-given curiosity. Cordelia saw Bonita walking through the grocery store, able to shop and casually touch the carts and register without worry.
Suddenly, she remembered what Dani had said about “Miss Bonita” having a similar gift.
“You’re like me,” Cordelia whispered.
Bonita hefted a soft-sided cooler that Cordelia had mistaken for her mailbag. “How about you invite me in before you let out all the bought air? Now, I know that Clarissa left a lot of food for y’all,” Bonita said as Cordelia waved her through the door. “But I thought you might enjoy some boudin and cornbread. Have you eaten yet today?”
Cordelia glanced at the clock. It was past noon and she had not, in fact, eaten yet today—a question she only understood by virtue of her time in Florida. She’d been too distracted to eat. Without being invited, Bonita made herself at home in Cordelia’s temporary kitchen, putting two Tupperware containers of sausages in her fridge.
“You know you can’t keep up a proper shield unless you eat.” Bonita opened her cabinets and began dishing up golden-brown cornbread. The older woman chin-pointed to the dinette table and carried two plates over while Cordelia sat down. She moved a few stacks of paperbacks out of the way to make room.
Bonita scanned the titles of Cordelia’s books, mostly historical fiction and biographies. “You’re quite the reader, aren’t you? Do you have one of those fancy degrees like Dr. Ramsay?”
“No, I barely passed a GED test, to be honest. It was the damn math questions. But, fortunately, I don’t need a fancy degree for my job. I’m uniquely qualified in a very narrow field. What about you? Did you like school?” Cordelia asked.
“I did well enough,” Bonita said. “My gift didn’t start showing up until I was almost out of high school, which was normal for my family.”
On each plate, near a large wedge of cornbread, Bonita added a big dollop of butter that smelled of honey. Cordelia’s stomach growled in response.
“Dig in, there,” Bonita said. “You know, it’s rare anymore that I meet someone who has the touch, so when Dani and Jillian told me about you, I just had to drop by.”
“I’ve never met anyone else with ‘the touch,’” Cordelia said.
“Didn’t anybody in your family have it?” Bonita asked. “My mama had it and so did her mama, and all my sisters. We didn’t talk about it all the time, but we didn’t hide it. It was something that just was. My daddy was terrified of us all—and he was the most honest man you ever met. Though I never figured out whether it was because he didn’t want to be caught in a lie by his wife, his daughters, or his mother-in-law.”
“Whatever the reason, he sounds like a smart man,” Cordelia snorted. “My grandmother had it but she’d passed before I was born, so I never got to talk to her about it…and my mother…”
Bonita’s expression softened. “Didn’t have the gift?”
Cordelia shook her head. Bernadette had been so bitter about her own lack of talent that Cordelia didn’t dare ask her questions about how Grandma Natalia controlled her gift. She’d had to learn on her own.
“She resented me,” Cordelia said. “She was desperate for the gift and when it passed her over and was given to me? Nothing I ever did was enough of an apology. And while she sure the hell begrudged me the gift, she had no trouble taking the cash I earned with it. We never had much of a chance at a Hallmark Channel mother-daughter relationship.”
“Yeah, that can happen. When one member of the family is special, ordinary can feel like an insult. I’ve got a cousin who makes Christmas miserable every year, being all over-sensitive about not having the touch. Like being married to a dentist and living in one of the nicest neighborhoods in Dallas is some big trial,” Bonita said.