“When I was around four or five, it became apparent that I had the touch. Bernadette made it into a game, asking me to touch things and tell her the history. The problem was that even then, her protective instincts were almost nonexistent, and she thought nothing of handing me nightmare fuel. I still have dreams of the things I saw…they stay with you, like stains on your mind. But I kept going back to try because every time I touched something and had a vision, she was so pleased with me. She was hardly ever pleased with me. It was like the only way I could earn her love.”
“Love’s not supposed to be earned, darling.”
Cordelia took his empty plate and put the stack of them in the sink. She attempted to wash the dirty dishes, but he shooed her away with a dishtowel. He directed her toward the couch and sat next to her, not close enough to touch, but close enough. “Well, five-year-old me didn’t know that. Bernadette taught me everything Natalia taught her about what the audience wanted to hear, the advice to give. She went out to the Goodwill and bought me the sparkliest ballet costumes she could find. We based my whole stage presence around them—a tiny princess dressed in tulle, making my pronouncements in a high-pitched innocent voice. And the audience ate it up. I mean, no one wants to believe that a little kid would lie to them, especially when I was giving them such accurate information. And sometimes, I gave not-so-accurate information because it was what they wanted to hear. I once told a grieving widow that her late husband had loved her very much, even when she gave me a necklace from her husband, and I saw that it had graced the neck of a mistress. I told many sons that their late fathers had loved them, even if I saw those fathers hating every minute of playing catch when handed a baseball glove. It was just kinder. Of course, sometimes I saw things I wasn’t prepared for with my little brain, awful things, but I learned to mask my reactions. You can only ruin so many shows before they boot you. You gotta make the cash to keep your spot. Bernadette made sure I knew that.
“For a while, Bernadette was happy. I mean, I was bringing in a lot of cash and she was traveling with the big carnivals again. But after a few years, the cash didn’t seem so great and she started resenting that she had to depend on me. She didn’t want to work the crowd for me, she wanted to be in her rightful place in the spotlight. I tried letting her sit on stage and be the star, while I worked the crowd for her and passed her coded messages, telling her what to say. But like I said, you have to connect with people and the audience never really trusted her. She tried to make up for it, making her accent more pronounced, bigger gestures, more dramatic pronouncements. It was a disaster, enough to get us fired a few times, before she finally decided money was more important than her pride.”
“How long did this go on?” Brendan asked.
“Until I was nineteen,” she sighed. “Some agents for the League heard that there was a powerful touch-know traveling with a carnival. They showed up for a few shows, watched me work. And they were impressed enough to make an offer. I jumped at it. I knew if I told her, she’d find some way to stop me. She’d talk me out of it, play nice for a while. And we’d be right back where we started in a few months. So I packed my bags and left in the middle of the night without a word, like a coward.”
“Like someone who had learned from experience,” Brendan countered.
She smiled. “That’s a nice way to rephrase. I’ve worked for the League ever since. I’ve never looked back.”
“So, you didn’t have a real childhood.” It wasn’t a question. It was a statement. And his voice was so sad when he said it.
She shrugged. “Well, no, not in the traditional sense. I guess not. I mean, when you grow up with it, all the things that seem magical about a carnival when you’re a kid—the food, the lights, the rides, the music—it all becomes very ordinary. You know how worn out everything is, how cheap the prizes can be. There’s no mystery. But it wasn’t all bad. I saw a lot of the world, more than most kids. I got to ride the carousel whenever I wanted—I mean, how many kids can say that? And there were other kids living with the carnival, traveling with their families, so I had friends.”
Brendan laughed. “All right, all right, but what about school?”
“Well, I couldn’t go. I would have been miserable in a classroom setting,” she explained. “All those people and their loud thoughts touching everything. I had very little control over my shield then. Besides, we were traveling most of the year anyway. Bernadette used to hand me books she’d stolen from local libraries and tell me to look out the window and learn from the world. And I did—while wearing gloves, because I couldn’t touch library books without nightmares. I got my GED when I was seventeen.”
“But what about the usual teenager stuff? Dances? Dating?” Brendan asked.
“Oh, that’s easy. I didn’t have those things. And not just because of the touch issue, which was a consideration. But I don’t think I’ve trusted myself over the years to date or have boyfriends. I mean, I’ve wanted them. Desperately. But when you grew up in the world that I did—wait, that’s not fair, I can’t blame it on the environment. I traveled with some very decent, hard-working people, who were wonderful parents. But when you grow up with a mother like mine, in a situation like mine, you look at people differently. It’s you versus them. Cash was survival to us. It wasn’t like if we had a bad run, we had a savings account we could fall back on. And if it was between Bernadette and I eating over the winter and some family being parted with their entertainment budget for the week? I didn’t feel bad about it.
“But Bernadette was never content. She was always sure there was an even bigger score we could get. She started scouting out private consultations with the cake-eaters…uh, the locals, every time we landed in a town. And while the operators might not mind a little side gig, they didn’t want any heat with the police. Bernadette burned the lot one too many times—”
“She burned down a lot?” Brendan exclaimed.
“No, sorry, it’s slang. Burning the lot means that you cheat people and you cheat them hard, and you’re so obvious about it that you can’t ever come back to the town again because the locals remember you. Some carnivals don’t particularly care about that sort of thing, but others—they know that they depend on generations of families bringing their children to the carnival they enjoyed when they were kids. A respectable carnival spends decades trying to develop that reputation. They didn’t want my mom coming along and ruining that. Eventually, our own reputations suffered. People were fond of me, which is why we kept getting hired.
“Bernadette liked to think that it was her that got us hired. After all, we were Cantons from Candella. Never mind that no one in Candella wanted anything to do with us—” She paused and blushed. “I’m sorry, I’m just monologuing and probably boring the hell out of you. It’s just that I haven’t talked about it in such a long time. Honestly, it’s kind of a relief.”
“Are you joking? Do you know what my childhood was like? Green pastures. Green pastures. And more green pastures. And then in my teenage years, hormones and death. Tales of traveling with a carnival is fascinating by comparison,” Brendan assured her.