“We’re afraid of what we’ll be told!” Faith said loudly. “You may have a wonderful past and a truly glorious future, but I don’t. If this woman is a psychic she might see things that I don’t want to see, she might tell me things I don’t want to know.”
“Primrose said her sister isn’t a psychic. She—” Amy broke off. They didn’t believe her and Amy wasn’t sure she did either. “Maybe she’ll see something good.”
Faith just snorted.
“Glass half empty,” Amy said under her breath. “What about you, Zoë? Are you afraid of the same things?”
“More or less,” she said. “I know that I did something truly bad in my past and I really don’t want to know what it is.”
“So you’re going to spend the rest of your life hiding, running from one house to another, and never getting to know anyone?” Amy asked.
“That sounds good to me,” Zoë said cheerfully.
“If I could paint, that’s what I’d do,” Faith said. “Escape. Get as far away from my mother-in-law as I can. Did I tell you that when I’m home she calls me three times a day?”
“Even after you put her in the hospital?” Zoë asked, then bit her tongue for having given that information away.
“I don’t want to know how you found that out, but yes, even after I beat her up, she still calls me. I’ve changed my number so many times that I can’t count them, but she pays people and Web sites to find it. Wherever I go, she finds me. She keeps three private detectives on retainers.”
“What does she say when she calls?” Amy asked softly.
“She cries and wants me to talk to her about Eddie. He was her entire life. She had no friends, no relatives who she liked. She just had Eddie. And me.”
“That’s it,” Amy said, standing up. “The more I hear from you two, the more upset I become. And to think that I thought I had problems because I like to stay in my safe little world. Let’s go. You two have fifteen minutes, then we’re out of here.”
“Sometimes I think you actually believe that you’re going to…I can’t even say it out loud,” Zoë said.
Amy leaned toward her. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I’m going to make an effort. I’m not going to sit here and whine about my life.”
“But then, your life is wonderful, isn’t it?”
“True, it is, but I think that maybe my husband’s life isn’t so great and if there is anything I can do to fix it I’m going to do it.”
That made Faith and Zoë look at her in astonishment. “All this is about your hunk husband?” Zoë asked.
“Yes. At least I think it may be. I don’t really know what’s going on, but I want my baby to want to be born to us.”
Faith and Zoë were still blinking at her.
“Get dressed,” Amy said. “I’ll tell you about it on the way.”
“You’re sure about this?” the woman called Madame Zoya said. She was as round as her sister, Primrose, but there was no coziness about her. She was as stern and unbending as her sister was sweet.
“Yes,” Amy said firmly while the other two said nothing.
They were in a pretty sunroom of the Victorian house. When Amy had led them down Everlasting Street, Faith said that the street had not been there the day before. “I was right here. I went from that shop to that one.” She pointed to opposite sides of the street. “There was nothing in between them.”
“This town is magic,” Amy said.
“Or it needs a good city planner,” Zoë said, looking at the forest around them.
When they stood on the little porch and rang the bell, Amy said, “I hope Primrose’s sister opens the door. I think that’s the signal that she’ll do it.”
Faith and Zoë stayed behind her, both of them torn between nervousness and feeling ridiculous.
A short, stout woman opened the door and her frown had nearly made Faith and Zoë back down the stairs. But Amy smiled broadly and stepped into the house.
“I received your card and they’re going with me,” she said brightly as she surreptitiously slipped three one-hundred-dollar bills into the woman’s hand. She hadn’t told Faith and Zoë about the money for fear that they’d say that was proof the woman was a huckster.