The Witch's Empathy (One Part Witch Series Book 8) Read online

  “Maybe. It has to be confirmed,” Erin cautioned.

  “But if I’d known that . . . If I’d known that, everything would be different. That’s messed up. That is so messed up . . . Geez. The cops are here. I’ve gotta get out here.”

  He grabbed the photos from Erin and hightailed it in the opposite direction of the approaching Finn Cochran. Erin almost felt like running herself. She didn’t want Finn blabbing to Orlando that she had ever nailed him as a murder suspect, nor mention anything about her witchy powers.

  “Do you mind going and getting us a couple of bottles of ice water?” she asked Orlando sweetly.

  “My pleasure.”

  He was way out of earshot by the time Finn Cochran reached her.

  “What is Mr. Gorman doing at an alumni event?”

  “Trying to figure out whether Regina stole his mother’s money. I think he’s going to need to hunt down the original marriage certificate.”

  “Why did he run off when he saw me? Is he back on our list of suspects?”

  “I wish I could say for sure. He’s behaving oddly, with a lot of stress and regret. But his thoughts are so jumbled right now. But you didn’t know he’d be here. What are you doing at an alumni event?”

  “There are a few statements from witnesses at the pool party that needed to have a few more facts filled in.”

  “My wife is working late tonight, I heard you all were having a lobster bake, and I was pretty sure that if I showed up and hung around long enough, someone was bound to offer me a big plate of food.”

  “Shameless. You’re absolutely shameless.”

  Finn just then remembered that Erin could read his ulterior motives. “Oh, yeah. So, you know exactly why I’m here. I’d blush, but I’m too hungry.”

  “Go ahead and do your phony follow-up questions. And then get in the buffet line.”

  “That’s very understanding of you. Although . . . if it’s all right with you, I think I’ll hit the buffet line first and then do the phony questions.”

  “Go,” Erin ordered.

  As she watched Finn stroll away on his errand of hunger, she could see that Orlando was being held up by a chatty classmate. He waved at her from a distance. No problem. It gave her time to do some interesting people watching. And people listening.

  Ms. Kipling had come to the event and was huddling with Jasmine Plummer, patting her gently on the back, trying to comfort her. Erin’s ability to hone in on one particular mind was becoming sharper than ever.

  Jasmine had been one of Nora Kipling’s absolute favorite students, and it had torn her up to see Jasmine wrestling with alcoholism for so many years after graduation. Jasmine had blamed Regina Gorman for destroying her chances of a scholarship, and apparently, Ms. Kipling did as well. She couldn’t begin to fathom the cruelty and indifference Regina had displayed in denying this deserving student. How many times had she wanted to strangle that woman?

  Erin had never seen Ms. Kipling get angry, but the long-lasting wound Regina had inflicted on Jasmine was enough to make Nora Kipling see red.

  Several yards away, Austin Tanner was in an upbeat mood. The future seemed so much brighter for his daughter now that Regina Gorman would never be in it. “I think we should spring for a swim coach. Just to give her the best chance. It’s never too early to start teaching them about focus and discipline and hard work. When I look back on my hours of practice . . .”

  “Does it feel . . . wasted? Never getting to play college ball? Never making it to the pros?” one of his old buddies inquired.

  His wife thought this was a really insensitive question. Why remind him of painful regrets and opportunities lost? But he patted her arm—he was just fine.

  “I’ve seen the studies that come out about the concussions. And I think that could easily have been me. If I had gotten everything that I dreamed of, I might be a broken wreck of a man right now. It’s easy to pretend that everything would have been fine.

  “But the numbers don’t bear that out. I guess that makes it a whole lot easier to make peace with what happened. I’m healthy, I have a terrific family, and I have a great business. No brain damage, no lifelong injuries, no addiction to pain meds. So, I don’t have a complaint in the world. Not a single one.”

  “So, I guess you could say that Regina Gorman actually did you a favor by messing up your football scholarship.”

  “Yeah, a favor. Hah! That is one favor she just got repaid for big time.”

  Even this very contented man had little charity in his heart for the dead instructor, Erin noted. If immortality was what Regina Gorman wanted, then she had indeed become the Julius Caesar of Oyster Cove.

  *****

  It was the last day of the longest and best week of Erin Sweeney’s life.

  Notwithstanding, there was still the matter of a number of unresolved mysteries and impending crises. The issue of the clear and unmistakably suicidal thoughts was still nagging at Erin. She had eliminated Jenna as a possibility. She had eliminated Megan. And even when she was feeling at her worst about her marriage, Kira Davenport was planning plane trips to LA and auditions. She had never considered suicide. Those were the only people Erin was with that day.

  The tea room had been completely empty except for their party. But . . . but that lovely tea hadn’t served itself. There had been a very efficient, very unobtrusive, very non-talkative waitress there. Erin strained to remember her face. In her late twenties, with her dark hair in a single braid trailing down her back. What was that name on her name tag? Sherry. Erin raced over to The Grand Hotel as fast as she possibly could.

  Sherry was in the dining room, putting out the table settings for lunch. She recognized the breathless attractive woman headed in her direction.

  “There’s one of those reunion people. I hope she and her friends had a good time at tea the other day. Somehow, it makes me feel good to know that other people are happy and enjoying their lives, even though mine isn’t worth living. It’s so hard to get out of bed every morning. I just keep prolonging the pain, the inevitable. But I promised myself that I would stay and help my boss out until this big reunion thing is over. I’d really hate to leave her shorthanded on such an important week. And then when all these people are gone . . . I can be gone too.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Erin asked for a menu, wondering about the origin of all this misery and how on earth she could possibly reach this woman and let her know that no matter how long the pain and misery lasted, there was always the possibility that life could turn wonderful. But Sherry would have to hold on long enough to reach that point.

  “Sherry. I remember you from the tea. Are you originally from Oyster Cove?”

  All it took was a few leading questions to send Sherry’s thoughts back to her family and all the heavy losses that she’d suffered in the past year. First a beloved grandmother, and then her only uncle, of cancer, and then her parents’ deadly encounter with a drunk driver. Her beautiful parents, gone in an instant, lying stiff and cold in their coffins, side-by-side. Sherry was completely alone now, and the agony was more than she could bear. She needed to be gone too. She needed to join her family.

  “You’ve lost everything. Don’t ask me how I know. I just know.”

  “Someone . . . someone told you?” Sherry’s eyes started to fill with tears. “I’m sorry. This is awful of me. I really don’t want to let my problems get in the way of my job. Customers deserve better, and my boss expects better of me.”

  “Sherry, I don’t know whether you’re trying to be too strong or if you need to be even stronger. I may not even have the right to tell you what to do with your life. That’s not going to stop me. Right now, you’re surrounded by darkness and pain and you want to end it. You want to end your own life.”

  Sherry gasped in complete shock. She quickly whipped her head around to make sure that no one had heard Erin’s very accurate but totally confounding assessment.

  “Then you’ll never know how your life story wa
s meant to play out,” Erin continued. “You’ll never know if you would have arrived at a moment when you were able to laugh again or enjoy a gorgeous sunset and feel happy to be alive again. Or to meet an amazing man who makes you feel like you’re floating on air.

  “You don’t know about the babies, the human beings who would have been the joy of your life and would have gone out into the world and done fabulous things, but that never happened because you never had those babies. Or maybe it’s not your children who were going to go out and do things in the world. Maybe it was you.

  “Maybe it’s your destiny to make the world a better place, to help people, to make their lives happier. Geez. I could even see right from this moment how conscientious you are. How much you care about the wellbeing of this hotel, their customers, and your boss. You’re a special, irreplaceable person, Sherry. Give yourself a chance to find out what healing feels like. What better feels like. What happiness feels like.”

  “You can’t know. You can’t possibly know how badly it hurts. I can barely breathe sometimes. It’s like a thousand knives are stabbing at me from every direction. Every day. There’s no relief from it. How am I ever supposed to get relief if I don’t give it to myself? You just can’t know.”

  Erin stood up and wrapped her arms around the miserable young woman. “You’re right. I can’t possibly know. I’ve never lost anyone like that. But there are people who have. People who have lost mothers and fathers and husbands and children. People who have experienced those never-ending knives slicing away at them.

  “I know that I can’t help you, because you know that I’ve never been through this. That’s why you need to talk to someone who has. Someone whose word you can trust because they’ve been through exactly this kind of horrible pain. Someone who can tell you from their own experience what’s on the other side.”

  By this time, Sherry was sobbing uncontrollably, and her boss, a very kindly middle-aged woman, had silently appeared at their side.

  “Why don’t you two step inside my office, where you can have a little privacy?” she offered, relieved that Sherry had a good friend whose shoulder she could cry on. Everyone at the hotel had been very worried about her.

  Before Erin left that morning, she and Sherry had called and gotten the meeting information for a nearby grief support group. Erin wouldn’t leave Sherry until she had her promise that she would attend the group, and not just once—that she would attend for six months to give them a real chance to help her. After she could read Sherry’s thoughts that she truly intended to do this, Erin was able to leave.

  *****

  Afterward, there was an admittedly less-urgent matter to attend to, but Erin had promised Wesley Gorman that she would try to get to the bottom of the dates of his father’s bigamist activities and to determine whether Wesley’s mother should have gotten her husband’s inheritance.

  It occurred to Erin that, in addition to photographic evidence, someone who kept the quantity of handwritten journals that Regina Gorman had would undoubtedly have left some clues about the details of her marriage. Principal Chaplin had taken away those journals to find some kind of endearing anecdotes for the memorial service. Good luck with that! She would have to swing by his office at the school and hope that he was in.

  The door to his office was open, and his mug of coffee was still steaming, but Principal Chaplin was nowhere to be seen. No matter. The coffee was a guarantee that he would be back any minute. Fortunately for Erin, she didn’t even have to wait on him to get started. Regina’s journals were stacked right on top of his desk.

  Erin started flipping through them, trying to locate the right dates that should have corresponded with Regina’s marriage to Mr. Gorman, and she noted with interest the bookmarks that Mr. Chaplin stuck in, presumably to make note of good material for his memorial speech.

  It was momentarily unnerving, Erin had to admit, thumbing her way through someone’s private, innermost thoughts. But then she had to remind herself that it’s precisely what she had been doing ever since the transplant.

  Mr. P. Who was Mr. P? He and Regina appeared to have been especially close. Oh, of course. Mr. Plummer—Jasmine’s father. He appeared for very lengthy stretches of Regina Gorman’s life story. No wonder that Regina was kind of put out when he broke it off with her. Still no excuse for punishing Jasmine, though.

  There were pages missing. They looked as if they been ripped right out. Had Regina done that? But why would she? That’s the point of a journal, to get down your private thoughts with the confidence that no one will ever see it. Had these pages been ripped out very recently? Erin quickly surveyed the office, and her eyes landed on a large shredder. She went over and lifted the top off.

  Right there at the very top was paper that was unlike the fresh white standard-issue office 8.5 x 11. It was thick, a softer beige color, and even shredded, it had some discernible handwriting on it rather than institutional print. No doubt about it. Mr. Chaplin had shredded some of Regina Gorman’s journal. She jumped, startled, when Vice Principal Metcalf appeared at the door.

  “Ms. Sweeney. You must be looking for Mr. Chaplin. He just got an incoming call and the cell phone reception in his office is actually pretty bad. I’m sure I’ll be able to make do . . . if this ever winds up being my office. What have you got there?”

  “Regina Gorman’s journals. I was just wondering . . . there seem to be some pages that Mr. Chaplin might have gotten rid of. I’m not sure why.”

  “Hmm. I hope that you can be discreet, Erin. But there are numerous references in Regina’s journal about a certain Mr. P.”

  “Yes. Jasmine Plummer’s father.”

  “Ah, I see you know about that whole sordid affair. Yes, that was Mr. P. Although, in her own little twisted play on words, she would also refer to him as The Plumber.

  Well, I don’t know if Regina Gorman really deserves our protection, but Mr. Chaplin felt there was no benefit in airing out any more of her dirty laundry than was necessary. Particularly as it could negatively affect the Plummer family, and they’ve been through quite enough. Apparently, the sections that Mr. Chaplin saw fit to destroy were rather . . . explicit.

  “I see. I was hoping to be able to take these journals home and have a look at them. You probably know about the whole Wesley Gorman bigamy thing. I’m trying to nail down the dates of Regina’s marriage to see if she was Mr. Gorman’s first wife or his second. Legally and financially, it’s kind of a life or death issue for Wesley’s family.”

  “Of course. I’m positive that Mr. Chaplin is done with those journals because I’ve already seen his written speech. So, by all means, take them. We need to do whatever we can to have a bit of closure on Mrs. Gorman’s life. I think we all need to be able to move on.”

  Erin nodded gratefully, gathered up the large pile of journals, and hauled them out to her car. This was going to be a whole lot of reading. But she couldn’t get to it just yet. She was going to meet Orlando and his buddy Leo for lunch. She hadn’t been able to talk to Leo long at all when she met him on the bowling night, but if he was a dear long-time friend of Orlando’s and had stuck with him and remained his true friend through hard times, then he was all right by her.

  *****

  Leo’s hand had been so full of sticky barbecue wings the first time they’d met that he and Erin had never even shaken hands.

  “Allow me to introduce my cleaner, more presentable, less-greasy self,” he joked as he reached out for her hand.

  Erin’s ability to read minds without touch had become so developed now that she would have been able to read Leo even without the handshake. But the physical connection only amplified his thoughts, and they were some pretty astonishing thoughts.

  “She’s really pretty. I’m so glad that things worked out for Orlando. Decent job at the urgent care clinic. Pretty girlfriend. I really need to stop feeling so guilty about changing the dosage on that prescription. I thought that my buddy was messing up and that I was helping him out and
covering up his mistake. But he got it right the first time. And my “fix” was the stupid mistake that made that man have a heart attack. But Orlando’s signature was on it.

  “One of us had to go down, and I just panicked. I just couldn’t throw away all my hard work, all my dreams. At least I’ve done what I can to make it up to him. I’ve stuck by him when so many of his friends walked away. Not just because I know that he didn’t do anything wrong. I just wanted to keep a close eye on him and make sure that his life wasn’t suffering too badly because of what I did.”

  Erin could hardly believe what she was hearing. Orlando had been beating himself up, wallowing in guilt and self-incrimination for the past fifteen years for an error that his friend, Leo Price, had made. And Leo never said a word. He just stood by and watched Orlando suffer. He watched his friend’s career suffer, and he watched his mental state continually weighted down by the guilt. She wanted to throttle him.

  It was a long, endless wait before Orlando eventually excused himself to go to the restroom. Erin wouldn’t have long to lay down her ultimatum.

  “Listen carefully, Leo. I know that it was you who made the mistake. That it was you who changed the prescription. And when Orlando comes back to this table, you’re going to tell him exactly what you did. You’re going to tell the medical school and the legal authorities what you did. You’re going to set the record straight. And because he considers you to be one of his closest friends, better that it comes from you than it comes from me. But make no mistake, if it doesn’t come from you, it will most certainly come from me.”

  “How could she possibly know this? She can’t possibly know. But she does know. She knows everything. That means someone else must have known and told her. Who is out there who knew all about this? And look at her. She’s not playing. She’s dead serious. She’ll tell him if I don’t. Oh, God. It’s all over. I thought I could get away with it. I’m going to lose everything. Everything.”

  Orlando couldn’t possibly have any idea of what motivated the confession. As he sat, stony-faced, listening to his friend’s blubbering account of an unforgivable error, covered up by an equally unforgivable lie, it was only in the back of his mind that he could wonder why Leo had chosen this moment to come clean when he could have confessed five years ago. Ten years ago. How about immediately afterward, when Orlando still had the chance for prestigious positions open all around the country?