A Stir of Echoes (23 page)
"Bad?"
"No; the doctor says it'll be fine." She leaned over and kissed me. "Lordy, I was scared," she murmured.
I kissed her cheek. "How's the wee one?" I asked.
"Still in there," she said, "though God only knows why."
I chuckled weakly. "The way things have been going," I said, "she'll never want to come out."
She smiled, then squeezed my hand tightly. "I'll always remember how you stood up and faced that gun to save Richard," she said.
"I didn't do a very good job," I said. "It took Helen Driscoll to save him."
"You think…?"
"Of course," I said. "Elizabeth saw her. Can't understand why I didn't, though. Say, where is she?"
"In a prison hospital," she said.
"That poor kid." I sighed. For some reason I remembered that comb; and realized that the
death
I'd sensed had been that of Helen Driscoll. I didn't know but I'd have bet that Elizabeth had had the comb in her pocket the night she killed Helen Driscoll. Killed her so brutally in the darkness that Helen Driscoll never knew who had murdered her but thought it was her brother-in-law.
Even afterward.
"And I went over and asked Elizabeth questions about it," I said, remembering the fear and suspicion in her mind. "What a medium," I said.
"You-think you still are?" Anne asked.
"I don't know," I said.
* * *
But I wasn't. I don't know what happened-unless that head wound joggled something in my brain. Or maybe I'd only had the power limitedly-or for a specific purpose. At any rate it's gone.
But I can always say I batted a thousand in my predictions. Because, in late September, Anne went to the hospital and, after delivery, I visited her and she asked me in a sweet little doped-up voice, "Was it a girl?"
I kissed her and grinned.
"What else?" I said.
THE END
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