Page 31 of Professor and the Seer
I tried to wrap my head around the concept of choosing to love someone that you would lose. Despite it being intrusive, I had to ask. “How did you handle the heartache?”
“I cried. Even now, I sometimes get blue when I think of Harry and the things we missed out on. But then I’ll look at pictures and remember the love. Or John will walk in the room, the spitting image of his father, and lift my spirits. Quite honestly, life itself still brings me joy. A good garden harvest. A delicious roast. A fabulous book. Rather than wallow in grief, I choose to find joy.”
I paused in my slicing of the tomatoes. “You never married again?”
“No, but I have dated.” She shrugged. “Perhaps one day I’ll find another love. I’m not averse to trying. And before you ask, it’s not a betrayal of what I felt for my husband. He wouldn’t want me to be alone.”
“I’m sorry to ask so many questions. It’s rude of me,” I hastened to apologize. “I didn’t mean to be intrusive or ask such intimate things. Especially since we just met.”
“It’s okay, dear. With a gift like yours, it must be so hard to love and trust.”
My head dipped. “Sometimes I wish I couldn’t see the future. Not know when someone will break up with me, or die, or just plain use me for their own gain.”
“Then you came to the right place. Grams will surely know how to help you. Speaking of whom, they’re here.”
As Bev spoke, the door to the house opened. My gaze went to John, and I found him staring right back at me, a smile tilting his lips. He towered over the woman he accompanied, her back slightly rounded as she leaned heavily on a cane. The old lady stamped her way inside, her bright eyes fixed on me, intense enough I dropped my chin and stared at the already chopped cucumber.
“Smells good. Then again, I already knew it would,” cackled the great-grandma.
“Let’s get you seated, Grams.” John kept her hand tucked on his arm as he guided her to the head of the table, where she plopped heavily on a chair.
“Well, are you going to say hi, girl?”
“Hello, ma’am,” I shyly replied.
It led to a snort. “Ma’am! Call me Grams like everyone else and come closer. These old eyes don’t see as good as they used to, and I can’t stand wearing glasses.” She tapped the tip of her cane imperiously.
While my sisters might have given her the finger or attitude at the imperious demand, I shuffled to within a few feet, head still bowed, hands clasped. I didn’t know if it was the house or the woman, but I read nothing from her.
“You have questions.”
I lifted my head enough to find her keen gaze on me. “I see the future.”
“Ditto.”
“For everything,” I added.
“And?”
“And it’s gotten to be too much,” I blurted out. “I don’t want to know that an alley cat is going to get hit by a car unless the nice lady from the apartment building offers it a piece of her breakfast sandwich, which will then lead to it mating and having a litter of kittens, where the cat might die if it has them in the alley but live if it chooses to do so on a sidewalk where someone will take her to the vet.”
Grams blinked. “Goodness, you really don’t rein in your gift one bit, do you?”
“I don’t know how,” I had to admit.
“Then I guess we’ll have to work on that, won’t we? But after dinner. I’m famished.”
I wanted to scream with impatience. Here was someone who could finally help, and she wanted to eat? But yelling and having a tantrum wouldn’t accomplish anything, and the food did smell delicious.
It tasted even better. It might have had to do with the fact I didn’t know ahead of time how it would make my mouth sing. Each bite was a lovely surprise. The company was quite pleasing, seeing as how I didn’t get a single hint of what was to come.
Over dessert and coffee, while John helped his mom with the dishes, Grams finally leaned back in her chair and said, “First lesson, build a wall in your mind.”
The abrupt drop into serious business had me frowning. “I’ve tried meditation. It doesn’t work too well.”
“I didn’t say meditate. I said you need a mental shield. A wall. A barrier to block the impressions everything emits.”
“How?”