Or maybe he doesn’t see anything after all if he thinks what she’s doing for Mrs. Van Alst is the equivalent of theft. Gretchen puts her hands on her hips and leans slightly forward. “Hey, what gives you the fucking right to—”
“What gives me the right?” he interrupts. He leans forward too, the scent of citrus and crisp spring air and something earthy that might be hay drifting over with the movement. Now he isn’t towering over Gretchen so much as... looming. “I’ve known Deborah practically my whole life. She’s like family to me. I care about her.”
“Yeah, whatever, sure you do.”
He leans in even closer. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“If you care about her so much, where were you for the last nine months? Did you even visit her after the funeral? Because Mrs. Van Alst never once mentioned you, not until yesterday.” She moves an extra inch toward the threshold and maintains eye contact. It’s a little like staring into the eyes of a tiger while armed with nothing but a Nerf gun. “And Rachel’s never mentioned you at all.”
Such scant space separates them now that Gretchen has a front-row seat to the responding twitch in Charlie’s jaw. But then his eyes dart away from hers, and his head drops again, de-escalating everything so suddenly it’s almost more disorienting than an actual blow. “I’ve had my own stuff going on,” he says to the porch. “Deborah understands.”
“Excuses, excuses.” Gretchen’s instincts tell her she isn’t going to get anywhere with this stubborn man unless she can rebuild the momentum of their argument. And win it. “Well, whether you like it or not, Ihavebeen there for her. She was in a bad place when she lost Rachel, butIhelped her find the way back. And yeah, she pays me. But that’s because she appreciates my gift, and that I use it to help people like her feel like they aren’t so alone during some of the darkest moments of their lives. A gift Mrs. Van Alst asked me to come out here and share with you, though it really doesn’t seem like you deserve my help, to be quite frank. If she hadn’t already paid me, I would’ve been out of here the minute you started in with the insults and accusations.”
Charlie’s eyes once again pierce hers. They really are beautiful, she thinks, forcing herself to look past the intensity of his glare. So many shades of brown and gold and green, all marbledtogether. They remind her of the rainforest jasper she recently added to her stock of crystals at the shop.
“Goddammit. She paid you for this scam already?” He runs a hand over his face, suddenly looking like someone whose already overflowing plate has been filled with another unasked-for helping of a vegetable he doesn’t even like. Gretchen almost feels sorry about it. “How much?” he asks, his voice quiet now in concession. “I’ll write you a check. You might need to hold it for a few days but... Use it to refund Deborah’s money. And then you have to tell her you can’t do readings or whatever for her anymore.”
“Ten thousand.”
“Excuse me?”
“Ten thousand dollars,” Gretchen repeats. “That’s what she paid me to come out here and rid you of your ghost.”
Charlie brings both hands to his head and pushes his fingers through his hair. “Jesus Christ, Deborah, what have you done?” he mutters, staring up at the place where the porch’s roof meets the brick of the house. The position makes his biceps bulge under his horrible sweater, and the dark gold strands of his hair fall right back into place as soon as he lets go.
It takes a moment for Gretchen to refocus on the matter at hand, her brain as reluctant to pull itself away from watching his movements as an extra strong magnet resisting removal from a refrigerator. “Plus, if I’m going to tell Mrs. Van Alst she can no longer be my client, I’ll lose... well, two hundred dollars twice a week...” He doesn’t need to know that she was already planning on persuading Deborah Van Alst to come see her less frequently. “That’s twenty thousand dollars for the year, rounded down. And a majority of my other business comes from her referrals, which I’m sure she’ll no longer provide if I cut her off all ofa sudden with no explanation, so let’s make it forty to account for the harm to my reputation. Plus the original ten thousand. So sure, for fifty thousand dollars, I’ll leave right now, refund Mrs. Van Alst’s prepayment for this service, and cancel all her future appointments.”
That muscle in his jaw twitches again, this time joined by a vein throbbing in his neck. “This is extortion,” he says, voice so full of rage that Gretchen has to keep herself from flinching at the rawness of it.
“When it comes down to it, I run a business same as you, Mr. Waybill. And my time is valuable.” Gretchen waits, watching as Charlie’s hands clench into fists at his sides. She should probably be afraid of his anger, but instead finds it only emboldens her. “I also accept credit cards. If that’s more convenient.”
Then Charlie’s fury breaks into something else, something more subdued on the outside but with a barely leashed quality that does actually scare her. He clutches the doorframe in either hand and leans in as close as possible. He looks past her, out toward the road, as if he doesn’t trust himself to meet her eyes. “Get off my property,” he says, his warm, peppermint-scented breath against Gretchen’s forehead. “Right now, Ms. Acorn. Or I’ll have you arrested for trespassing.”
And the bright white door slams in her face.
4
The confrontation with Charlie has Gretchen’s body overflowing with energy, and if she doesn’t find a way to discharge it, she’s worried she might explode like a can of soda forgotten in the freezer. She tugs at the ends of the dark brown hair that falls over her shoulders and lets out a guttural scream. Then she stomps her feet on the porch a few times as if she’s a large toddler, letting the block heels of her boots make strong, loud contact. It helps, but only a little.
“Fine!” she shouts, turning back to face the closed door. “I’d rather lick a goat’s asshole than help you anyway!”
Well. That was a very weird, very gross place to go with that. Hopefully, Charlie got the gist of her fury without actually hearing the specifics of it.
She puts extra weight into each step to maximize the clomp of her heels against the porch’s wooden boards as she leaves. Once she makes it back to the long driveway, her strides pick up speed; the sooner she leaves this stupid farm, the better. She’ll email Mrs.Van Alst’s assistant while she waits for a Lyft and inform Shruthi that she tried her best, but that Charlie’s intense negative energy prevents her from doing the job. Which isn’t far from the truth, anyway.
Gretchen figures she’ll refund half of the ten thousand as a goodwill gesture. Maybe even two-thirds (she was supposed to be here for three days, after all). Whatever it takes to ensure Mrs. Van Alst continues telling everyone how honest Gretchen is and sending that word-of-mouth business her way. And to keep her from believing Charlie when he insists that Gretchen’s a thief.
So much for getting ahead on next month’s expenses.This was such a waste of time.
Her escape down the driveway feels infinite, even with Gretchen moving at such a brisk pace. If she requests her ride now, it’ll probably arrive by the time she reaches the main road. The app connects Gretchen with Sulayman again, who she supposes couldn’t have made it very far in the remarkably short time it took for this to all implode. Great, what luck. He’s apparently fifteen minutes away.Getting a Slurpee, maybe.Fifteen minutes feels like too long of a wait to leave this place. Charlie might call the cops on her before then, or come out to shoo her away with a shotgun like some handsome live-action version of Elmer Fudd. She isn’t up for playing the role of Bugs Bunny today. Not in this outfit.
Something in Gretchen’s peripheral vision urges her to glance up from her phone just in time to see a man standing directly in her way. Her brain doesn’t process it fast enough to slow her forward momentum, though, and they collide.
Except... they don’t actually collide at all?
And then, all of a sudden, she’s cold.Painfullycold. She chills easily to begin with, but this is a different level. It’s like beingencased in a block of ice. Gretchen clutches her arms, attempting to pull some minuscule amount of warmth from the brisk outside air and gather it closer to insulate her freezing bones.
Holy shit.
