“Oh no!” She looked horrified.

I nodded. “I guess that night he decided the best thing he could do was get out of my life, and it took him a while to arrange things, but arrange things he did. Grandma was prepared to take care of me full-time by the time he did it, and money wasn't a problem because even the insurance people treated it like an accident, but I . . . knew.”

She wafted an ethereal hand over mine in sympathy.

“I . . . looked for him, you know,” I choked out around a bitter laugh. “Despite everything, I kept looking for him, but he . . . never came for a visit, not once. Mom told me he probably felt too ashamed.”

“And that's why you block out your ability as much as possible,” she concluded in a whisper.

“Huh?” I asked, taken aback. “Oh, no!” I exclaimed. “That happened later.”

She tilted her head in confusion.

“Turns out 'the Sight,' as my grandmother liked to call it, was a family trait,” I explained. “She told me that when my father was a boy he'd been able to see the same things I could, but he'd gotten teased and beaten so much in his hometown over his 'lies' that he'd learned to block out his Sight almost completely, and that was probably why he reacted to my abilities so violently.”

“That's still no excuse,” she said firmly.

“No, it's not,” I agreed. “But people in small towns have long memories, and I got my own fair share of teasing and beatings by the children of the people who used to beat my dad because I belonged to a 'crazy family.' By the time I graduated high school and right after Grandma got sent to the asylum because she started getting careless about what she talked about and with whom, I'd decided I was done with people, and if to be left alone by the living I had to learn how to ignore the dead, well . . . if Dad could do it, I could too! Like I don't have better things to do with my time than listen to some moldy old spirit moaning on and on about . . . ”

She was looking at me askance even before I realized what I was saying and to whom.

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