All Our Hidden Gifts by Caroline O’donoghue (ink ebook reader txt) 📕

fat something. The something that is burning inside of my coat pocket, that hasn’t been more than ten feet from me since the day they reappeared in my bedside locker.

As the bus trundles along, I ease the cards out of my pocket.

“Oh Jesus,” he says, a bitter laugh in his voice. “Them again.”

“Do you want me to put them away? I just wanted to talk to you about one thing…”

“You know, you guys are two sides of the same coin.”

“Me and who?”

“You and American Aaron.”

“What in hell is that supposed to mean?”

My body recoils at the suggestion, as I back towards the window, and cold space opens up where our legs once touched.

“You force people to confess their problems to you, and then you hold all the power over them. You use their stories to manipulate them.”

I’m dumbfounded. “You don’t really think that, do you?”

“Well. No. Not really. But you have to admit, there are similarities.”

“I don’t force anyone.”

“And neither does Aaron, you could say.”

“Why are you saying this?”

“Why do you always underestimate yourself?”

I roll my eyes. “Is this really the time for a lecture on self-confidence?”

“No, I mean, your opinion of yourself is so low that you completely underestimate the effect you have on people. That the things you say to them – or don’t say to them – matter.”

“I said I was sorry about Lily, Roe.”

“I’m not talking about Lily. I’m talking about everyone. Take some friggin’ responsibility for yourself, Maeve.”

I stuff the cards back in my pocket and stare out of the window. Does Roe have a point? Those sessions I held in the Chokey, where half the school came and confessed their secrets to me. Did it make me feel powerful? A little, yes. But I didn’t do anything with that power. I didn’t abuse it. Not the way Aaron does.

Until Lily went missing, that is.

A familiar shudder of guilt washes over me. Lily is missing. Lily is missing because of me. Because of me, and these cards, and the Housekeeper. I lean my head against the bus window.

“Hey,” Roe says gently. “I wasn’t being serious. It was more like … a thought exercise. Sorry. You’re nothing like Aaron.”

I’m sick of keeping this to myself. I need to tell him about the Housekeeper dreams. Even if it’s all nonsense, I need to lance the boil that’s growing under my skin. I need to say her name out loud.

“Roe,” I say, “there’s something I need to tell you. It’s about the tarot reading I gave Lily.”

“Christ, not this again.”

“Just listen, OK?” I exhale loudly, warming up. “So, in the reading, this card came up. This card that didn’t belong to the deck. I’d seen it once before, but I took it out and put it in my desk drawer because there was no explanation anywhere on the internet about what it meant. And … it scared me. It’s this horrible illustration of a dark-haired woman in a wedding gown with a knife between her teeth. So I took it out. And then, when I read for Lily, the card was there again.”

“Can you show me the card now? In your deck?”

“No,” I say, chewing at the skin on my thumbnail. “I haven’t been able to find her since. It’s like she has to be … summoned, or something. Anyway, I’ve been having these dreams. These dreams about this woman, and in the dreams, it’s like Lily is watching. Like she’s there, but not able to show herself.”

I pause, trying to suss out his reaction to all of this. He just keeps staring mutely at the bus seat in front of him.

“Also,” I continue. “And this bit is … well. So, Miss Harris confiscated my cards after Lily went missing. Totally banned them from the school. But on Saturday night, after my mum told me about Lily being spotted by the milkman with a dark-haired woman, the cards were suddenly in my bedside cabinet. It was like they’d never left.”

“No,” he says, shaking his head. “I don’t believe you.”

“I don’t want to believe me, either. But that’s what happened. That’s what’s happening.”

“So, what? You think Lily summoned this demon accidentally when you gave her that reading?”

I bite the skin inside my cheek, swallowing the honest answer. The fact that I said, ‘I wish you would just disappear…’ right to his sister’s face. She didn’t summon the Housekeeper. I did. Or we both did.

“Yeah,” I answer. “She could have.”

It’s not a lie. It’s possible that no one summoned the Housekeeper, and Lily could be shacked up with her cello teacher right now. Roe doesn’t need to know what I said. In fact, it’s imperative to us working together that he doesn’t.

The bus stops. We’re back in Kilbeg. We walk in silence for a few minutes.

“Where do you see her? In the dreams?”

“Near the … uh …” My brain wants me to say, “… the place you refuse to kiss me,” but I resist. “Near the underpass. Always there.”

“Well, let’s go there then.”

“What?”

“Maybe there’ll be … I don’t know, a clue there.”

I look at him doubtfully. “I’m not sure…”

My phone buzzes. Dad.

Where are you?

Near the river. Omw home.

I type this, and then rethink. Do I really want Mum and Dad to know that I’m by the river, where Lily was last seen alive?

Delete, delete, delete.

Nearly home. See you soon. x

Be safe. Road slippy.

“Come on, Maeve. I have to try everything, no matter how bizarre it is. Everything.”

“OK,” I say uncertainly.

We trudge in silence, the snow falling on our hair and shoulder blades. I can’t remember the last time I saw snow like this in Ireland. Five or six years, at least. We’re too near the Atlantic. Even if it falls, snow usually melts the moment it hits the ground. But this snow is sticking and gathering in heaps beneath our feet.

The bricks at the underpass are glazed with ice, sparkling like grey diamonds.

We stand there a moment, uncertain.

“What do we do now?” I ask, tentatively.

“Can you feel Lily here? Feel her