The day we moved into our new house I noticed two things: the shingles looked less charming in the daylight, and I developed psychic abilities. First came the whisperings—a cluster of unintelligible voices that occasionally spit out an audible word or two. Then came the visions—snapshots of images that meant nothing to me in the moment but made sense later. Two weeks after moving in I was cleaning the dishes and saw a boy on a bike heading straight for a pole. I blinked the vision away and forgot about it until three weeks later when I was driving home from scooping up take-out pizza. I saw that same boy cross the street in front of me at a red light and then whip the turn too sharply, causing him to crash his bike into a pole. The boy was fine, but I was spooked. After the first year of living in that house my unease slackened and I surrendered to acceptance; I was too old to move again, and explaining to Phil that I wanted to leave our dream home because I was hearing voices and seeing visions was not something I was ready to do. Phil is a realist. When his mother died the year we got married, I suggested he see a psychic medium. He muttered something about it being a load of bull and descended to the basement of our old apartment. I presumed this conversation would take a similar direction.
I decided to finally tell him about my abilities after witnessing a horrific vision of my own death. Phil was growing grim in his old age and I wanted him to believe in something hopeful, something higher than both of us to get him through his remaining days without me. I am probably going to die this month, I told him over dinner. It was not the delicately phrased speech I had practiced in my head, but at least I had said it. I dissected his reaction while frantically thinking of what to say next. His eyes darted sadly to the walls, the floorboards, the leaky faucet over the rust-splattered sink. I thought he was avoiding my eyes and was surprised at how quickly he believed me before realizing there was something strange about the way he was searching the house, as if inspecting it for answers. He finally drew his stubborn eyes to meet mine, and he said, I know. ◆
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