In the end, Kendra lent out some of her journals, keeping the more personal journals for herself. That included her notebooks and sketchpads from the last three years, from when she first met Toby to the present.
Rick got her earliest, before her handwriting and drawing had refined to a level of realism. The dead people in her drawings were misshapen, with large heads and stick hands. Rick wondered if Kendra had taken up drawing so she could more accurately portray the people that appeared to her.
In one drawing, a woman hovered behind a large brown noose. In another, a man wore yellow bandages around most of his body. In a third, a man stood at a bed, holding a pointy needle he was about to inject into a wrinkly man lying in a hospital bed.
Kendra remained absolutely silent when pursuing her own reading. Occasionally she jotted down a name, each time without determination. Sometimes her hand lingered over, like she wanted to scratch out the name.
Spinner and Cole returned. They burst in and marched right up to the table.
"What's all this?" Spinner asked. He started to lift up the sketchbook Rick was reading, but Kendra swatted his hand away.
"I'm cleaning out some stuff from my room," Kendra said with practiced nonchalance. "How's Jay?"
"Good I guess." Cole wedged himself between Spinner and Rick.
Kendra slammed her journal shut. "How about you breathe your germ stuffed breath away from my journals?"
"Sor-ree," Spinner backed away. "Jay wasn't in the quarantine zone or anything."
"I guess we should wash our hands," Cole said more diplomatically.
"You two are getting OCD," Spinner retorted before he rushed from the room.
Cole maintained a respectful distance as he looked at Kendra's childhood sketch of three boys buried in boxes below the ground. She had crayoned a heavy brown ground that overtook most of the page. On top were three markers that resembled Popsicle sticks.
Kendra's output seemed impressive, considering that, for a seer, any expression of art became a minefield of wrong and taboo and abnormal.
"So why do you have the journals out?" Cole asked.
Distracted, Kendra stood. "He can explain it," she said, indicating Rick.
She chased after Spinner upstairs.
The computer screen blazed white for an instant until Spinner, hearing Kendra coming, tapped the close tab to his email.
Kendra knocked. "Can we talk?"
He swiveled around, annoyed at the interruption. She was tempted to take the cue and leave. She reminded herself she did not have time to delay.
So the dead guy, whoever he was, was forcing her hand. Using her sense as a vulnerable point. Well, she would call his bluff. If the dead guy insisted on dragging Spinner into it, thinking that she could not do anything about do it without giving away her secret, his tactic would not work.
Kendra perched onto the end of Cole's bed.
"Or are you busy yapping with Walkingisanart?"
"I knew it." Spinner punched the armrest on his chair. "I knew you've been in my email. Is that what this is about?"
Maybe his admission would ease into hers. She shrugged.
Spinner sighed. "It's Teri."
"What?"
"Walkingisanart."
"You mean that's Teri," Kendra exclaimed. "Teri McGreggor?"
Rick's ex girlfriend.
"No. Teri Hatcher," Spinner replied with dripping sarcasm.
"How'd that happen?" Relief turned to mind boggling confusion.
"I emailed her. She emailed back. And so on."
"And she knows all about . . ." Kendra hesitated here, " . . . Rick?"
"That's what I emailed her about," Spinner explained measuredly. "It was in the news. The shooting. Turned out Paige had already called her about it."
"I see. Why all the secrecy?"
"No secrecy. It just wasn't your business."
"Right."
Kendra clasped her hands behind her head.
"Actually . . ."
Her mind raced to search for a proper way to explain about the dead people, before she lost his attention. Spinner fidgeted, but he waited for her to finish. He must have picked up the sensitivity of the impending subject.
"Is this about Teri?" Spinner guessed. Though he tried to keep patient, he was eager to get back to his email.
"No. It's about the attacks. Sort of."
Spinner's hands tightened over the armrests. "What attacks?" he asked, deliberately making his voice expressionless.
"The cracked car windows. And your fall down the stairs. And your near drowning. And the rat poison in the pie."
"Poison?" More doubt than fear.
"We had it tested." Aware that she was drifting away from the subject again, Kendra started over. "I see dead people."