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When Dorrie woke the next morning, she found Pumpkin still perched on his favorite windowsill. “You don’t look like you have moved all night,” she said to him playfully. Pumpkin turned his head and blinked letting her know he was in no ood for joking.
“What was so interesting out there that you stayed up all night?” Dorrie wondered aloud as she looked out the window. The sun was shining and the little white buds of the apple tree had started to open. “Oh, how beautiful,” she said. “I thought I was the only one who got so excited about things like that. Still, I don’t think even I would have stayed up all night to wait for the blossoms.”
“Stop it!” Pumpkin hissed. “I wasn’t staying up for fun. Someone tried to break in here last night.
“What are you talking about?”
“Someone was outside the window. He even tried to open it.”
“Could you see him?” she asked.
“Not completely, but I could feel him clearly. I think it was that man who came here with Officer Conway.” Dorrie was stunned. “Now you are seeing it,” said Pumpkin. “You protected the ring but you didn’t protect us. Did you put any protection crystals at the windows or doors?”
“Of course not. I didn’t...”
“Think about it.” Pumpkin finished her words.
Pumpkin was right. It never occurred to her that something like this would happen. She walked over to the window. It was an old house with simple single paned glass. “Thank goodness I locked it.”
“You said last night that this man is a predator and then lock your windows and think you have done a good job. Come on Dorrie, you know better.” Pumpkin could be moody and sometimes blunt but Dorrie had never seen him so angry. “He would have undone this old lock if I hadn’t scratched on the window.” Dorrie looked down at the window base and could see where Pumpkin’s scratch marks torn though the wood. “What kind of person do you think he is?” asked Pumpkin. “Are you really surprised?”
“I don’t know,” said Dorrie. Even though she felt he was dangerous and described him as a predator she realized she never thought he would try to break into her store. “I guess I was stupid. Mostly when I met him. I just thought he was just an arrogant jerk.”
“But not completely,” Pumpkin reminded her. “there was a minute when you were listening to him and found him charming.”
Dorrie remembered when the man leaned close to her that day at the store, telling his sad story about his wife, there was a minute when she would have happily believed anything he said.
“I guess I was sort of enchanted,” Even though she said it out loud her brain still scrambled to make sense of it. Charming, enchanting weren’t they just expressions. She knew her whole life that she was a witch but she had never really known another one. That is part of what made it lonely.
“I know you are reminded of Damion,” Pumpkin said. “Both are illusionists, no real magic.”
“What do I do?” Dorrie was starting to get panicky and Pumpkin started laughing. “Stop it.” Dorrie snapped back. “This is really upsetting.”
“I’m sorry, I know this is upsetting. “Pumpkin jumped down from his perch and sat by her. “You have been tricked by the illusionist before but you are wiser now. Besides,” he added, “you asked for this. The universe heard you wish to better understand people and it sent you a whopper.”
__________
It was almost 11 o’clock before Ray had a chance to look for the old Penny Saver. He had mistakenly left a window open the night before and his accounting records, a huge stack of loose receipts and bills he kept piled on his desk, had been blown all over the store. Usually big winds only happen in the winter, but spring weather was always changing so maybe he never noticed it. As he picked up the papers to make way for morning customers, he realized that now might be a good time to organize the records a bit and he put them into a box.
When customers came in to the shop and saw him working they asked what happened. He explained the open window and they nodded and agreed that the weather can be unpredictable. Some of the customers helped pick up when they found a paper on top of a bookshelf or hidden in a corner. Mornings were a busy time. After all, he had to drink his own coffee and read his own newspaper before he was officially awake. He didn’t have much time to think about the Penny Saver until eleven.
After the morning rush of customers, he started to go upstairs to look for the advertisement. At the foot of the steps he bent down to pick up one more loose receipt. He stopped. This didn’t make any sense. How can one open window blow papers all over a room? He stood up to think about this. Papers had been in the front and back of the store, on the ground and even on top of bookshelves. Someone would have mentioned if there had been a freak tornado, yet that was about the only thing he could think of that would have scattered papers in so many directions. It was odd.
He had lived in this storefront house for almost 20 years. It wasn’t a fancy neighborhood but it had always been safe. So safe that he had never thought of any other explanation for the scattered papers than that the wind had blown them. He hadn’t thought of any other explanation for the open window but that he had opened it. Nothing else had even occurred to him. But now it was obvious that this isn’t what happened.
Whether by nature or by years of practice, it was hard to remember which, he was not the kind of person who got excited by dramatic situations. As he pondered the open window his mind immediately chose the most ordinary and least threatening of the possible explanations. It was probably a racoon. He knew that they were known for letting themselves into places and creating big messes. He liked this explanation a lot. In the past, he would have been able to accept this on face value and look no further, but today for some reason he found he just couldn’t do that. As he held the receipt in his hand, he couldn’t stop himself from noticing that there were no claw marks, no dirt. The paper was perfectly clean and unwrinkled. In the past he still may have been able to shrug off this evidence to the contrary but today he couldn’t.
It’s that damned Dogged Detective stuff, he laughed to himself. It was fun when he and Jessica could tell Dorrie to follow the trial wherever it leads, but he had carefully built a life around selectively ignoring things. This could change everything he had to admit to himself as he turned around and began scanning the store for clues. It was past his usual lunchtime but he was walking over to the window to examine it, and his mind was already planning a thorough search of the store. He realized that life suddenly wasn’t going to be quite so easy anymore. He smiled. A lot had changed in a few days.
__________
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IT WAS SUNNY OUTSIDE when Carol woke up. She stretched and rolled over. The bed was clean and soft and her hands ran over the standard hotel comforter again and again. It felt so nice to sleep in a bed. As she started to get up, she felt a jolt of panic. She stood there for a minute. He knows where I am. Quickly, she told herself to be strong. That is what she wanted him to know. Her body listened and he furrowed brow unwrinkled. She stretched one more time as she got out of bed. This time she stretched her hands over her head pulling herself up to become bigger than she had been.
She made her way to the shower and thought about what she had learned. The restaurant owner let her know that as recently as two days ago Eric had been in the area looking for her. He was probably still close. And now that she had used the credit card for the hotel, she figured he would be even closer. The hotel clerk told her that this expense would be posted this morning. She was tempted to lie and tell the clerk she had to know because she was on a business trip and needed a record of her expenses, but she decided against it. Lying was not in her nature and she could see how easily it become a habit for people. She had decided to stop running and hiding so she wasn’t going to lie either. That was just another kind of hiding.
The hotel clerk was not surprised by her request and told her that the record of the transaction would be available by six pm. That would give her twelve hours. She stepped into the shower and felt the warm water pour over her. She was happy she decided to stop hiding. Today or tomorrow he would check the credit card records. Briefly she wondered what he would think of it but she quickly stopped herself. It didn’t matter. Regardless of what he thought, she knew he would be monitoring her transactions and that was exactly what she was counting on. She was more and more convinced that she had to confront Eric with what she knew he had done. He lived by lies, to her and to others and she needed to call him on it.
Now when she saw the image of the woman, she saw someone childlike, innocently or perhaps naively believing what she wanted to believe about him. “Not unlike me,” Carol realized. There was a strength in this clarity. In a very powerful way, the woman who had haunted her for so long was now helping her.