The first time I went to see Lillian, a clairvoyant reader and self-proclaimed metaphysical teacher, was a few years prior to Sarah’s death. A friend had given me a session with her. I had gone mainly just to know what it was like to see someone who claimed they had supernatural gifts. One of the first things she told me was that my family of origin was like a black hole for me.
She had also told me that Sarah and I were connected throughout time. In one past life, she said, Sarah had been my baby, and we were trapped in a building that was on fire. Lillian had an image of me standing at a third-floor window, throwing my child to the crowd below, saving Sarah’s life before I burned to death.
“I see you walking down a long road,” she had said. “There is a misshapen boulder that you are rolling alongside you with a long wooden stick. You take it with you everywhere you go.” I hadn’t been able to look at her as she said this; it had felt intrusive and true, this image of me she had conjured. “You see,” she continued, “that boulder is everything bad you think you have done or you think you are. And most people, once they make amends or change a behavior, they let go of those things, but you, you tend to them, you keep them with you.”
My first experience with her didn’t convince me she was psychic, but I did think she was intuitive and articulate.
In the weeks following Noelle’s Facebook post about Raymond, I have been trying to put together as much as I can of what happened to Sarah. But I have gleaned everything I can from newspaper articles and social media; I am far away from where Sarah died; Jack has stopped answering the phone. The same friend that sent me to Lillian the first time suggests I return to her to ask about my sister’s death. I am equally skeptical and hopeful. Maybe Lillian will intuit some concrete next step for me, help me sort through the noise that has been keeping me up at night.
Lillian is dressed in ill-fitting polyester pants and a brown long-sleeved shirt with several stains on it. Sitting there, eyeing her clothes, I wonder if this was the best choice. I don’t want the psychic to tell me that my sister loves me and that everything is going to be okay. I am not ready to be comforted. I’ve already paid for the session, though, so I hand her a blank CD to record my reading, and I try to stop being so judgmental about her clothes. My face turns red with the effort of trying to think of anything else. On the off chance she is clairvoyant, I don’t want her knowing what I think of her pants.
Lillian isn’t a crystal-ball psychic. The reading takes as long as is needed: my first one was close to three hours. She doesn’t look at palms or use tarot cards. Instead, she closes her eyes and reaches out to her “guidance” (what she calls it) to communicate your questions and concerns, and then shares what she finds out with you.
This session starts off as my first one did; she asks me why I am there and what I want guidance on. I explain what I have heard about my sister: the gun she sold, the people who were involved, the possibility that she was killed. Lillian likes to see photos of the people her clients are coming in to talk about, so I pull up the pretrial photos from the news and show her Raymond, Dale, and Leland. I show her pictures from Sarah’s Instagram, taken in the months before she died, where she looks too thin and smiles indifferently.
I sit across from Lillian, and she closes her eyes, looking relaxed, as she starts the process of communicating with her guidance. She stays this way for several minutes until, with a sharp intake of breath, she balls her hands in tight fists. She is in this state, agitated, for another few minutes before opening her eyes. It isn’t until she is looking at me again that I realize I am crying.
Lillian takes a deep breath before speaking. “I called for her, for Sarah, and I talked to her.” I wrinkle my nose at this—the reason why I have come, and the thing I don’t really believe can happen. She continues, “I really debated with her—we went back and forth over whether this is what she wanted to say to you, if this is how she wanted to say it, but she is insistent.”
“What did she say?”
“Three times she said to me, ‘That bastard Raymond fried me.’ ” Fried me? I had seen that phrase as I read through hundreds of drug forums, trying desperately to understand how my sister’s last moments felt.
“What happened?”
“I asked her that. She kept saying, ‘He fried me.’ She said, ‘He told me it was really good stuff and then …’ ” Lillian stops.
“And then?”
“And then she said, ‘It was like the top of my head blew off.’ ”
We sit with this, these strange, sickening words coming out of the mouth of this woman who is old enough to be my mother. Has she ever heard someone talk like this before? Does she know what a meth overdose feels like? My mouth feels dry. There is no such thing as a psychic.
But the psychic goes on. “Sarah wanted me to say: ‘Tell them I’m going to be there when they stick a needle in his arm, laughing.’ She is angry.”
“She’s feisty,” I reply, dumbly.
“She’s hostile.”
“I don’t blame her.”
“I got an image of her with her legs crossed, sitting on a gurney, while he was strapped down, ready to be executed.”
Somehow this image is more vivid than any I have conjured of Sarah’s death, accidental or otherwise. “She’s convinced he needs to pay.”
Lillian stops for a moment to hand me tissues. I blow my nose, loudly. Lillian waits. She starts to speak again. “She is sorry that she made such a mess. She wasn’t trying to die.”
I turn that phrase over in my head: wasn’t trying to die.
Was she trying not to die?
What is the difference?
“Is she mad at me?”
“No.”
“We just hadn’t talked in so long.”
“I told her that you would be talking to your mom about this, and was there anything she wanted to say …”
“And?”
“ ‘Just tell Mom I’m sorry I fucked up so much.’ ”