“I don’t know.”
“Was it Grandma Kay?”
“I only met her a few times. I don’t know her voice well enough to say for sure.”
Courtney bit her lip. “But did you think it was her? Because you really did sound like you were about to be killed. Were you hearingher, about to be killed?”
“I don’t know that.” Julia could see Courtney’s lower lip beginning to tremble and worried she was doing her more harm than good. Maybe there were things no one was meant to know.
“But what do youthink? I mean, what’s your gut telling you, or your psychic powers—”
“Again, I don’t have psychic powers. If I did, I’d know more than I know now, wouldn’t I?” Julia tried to reason it out, even though it didn’t stand to reason. “If I were psychic, I would’ve known I’d hear a scream when I went outside, right?”
“But what if it’s like the premonition, like you’reknowingsomething without knowing how, or why?”
“Okay, but it’s not—”
“So did youknowit was Grandma Kay’s scream?”
“Honestly, I did,” Julia answered, reluctantly.
“Oh no.” Tears sprang to Courtney’s eyes.
Julia touched Courtney’s arm. “Don’t be upset, I don’t know if I’m right. It doesn’t make any sense. I don’t know why I wanted to go outside. I don’t know why I wanted to stand in that spot. I don’t know why I heard her scream outside and not inside, in the living room, or her bedroom—”
“You were standing in her garden.”
“What?” Julia didn’t understand. “I didn’t see any garden.”
“Because it’s only March. Nothing’s growing yet. You can’t see it at night anyway. She mows around the garden, then it goes to pasture, but you walked directly to her garden.” Courtney wiped her eyes, and her intense gaze burned into Julia. “Do you understand what I’m telling you? You’ve never been here and you knew where her garden was, even though you’d never seen it. Grandma Kay’s garden was her favorite place in the world.”
Julia fell silent. She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t want to understand what she was beginning to understand. It was a conclusion she had to resist. She remembered what Helen Davenport, the medium in Florence, had taught her. “It must be her thin place.”
“What’s that?”
“A place in nature, where the line between the spirit world and the material world is thin. I feel that way about the well in our vineyard, back in Tuscany.”
“Yes, totally, her garden was her thin place. So the scream you heard was her. That proves it.”
“It doesn’t prove—”
“Yes, it does.” Courtney pursed her lips. “Did she scream for help?”
“No.”
“Did she say ‘no’ or ‘don’t shoot’?”
“No.”
“What about a name? Did she say a name? If she knew the killer, maybe she would have.”
“No.”
“But if it happened right when she was about to be killed, maybe she was trying to tell you who killed her.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Why did you scream?”