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me now, more worried than usual about my welfare.
Until things died down and Lisa was forgotten anyway. And I
couldn’t ease their minds by telling them that she’d known her
attacker, intimately in fact, and that neither I nor any other
student at school likely had anything to be concerned about. No,
I’d just have to let them worry, right along with most of the other
parents of my schoolmates because the alternative would bring them
much more grief in the end and I refused to put them through
that.
    Dad flipped from channel to channel,
getting bits and pieces of coverage on all the news stations. None
of them had as much information as I had, though, and it was eating
away at me. Why hadn’t I been more courageous, more selfless? Why
hadn’t I acted sooner? Would it have mattered?
    Almost an hour later, Dad scooted to
the edge of his chair. “You staying up or do you want me to cut it
off?”
    I uncurled my legs and stood. “Nah, I’m
going to bed, too.” I turned to walk back to my bedroom and Dad’s
voice carried softly to my ears.
    “ I love you,
Mercy.”
    I looked back over my shoulder and Dad
was moving off through the dark house toward the master
bedroom.
    “ Love you, too, Dad.” I saw
him stop and turn back to me before continuing on to bed so I knew
he heard me.
    It goes without saying that I had a
terrible night. What sleep I did manage to get was haunted by clips
of Lisa’s murder and vicious attacks of conscience in between. I
woke feeling worse than I had when I’d gone to bed.
    ********
    It wasn’t until Saturday afternoon that
I got a call from Detective Grayson. I had wondered if he would try
to contact me. Thankfully, I’d given him my cell phone number, so
when I saw the unfamiliar number pop up on the screen, I had enough
foresight to take the call in my bedroom.
    Though the circumstances
were anything but funny or ideal, I couldn’t help a grin of
satisfaction when he introduced himself. I badly wanted to
say Told you so, but I refrained. That would be in the poorest taste ever.
    “ I guess you’ve been
expecting my call, haven’t you?”
    Though his voice had the hard edge of a
cop, there was still something warm and pleasant about
it.
    “ To be honest, Detective, I
didn’t quite know what to expect. I guess I’d hoped this could be
prevented altogether.”
    “ Where were you Monday night
between the hours of eleven pm and two am?”
    In my mind, I did a double
take. This was hardly the direction I’d expected him to take. It
was an unforeseen and terribly bothersome angle I hadn’t
considered. Could my plan to help Lisa have backfired? Did they
suspect me?
    “ Um, I was here at home all
night. Why?”
    “ Is there anyone who can
corroborate that?”
    My voice dropped to a loud whisper.
“Yes, but will you need to speak with them?”
    “ Of course. That’s the only
way I can verify your whereabouts.” His tone said all that was
missing was a duh! at the end of that sentence.
    “ Ok, here’s the thing. My
parents don’t know that I came to you with that…information. In
fact, they don’t know about my visions at all.”
    “ Uh-huh,” he said
suspiciously.
    “ It’s not like that. I’ve
just never wanted to worry them. I mean, you have to admit, it
sounds crazy, right?” I took the silence that answered me as
agreement. “So you see, I’ve just never told them. They’d probably
have me in therapy for the rest of my life.”
    “ And yet you expect me, a
total stranger, to believe you?”
    I thought for a minute about
how to answer that. “Not really, but I had to come to you. I felt like I had
to risk looking like an idiot if there was any chance that it could
save Lisa’s life.”
    The silence that I met with
this time was a little different. Not that it was probably possible
to tell over the phone, but I imagined that Detective Grayson was
giving me kudos for acting despite the unsavory
consequences . He
seemed like the type that would admire things like