Foreteller Read online

  That was why, when Dora saw a pretty young woman tentatively approaching the house and checking the gate for a house number, she waved at her like an old friend. Relief washed over the eldest remaining Santorini at the sight of this healthy young lady who had indeed fulfilled her genetic promise. Truth be told, her resemblance to both Magda and Susan gave Dora a foreboding chill.

  “Kyra,” Dora said in a voice that had weakened with age but still held notes of the talented choir singer she’d been in her twenties.

  Zoey placed a calming hand to her heart upon hearing her original name in the midst of this town so foreign to her, especially when she couldn’t discern the source of the voice. With all the ferns and potted plants on the inviting porch, Zoey couldn’t see anyone sitting there. Nevertheless, she opened the freshly painted, white gate and stepped through. She followed the stone pathway leading to the house and peeled her eyes toward the porch.

  Halfway down the short path, the form of a plump, small woman with a head of dark hair speckled with gray, came into view. The crooked, aged hand that waved her on with eager anticipation was a much-needed, welcoming sight.

  Hesitantly, standing at the base of the porch steps, she ventured, “Mrs. Santorini?”

  Dora’s face lit up, immediately erasing twenty years from her countenance. “Nobody calls me Mrs. Santorini! Not the mailman, the priest, or the schoolchildren. It’s either Dora, Miss Dora, or Mrs. Claus, if you shorten my name to Santa as many of the children do. Come up here and give me a hug!”

  As Dora issued the command, she stood up from her cushioned rocking chair with only a bit of a struggle. Zoey bound up the steps to help her, but, almost as if it were planned all along, Dora transformed the offered support into a warm hug. “My little Kyra, I can’t believe it.”

  A memory flashed in and out of Zoey’s mind. She fought to hold onto it, but it evaporated in an instant. A smile crossed her face, though, because somewhere in the recesses of her brain, there resided a memory of this very woman holding her, rocking her back and forth, and calling her Little Kyra.

  When Dora finally ended the embrace, Zoey helped her back into her seat. The tenderness the old woman exuded left no doubt in Zoey’s mind that she’d been well cared for in her earliest years. Dora patted the seat next to her own, indicating that Zoey should sit. Dora then took her time examining her visitor’s face, finally reaching up to stroke it with her bent but loving fingers. She brought her hand to rest on Zoey’s.

  “Oh, Kyra, my heart is so full and yet so heavy. I am beyond happy to see you here, so young and beautiful, and yet I know why you have come. It makes tears flow from my heart.”

  Zoey waited quietly for Dora to go on.

  “So many times over the years, I thought to find you, thinking I could protect you. But I made a promise to your dear mother. A sacred promise not to contact you.”

  “You were right not to tell me. I wouldn’t have believed you anyway. To be perfectly honest, I still have my doubts. That’s why I’m here.”

  Dora nodded, then tilted her head at the young woman. “Let me say first that I know about your father, and I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you. As you’ve probably figured, I barely remember him at all.”

  “Of course not. As much as I worried about his state of mind after Susan’s passing, I still thought he’d be better for you than the poisonous venom of your Aunt Eva and your grandmother, Magda.”

  Zoey pulled back, her mouth slightly open. Poisonous venom?

  Dora read the response on her former charge’s face, but was too old and wise to be apologetic or tentative about her assertions. “Your grandmother was not horrible, but she did not hold love closely in her heart.”

  Zoey floundered in middle ground. She lacked a strong conviction to defend her grandmother, but neither had anyone ever accused Grandma of lovelessness. Magda had set the standard for model citizenship, always doing the long list of right things: church on Sundays; welcome baskets for new neighbors; punctual appearances at town gatherings; conferences with teachers; arrangement of acceptable playdates for Zoey. All the proper icing had been on the cake of Zoey’s childhood. But the cake itself had been missing, hadn’t it? Dora’s statement had struck a resounding chord in Zoey’s buried memories, summing up in one phrase what Zoey had felt, but never comprehended, about Magda. To hear someone else say it justified an empty feeling Zoey had harbored for years.

  “I prayed often that you would receive love in abundance,” Dora said.

  “I felt… cared for,” Zoey said. “And I received plenty of attention. But as for love, I’m not sure.”

  Dora patted her hand. “Rest assured, you were loved. By me, and by your mother, all these years.”

  Zoey shifted in her chair, a glimmer of doubt darkening her face.

  “I see you do not believe me,” Dora said, frightening Zoey with her perceptiveness.

  “No, it’s not that. It’s just, well, I don’t know enough about my mother. I wasn’t given a very good impression of her growing up.”

  “Again, your grandmother’s influence.” Dora’s bitterness was unmistakable.

  “I need to know more in order to understand the foretelling,” Zoey said. “I read your letter for the first time today and already I’ve done a horrible thing to give it credibility.” She glanced down at her empty ring finger. “I keep telling myself that the foretelling was nothing more than the ramblings of a sick woman on her deathbed, but—”

  “Stop right there,” Dora said, a surprising strength in her delivery. “I see now. I see the remnants of what your grandmother and aunt did to you. You don’t know your mother at all, do you?”

  Zoey felt like a naughty child caught tormenting the family cat. She lowered her eyes and felt her face burning with shame. “No.”

  “You make your living digging into the past, Dr. Zoey Kincaid, but you can’t even brush away the dirt that your relatives dumped on your own.”

  Zoey pulled back, surprised to hear Dora’s familiarity with her current life. “How did you—”

  “Just because I promised your mother not to contact you doesn’t mean I crawled away like a cucaracha and pretended you did not exist. I am what they call a bit of a computer geek.”

  Zoey released a soundless chortle of amusement. “But I changed my identity.”

  “I know. I lost track of you for several years when you did that.” Dora leaned over with a strained effort and got within inches of Zoey’s face. “It really pissed me off.”

  Zoey broke into a surprised giggle. “I’m sorry. I had a stalker.”

  “Well.” Dora leaned back in her chair with a relaxing sigh. “I forgive you then.”

  “How did you know about my career?”

  “I told you, I’m a geek. I read magazines on-line and you were in the background of a National Geographic picture during a dig in Macedonia to uncover clay models of temples.”

  “Oh my gosh, you’re right. But I was so small in the picture. How did you see me?”

  Dora pointed a crooked thumb toward the inside of the house. Zoey glanced inside to the main room, surprised to see it dominated by a 75” plasma TV screen. “My nephew’s son. Video game addict. When my eyes started to go, he hooked my laptop up to his giant television screen. You were tiny in the magazine, that’s for certain, but as big as life in my living room. I did some research with the help of my brother, a retired professor, and I found your new name.”

  Zoey forced all her faculties to full attention. She would need to bring everything to the table to keep up with Dora. “Tell me about the letter you wrote, the one I read today.”

  Upon mention of the topic, sadness coated Dora’s eyes as blatantly as if a gifted artist had painted the emotion there. “I’m disappointed to say I never kept a copy. The whole episode upset me so. And some of the details, because I’ve thought about them time and time again, I no longer know if they are real or imagined.”

  “I have the letter with me.” Zoey pulled the
envelope out of her purse and put the letter in Dora’s reluctant hands.

  Dora picked up her thick eyeglasses from the small table where a glass of iced tea had sweat onto them. She shook them off before donning them, then read in silence for a moment.

  “English is my second language,” she said, “which may have worked to our advantage. As a young girl, I didn’t have many books. I picked up English by listening with sharp ears to everything.” She touched the long lobes of her left ear. “Not only did it help me understand young children when they spoke, but it helped me decipher your mother’s words when others couldn’t.”

  She removed her glasses and turned to Zoey with a dash of concern. “I hope I made no errors interpreting what she said. Every detail seemed important to her.”

  Zoey squeezed Dora’s arm. “I’m glad she had you. Imagine the frustration if she’d been unable to tell someone about the foretelling when she believed her own daughter’s life was at stake.”

  Dora accepted the gratitude in silence.

  Zoey watched as the old woman read portions of the letter. Surely, mixed and overwhelming emotions were rushing back in full. At last, Dora rested the pages on her lap, removed her glasses, and gazed into the distance. A look of mourning shrouded her face and she aged a decade in front of Zoey’s eyes.

  “I can add nothing,” Dora said. “It is the same as I always imagine it. My only doubts were her final words about the opal ring, in the hour before she died. Her voice trembled so badly, I wasn’t certain what she meant.” Dora turned to face Zoey finally. “I was one of the few outsiders who knew about her foretellings. Me, and her best friend, Bernadette.”

  Zoey swallowed. “Were my mother and I close?”

  Dora smiled with thin lips. “You couldn’t have been closer. The bond between you reached extraordinary levels.”

  Zoey cocked her head, not in doubt, but in surprise. She’d never given much thought to the relationship between her mother and herself for the three-plus years they’d been together.

  “And believe me, little Kyra. I know of bonds between parents and children.”

  Zoey did not need clarification. In asking around town about Dora’s place of residence, every person, without fail, mentioned the nanny or the one with the magical way with children.

  “You and Susan were more than just mother and daughter. I know a phrase usually applied to lovers, but I can think of no other way to describe the relationship between you and your mother.” Dora’s eyes shed their sadness as she fixed a twinkling gaze on Zoey. “You were soulmates. Probably still are.”

  Zoey looked at Dora questioningly, to which Dora responded by leaning forward again. “You are very much like her. When she died, she was only three years older than you are now. And at your age, she became pregnant with you.”

  Zoey swallowed. Hard. The unrealized coincidence struck her like a sucker-punch. She decided to keep mum about her own maternal condition. Should she ask Dora about the rape? What if the old woman knew nothing about it? She couldn’t risk telling her.

  “What about this foreteller business?” Zoey said, but the question came out more coldly than she would have liked. She tried to brush over it. “I mean, it’s never been proven, right? Why didn’t my mother get it tested and verified?”

  Dora squinted her sharp eyes. “If you had a gift for playing the piano and someone beat your hands with a ruler every time you touched the keys, how often would you perform?”

  “Okay, but—”

  “Okay, but nothing,” Dora said harshly. “Your mother was not a circus lion, able to perform on command.”

  “Still, it could have been tested.”

  “Perhaps you would like to be the proof? We have here a foretelling, after all.”

  Zoey felt the sting of Dora’s words and at the same time, the deep love the old woman still held for Susan Collette. It manifested itself as defensiveness against the naysayers. Zoey decided to keep the conversation on a factual, straightforward level. “Scientifically speaking, I wouldn’t qualify as a test case because I already know the details of the prediction.”

  “Exactly. Your mother told those who needed to be told. And because she told them, they could live. That was more important to her than proving anything to a bunch of heartless scientists. I’m sure your preference would not have been for me to watch in eager anticipation all these years to see if you were slaughtered on the banks of a river. I can’t say the same for the scientists.”

  Zoey absorbed the exacting words. “My mother was lucky to have you in her life, Dora.”

  Dora lifted her arms chest-high and gave a shrug. “I don’t mean to be so direct, Kyra, but I sense your doubt. I have thought about it many times over the years, and I think I can offer one thing to chip away at your denial.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Of all the sports in which you could excel, you are a runner, yes?”

  Zoey looked surprised that Dora knew that. “Yes.”

  “Of all the places you could live in the world, you live near the Schuylkill River, yes?”

  Zoey frowned and did not want to answer. She saw Dora’s direction now, demonstrating how Zoey’s life already pointed her in the direction most likely to yield to the foretelling. “Yes, but—”

  Dora put up a hand to stop her from speaking. Then she strained to reach all the way to Zoey’s midsection. She touched Zoey’s abdomen warmly and with the utmost love. “You are with child, yes?”

  Zoey gasped. But then she remembered that Dora also knew about the phrase from the letter—the one Zoey supposedly utters to her attacker in the future. She pressed her eyes closed. “Yes,” she managed. “I am.”

  When Zoey opened her eyes, she saw Dora gazing at her with pure love.

  “Trust your mother, Kyra. I don’t know how fate will play out, but don’t waste your energy wondering about the certainty of your mother’s foretelling.”

  Zoey wished it were that easy.

  They talked for another twenty minutes, until Dora grew tired. She bestowed upon Zoey a box of old letters and mementoes that Susan had asked Dora to pass along to Zoey if the chance ever arose. Zoey accepted the gift, knowing it would prove more valuable to her than the chest of jewels Jake had hoped for. And yet, part of her felt apprehensive about the contents. What might she learn?

  “I put one other thing in the box,” Dora said, “in case you needed an extra copy.”

  Zoey opened the box and glanced inside. “Of what?”

  “A copy of your freshman college yearbook. When you were still my Kyra. At Georgetown.”

  Zoey saw it lying atop the collection of letters and photos. She pulled it out. “You really did keep tabs on me, huh?”

  “The least I could do.”

  Zoey set the box down and flipped through the pages of the yearbook, of the life she’d left behind. “I remember this.” She grinned and pointed at a picture of her with a group of friends at a football tailgate. In it, a younger Kyra Collette donned a two-foot-tall foam hat bearing an image of the Hoyas’ mascot, Jack the Bulldog. Her arms draped left and right across the shoulders of her friends while another arm came from behind her and gripped her around the waist. The foam hat blocked the view of the arm’s owner but Kyra recognized the large fingers and, to her horror, the ring on the hand’s pinky finger: a rectangular opal. Her face fell.

  “What is it, Kyra?” Dora said. “Has the book upset you?”

  Zoey pointed to the hand in the photo. “The ring. That was his birthstone.”

  “Whose?”

  “Cesar Descutner’s. I’d forgotten all about it. His mother was big-time Italian. She’d given him the ring that October, a few weeks earlier, for his birthday, because the ancient Romans believed the stone would keep the wearer safe from disease. It represented hope and purity.”

  “Not a bad stone, then.”

  “It is if it’s on the finger of your killer. It’s an opal.”

  Dora’s eyes widened and her breath caught
in her throat, but then her face completely relaxed as if allowing an old thought some room to surface. “Interesting,” she said. “You know, for someone who studies the Stone Age, you should know the other mythical power of the opal.”

  Zoey’s foggy brain couldn’t have recalled the power of Frosty’s old silk hat right now. “I’m drawing a blank.”

  Dora explained. “The ancient Greeks believed the opal granted the power of foresight and the light of prophecy to its wearer.”

  Zoey shook her head at the irony. “Let’s just hope Cesar hasn’t foreseen the same scenario as my mother. I’m quite sure he’s the man on top of the cliff in the foretelling, the one who yells Keeks, but now, with this opal ring…”

  Dora’s face filled with pity but she ringed it with optimism. “You’ll find your way through this, Kyra. You have the knowledge now.”

  They embraced one final time, then shared a prolonged gaze, as if each was creating a permanent impression of the other. The unbidden thought entered Zoey’s mind that she might never see the old woman again. Perhaps the angle of the setting sun held the blame for Dora’s suddenly-aged appearance, but an ominous feeling swept over her that Dora had persevered all these years merely to keep her appointment today with Little Kyra.

  “Thank you, Dora.” She bent down to kiss the woman’s soft cheek. It felt like tissue paper to her lips.

  “Fate be kind to you, little one.”

  Chapter 19

  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

  The police station in central Philly buzzed with its usual melee of activity. Desperate drug dealers pleaded their cases in overcrowded holding cells to anyone who would listen. The loudly attired pimps, who had flared in number along with the explosion of poverty-stricken teenagers the last few years, arrived like clockwork to make bail payments on strung-out hookers. The extreme budget cuts to the city had forced more policemen and endless perps into ever-closer quarters.