Until that morning.
The vision was still pulsing at the edge of her mind like a bruise being pressed. She saw him walking into an office, his office, the big 1 on the top floor of that very building. She could feel the height of it, the cold air, the glass walls. She saw him sit down. She saw a glass of something on the desk in front of him. Someone had brought it before he arrived. Someone he trusted. She saw him drink. She saw his face change. She saw the betrayal register in his eyes, too late, too late, always too late. She saw him reach for something, for help, for anything, and find nothing. She saw the blood. She saw the floor. She saw him falling.
Then the vision shifted and she saw herself sitting outside on her piece of cardboard. Jimmy Macalli’s body was on the ground in front of her.
That was when the vision ended.
Let him die.
The thought rose up in Janet’s chest before she could stop it, and for a moment, for 1 terrible, beautiful moment, she held it.
Let him die.
He took your house. He took your son. He has eaten well every night of his life while you sleep on cardboard. He rides in cars that cost more than David made in 5 years. He has never spent 1 second thinking about what he did to you. Not 1 second of guilt. Not 1 bad dream. Not 1 regret. Let him die. Let him feel what David felt. Let him know what it is to fall. Let him hit the ground and have nobody catch him.
Her grip on the bowl tightened. Her jaw clenched. Tears came without permission, rolling down her cheeks into the wrinkles around her mouth, and she tasted salt.
“Let him die,” she whispered again.
Then the pain came.
Not the ordinary kind, not the dull ache in her knees from sitting too long on hard ground or the burn in her throat when the Harmattan wind blew dust into her face. This was something else, something interior, something that started behind her eyes, those eyes that had never worked, and radiated outward through her skull like a hot iron being pressed against the inside of her head.
She gasped and grabbed her temples.
The pain spiked, sharp and sudden and absolute. In the white heat of it, she heard the voice. Not a person’s voice. Not something that came from outside. This voice lived inside her, in the same place the visions lived, in the deepest part of whatever she was.
It said simply, “If you don’t speak, you lose it.”
The pain held for 3 more seconds.
Then it released.
Janet sat there sweating in the morning heat, breathing hard, her bowl on its side in her lap, her hands trembling. She already knew what she would do. She had always known. Because 55 years of carrying that gift had taught her 1 thing above everything else.
The gift did not care about your feelings.
The gift did not care about your grief.
The gift did not care about your justice.
The gift only cared about the truth.
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