Between the Spirit and the Dust

Chapter Three

The song (follow the youtube link) is meant to help set the atmosphere for this chapter haha. Still tryna get a hang of this wattpad thing, let me know what you think of this chapter :)

Oh and this chapter's dedicated to SkyLyte, for having been a reader of mine since my old mibba days :)

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“I don’t… How’s anything that I feel supposed to help with the investigation?” I finally managed to say.

Evie sighed. “Maybe I should start with my own history before I ask you about yours. Would that help?”

I nodded, settling into one of Dad’s sofas. “Yeah, it would. Dad never really said that much about you.” 

She shot me an amused smile, as though she knew that I was lying. But it was only a white lie, to avoid hurting her feelings. And then I wondered if she knew what I was thinking. Could she read my mind? I groaned inwardly at how paranoid I was becoming.

Evie continued, “I wasn’t a very good mother to Marty. There’s a lot that I regret about his childhood, a lot of things that I wished I’d handled better.” She studied my face closely. “Let me be frank with you, Emily. I was an alcoholic for the whole of your father’s childhood. I was drunk off my head every day of week and your father saw all of that. My husband, your grandfather, left us when Marty was only a teenager because he couldn’t put up with me any longer. Marty refused to leave, I suppose because he felt some sort of responsibility towards me.”

Her eyes were filling and she blinked hard to get rid of the moisture. But her gaze never wavered from mine. “I got myself cleaned up after he’d left. Decided that it was time to make something of myself. It wasn’t easy but I’d lost so many people because of my unwillingness to accept the truth about who I was. I was the kind of person that’d always sensed…that there was more to this world.”

My breath had hitched in my throat and I looked down at my hands, suddenly finding it difficult to meet her steady gaze.

“I had never knew how to handle this…ability of mine and I chose all the wrong things—alcohol, painkillers, anything that could’ve shaken me out from what I felt. I’d hated it when my father had done these things but ironically, they were what I turned to.  It was a miracle that I’d even met a man willing to marry Crazy Evie.” I looked up sharply at this. The corners of her lips quirked up in a wry smirk. “Oh yes, that’s what they used to call me—Crazy Evie. I had a reputation for being stark raving mad. 

“Dad’s actually told us, Sylvia and me, about leaving you because you were drug addict,” I said. I could feel her wince even without looking at her, but I figured that since we were being honest with each other, I should tell her what I knew. “I don’t think he knew about you getting cleaned up.”

“No, I don’t suppose he did." 

The tension in the room melted away a bit, enough for me to finally risk asking, “Those abilities of yours, what are they?”

“Our abilities are hereditary, Emily. It skipped a generation with your father but yours and mine? They are the same. I guess the easiest way for me to explain it is that we’re empaths of some kind." 

Empaths. I hadn’t even known that there was a word for what I had been feeling. Or that there had been someone, someone right in front of me now, who’d undergone the same things that I did. Maybe she wasn’t the most reliable person but wasn’t she still proof that I wasn’t losing my mind. 

Either that or we were both crazy.

I eyed her in her expensive linen suit and the SPECIAL CONSULTANT badge that was still prominently displayed on her blazer. She seemed sane enough.