Sometimes I forget her gifts. On nights like tonight I awaken. I turn to see Betty’s naked body washed by the moon’s light. She curls away from me in a tight protective ball. Her shoulder length black hair hides the right side of her face. I wonder if she occupies her body now, or if her essence has flown on another of its late night trips. I hope it returns before the police come. I hope she will go peacefully.

She begins to snore lightly, so I reach over and touch her hip. She moves the hip deliciously in response and in her new position the snoring stops. I examine her face: full lips, dark eyebrows, high rounded cheek bones. I want to stroke it, but can’t risk waking her. She will awaken soon enough.

We met two years ago at the Mark Twain Elementary School Fair when Jason was seven. Betty operated the fortune telling booth. “I don’t read palms,” she told me. She wore forest green tights and a large man’s striped dress shirt with a bold floral tie. “I read metal.” She motioned me to a chair. “Let me hold something which has been in contact with your skin.”

I removed my Celtic cross and placed it in her palm as she closed her eyes. A wave of pleasure flooded her face, then concern, then pain. She dropped the cross as though it burned her hand.

“Extinguish your anger. Be glad your wife left you and the child,” she said. “Forget about the television set. Focus on safety. The Pack is back. Rejoice in the joy-filled days to come.”

I was stunned. I’d never met Betty. How could she have known I was a safety engineer at the local nuclear power station? My Green Bay Packer jacket made no secret of my football affiliation, but only my ex-wife Judy knew about the tv. One Sunday afternoon before the divorce, while I watched the Packers pummel the Chicago Bears, Judy unplugged the 27” television on my desk, lifted it from the stand, and carried it through the front door which she’d already propped open. By the time I caught her, she had reached the creek. Judy pitched my Sony Smart TV into the water. She threw rocks at it until it sank. But Betty was right. I’d held on to my anger long enough. I’d replaced the tv years ago.

A month after the school fair I saw Betty again. She appeared at my door wearing black stirrup pants, a black silk blouse with large bow, and a floral jacket. “I understand you need a realtor.” I did. My laptop was open on the kitchen counter where I’d been searching for one.

For seven months my ex-wife had been living with her sister in Des Moines. I’d called her the night before to ask if she wanted Jason to come visit her at Christmas. “Why?” she asked. “If I wanted the little brat, I wouldn’t be living in Des Moines. And for God’s sake, sell the house. I need the money.”

The next day Betty was at my door with her book of listings and her perfect white teeth. “I know what you’re thinking, but we can’t date until your house is sold. Your wife’s essence is everywhere. I could never be happy here. Neither can you. You need a home with pure spirits.”

I didn’t know what that meant, but she was a crackerjack agent. “A house must match the buyer’s aura.” She told me. “My customers find happiness as well as a home. The dissatisfied ones are those who ignore my advice. I told the Richmonds not to buy that house on Belmont. When the FBI started digging up bodies in the basement under the new concrete floor, they understood.”

Her administrative assistant told me Betty had more than just a knack. “She’s a killer in negotiations. She reads people.”

“I borrow their pen,” Betty confessed, “or I touch their arm or shake their hand. With one touch, I know what they’re thinking. I can taste how much they want to close the deal. I sense how hard to push.”

It took her two days to sell my home, then she focused on the search for the new one. She found a two-story frame overlooking the Mississippi on Davenport’s Gold Coast. It had been built in 1866 by a local lumber king, but has gone through details of decline. Now the neighborhood was experiencing a revival. I grimaced as I got out of her Audi.

“Your eyes can’t see what you need to know. Look for the house beneath the peeling paint and missing shingles. Imagine the front with the bushes trimmed and the lawn restored. It’s easier to repair a roof than to mend a house’s spirit.”

We walked the twenty steps up to the front door. She inserted the key in the lock, held it there, closing her eyes, silent. The smiled and uttered a soft sigh.

When we entered the front hall Betty motioned me to wait. She moved carefully from room to room. In the dining room she stopped by the bay window, knelt down on the worn velvet window seat, and brushed her fingers over the tarnished brass hinges. She turned to me. “This house has been good to people for a century and a half; it will be good for us.”

She was thinking of the house and all the memories it held. I thought about the word “us.” We weren’t “us” yet, but she knew we would be. Until then, the ceiling leaked, the wallpaper peeled away taking old dry plaster with it, and every hardwood floor needed stripping.

But Betty was right. Painting the exterior made it glow. Repairs inside were cosmetic. The old boiler was indestructible. Jason and I had the eight rooms to ourselves until July when Betty agreed to join us. “Celeste watches over you.” I don’t ask about Celeste. Late some night when the candles are burning high on the painted slate fireplace, Betty will introduce me.

Recently I’ve learned of her other powers. In December I was promoted to Safety Director. I worked fourteen-hour days at the nuclear plant trying to correct the nagging problems left behind by the last safety director. The next inspection by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was a week away. We’d been cited by the NRC for sixteen violations three months earlier.  A follow up visit four weeks later found another nine. The board canned Harry Booker as part of their plan to make the necessary corrections. I was tapped to make things right before they would have to shut down our #2 reactor.

Betty had eight closings. One, a castle-like mansion on the bluffs, was a troubled house, but she didn’t know why. Then one night we were sitting exhausted in our matching La-Z-Boy recliners watching a Law and Order rerun. I looked up from the Costco chicken pot pie I was eating. For a moment I thought she was asleep. Her face suggested something different. My suspicion was confirmed when she announced, “I’m back.”

“From where?”

“From the castle house. I know the secret.”

“You haven’t left the chair.”

“I have–” She explained how she’d been dozing when suddenly she felt her essence rise. It drifted until she gained control, drawn toward the troubled house.

“You’re trying to scam me.” Even as I said it, I knew Betty was telling the truth.

“I watched him cut up his wife’s body with a chain saw. I watched him bag the body parts. I followed him to the water’s edge and saw him weigh the bags with stones and slip them into the river from his boat. I reached out to stop him, but I was powerless.”

“How could you have seen all that?” I asked. “You haven’t been in that chair more than twenty minutes.”

“I watched the past as if it were now. I have to call the police.”

I could not dissuade her.

Of course, the police did not believe her, even though the home’s owner, Dr. Dinesen had recently reported his wife missing. Betty tried to persuade Detective Pruit to get a search warrant. “I can’t get a warrant on the strength of a mad woman,” he told me. That’s the politically incorrect name they gave her at the station, “The Mad Woman.” When the police learned from Betty’s colleagues that she read house auras, it wasn’t hard to dismiss the out of body experience as one more lunacy.

Then a torso drifted to the surface by the Lindsey Boat Yard. No one was convinced it was April Dinesen because the body had been in the water a long time, but the DNA would confirm the suspicion. Certainly there had been a crime.

Betty is a suspect.

Now we struggle to find sleep. I keep Jason home from school. Sometimes I look at Betty differently. I wonder what other powers lie hidden in her psyche. I worry new marvels will disrupt our happiness.

And my ex-wife has returned, sensing a story she could sell to the tabloids. She is arguing for custody to save her son “from the madness.”

She’s too late. Jason speaks to people in the playroom when I know no one is there. And I see visions. Tonight before bed I helped Betty remove her cameo. I touched its golden chain. Her terrors flooded over me. I saw the killing she had seen. I realized the days of courtship have been replaced by a deeper madness, and it scares me.

Paul Lewellan retired from education after fifty years of teaching. He lives and gardens on the banks of the Mississippi River with his wife Pamela, his Shi Tzu Mannie, and their ginger tabby Sunny. He has recently published fiction in New Croton Review, True Chili, Blood and Bourbon, Jupiter Review, and Holy Flea Lit. Although he doesn't believe life begins at 74, it does get more interesting.