I had a choice: I could lie down for a few minutes and explore this odd situation, or I could wait until Holly stormed out of the bathroom and made the decision for me. My natural contrary reaction to Holly, either in the room or out, had me lying down and crossing my arms across my chest. But there was a wonder in all this as well. I was curious.

Summer’s bag lay near Marvin’s drum, deflated and vulnerable. The corner of the folder with the camper’s permit and insurance was in clear view. If I grabbed it now, Holly and I would be free of Summer, her detours and unpredictable ways. Holly and me in the camper alone. Holly calling all the shots. Holly irritated at my every sigh and grumble.

Marvin frowned. “What just happened? Your aura darkened.”

I looked over my shoulder in the direction of the bathroom and said, “Let’s get to it.”

It didn’t take long before he was sweeping a feather fan over my body, placing a rock on my forehead, and drumming softly at my shoulder. If I had been watching this, I’d have rolled my eyes at the oddity of it all; instead, I consciously decided to close them and try to relax. The sun from a large picture window fell on my feet, and the warmth traveled up my legs. For once I wasn’t tired; in fact, I felt alert—even without my morning coffee. I opened my eyes and saw Marvin concentrating his movements around my diaphragm. He swept and pulled something unseen, winding around his hand and letting it go into the air above me. I imagined cotton candy, not taffy, because it looked easily done, as if waving steam from a boiling pot. I tried to feel something. A lightness or closure of some sort.

I knew I should clear my mind, but I’m not the kind of person whose mind is a quiet place.

In college, before Jeff, I dated a boy named Mark. He was a nontalker. The silent Mark, we called him. I met him in a statistics class, and he was able to explain chi square analysis to me when neither the professor nor the textbook made sense. He drew a graph with shaded-in bars and explained it without jargon. For the first time ever, I understood statistics. I was so grateful, I dated him for a month.

When Katie asked me what we talked about, I couldn’t tell her. Mark and I barely talked. I talked. I reported, I guess. He listened, or at least I thought he did. We kissed a lot; it was pretty chaste, when I think about it. He had deliciously soft lips. Once, when I asked him what he thought about when he was alone, he said, “Nothing.” He had grown up in North Carolina, and the few things he said had an almost-feminine southern lilt to them.

I’d laughed and said, “That’s impossible. You must be thinking something.” I clarified, “Like when you’re driving. Or mowing the lawn or something.”

“Nothing,” he said. When he saw that answer wasn’t working for me he said, “Sports, I guess. I like baseball.”

I stopped seeing him after he dropped me off that night. It wasn’t that I wanted him to say he was thinking about me, although that would have been nice. I wanted to know what was going on in that brain that could so easily explain data analysis, false positives, and normal curves. I thought a brain like his must be filled with proving all kinds of things. Sifting ideas, analyzing information, coming to conclusions. When he said “nothing,” I decided to believe him.

Often, if I wasn’t careful, I made up a story about people in my head and didn’t check it with the facts of that person. I absolutely did that with Jeff. I made a list in my head of all the good things, added to it characteristics I was sure would surface, and ignored anything else.

For example, what had looked like astute political interest was, in actuality, a place to put all his anger and make it look like it was for the good of all people. “Can you believe what our government is doing right now? Bailing out enormous corporations while we get our hands dirty, working all the time.” Jeff was a landscape architect who did manual labor. He’d stop as if he wanted me to fill in the blanks. I didn’t know he was in debt and on the verge of bankruptcy. I thought he was arguing for a fair wage for hardworking families, equality, and a government that cared for its people. But what he wanted was money, to be easily richer than others, and someone to absolve his losses and guilt.

Marvin shook the maracas over my body, and after a quiet moment, he spoke in a low voice. “Take your time. Sit up when you’re ready. This was a very abbreviated session. I’m being mindful of the time.” I glanced at a clock over Marvin’s shoulder and was surprised to see thirty minutes had passed. I got to my knees, saw the folder almost waving to me in Summer’s bag.

With Marvin’s back to me, I could easily pluck the folder and slide it into my bag. If he asked me what I was doing, I could show him the camper registration. Shrug it off. But my mind was clear on the topic. I didn’t want to. I wanted Summer to ride with us, play the role of the human shield between Holly and me. She lightened our ride, seemed to provide a fairy-like contrast to our heavy energy, and I clasped my hands in front of me.

Softly Marvin said, “I was able to get rid of some energy just kind of hanging around. You were blocked around your digestive system. I moved some energy out of there. I know this all sounds pretty crazy, and I’d explain it to you if we had more time. In fact, we can talk on the phone if you like, do another session that way. I don’t need to be in the same room with you.”

“You don’t?” I was skeptical.

“I can do this from anywhere. I believe it’s more effective when I’m in the room with clients, but the phone is fine.”

“Isn’t that kind of shady?”

He smiled graciously. “I know what it sounds like. And I know what it all looks like. I don’t expect everyone to be open to it.” In that moment he looked like a kid in high school who didn’t have a place to sit at lunch. “It was my grandmother who noticed I was different, could read people. I had vivid dreams that often came true in one aspect or another.”

“Couldn’t everyone say that?” I couldn’t explain why I was questioning this man I’d never met before. It wasn’t like me. I usually just let people have their own weirdness and went on my merry way.

He nodded. “Yes, there are other things. Things that can also be explained away by the placebo effect, suggestion, and other physiological measures. But I know there’s a dimension that others don’t seem connected to.”

“Like?”

“Well, I wasn’t going to mention this. I wasn’t sure if you’re ready, honestly. But your husband. He isn’t dragging you down. I don’t feel a sense of him. Another spirit communicated to me that he crossed over. Was your husband very invested in our culture’s value system?”

“Yes. Isn’t everyone?”

As if he didn’t hear me he continued. “There is another voice. With a strong message. ‘Speak.’ I heard the word speak repeatedly.”

I stood—too quickly because I felt dizzy—and staggered a step to the side.

Marvin steadied me. “Okay. There’s a nerve there. Take a breath to center yourself.”

I did what he said. I took a deep breath, waited until my head cleared.

“Sometimes I get a word or phrase that isn’t quite right. I don’t hear voices or even words. It’s more like thoughts and feelings come to me and through me. I give them language, but I don’t always get the words right.”

I closed my eyes. “No. It’s right. ‘Speak,’ but harsher.” I’d thought I’d left my father’s haranguing behind me so many years ago, after his death. I rubbed my forehead to clear my thoughts.

“There is a heaviness around you, and that word is in the center of it.”

“I’m sorry. I’m just a meat-and-potatoes girl. You know? I deal with what’s ahead of me. One thing at a time. I don’t have layers and layers of hidden stuff to uncover.” I moved a step away. Laughed nervously. “When my daughter was born, the doctors asked me if I wanted to cut the umbilical cord. I’m just not that kind of human. The person with the medical degree should cut the cord. I didn’t want to have my baby in a swimming pool. I wanted as much pain medication as possible, and I didn’t want to bury the placenta in the backyard. I’m not earthy. I’m plastic maybe. Or,” I said and looked around the room for something that was better than plastic but not as earthy as earth, “I’m cotton. Functional, kind of versatile, not at all complicated.”

“No, Samantha. You are telling yourself the wrong story.” He let go of my elbow. “Don’t get me wrong; there are people who are, as you say, cotton. But that’s not you.”

Where was Holly? Where was the noisy Holly who never missed a chance to interrupt and make a moment her own? I needed a minute, a week, a month to consider that I was something other than an easy one-dimensional person.

“You don’t have to be a certain kind of person to accept the help of the earth, spirit animals, and the universe. They are here for organic farmers and investment bankers alike. In fact”—and he looked away—“my day job is as an accountant.”

That struck me as funny. I laughed with relief, and so did he—but he didn’t drop the subject.

“Is that what’s keeping you so quiet in your life?”