One Less Problem Without You Read online

  “All different things,” Marie said, helping Prinny open the bag, then taking them out one by one. “This one is rose quartz. That’s a magic rock to help you find love.”

  “But Mama had Daddy!”

  Marie smiled. “Maybe this is why.” She curled her fist tight around the rock and held it to her chest for a moment. “It’s very powerful. Also for self-love. You know it’s important to love yourself, don’t you, child? If you don’t, how’s anyone else gon’ to?”

  Prinny didn’t understand that concept, but she didn’t care. She liked the idea that she had found some magic talisman that had given her mother and father to each other, and when she touched it, it buzzed against the tender skin of her palm. She would save the stone, she determined right then and there, so that someday she would be able to find her own husband.

  Though it did occur to her later, and she hated herself for it, that maybe it hadn’t been so lucky after all. Had she been willing to give up her life so young, just to find love at twenty-one? Even at eleven that had seemed like a pretty bad deal.

  “This one”—Marie took out what looked like a great big diamond—“is a plain ol’ crystal quartz. Very very magical.”

  “It looks like a diamond!”

  “Indeed it does. It is good for everything. Very good luck for everything.”

  “But she died!”

  “It was her time.” Marie gave Prinny another hug, and it spread over the child like a soothing balm. “She chose that long before she ever came to this earth. She came here so she could create you, and you, child, are destined for greatness.”

  Those words never left Prinny’s mind.

  You are destined for greatness.

  They had supported her through some pretty hard times, but they had also taunted her when the going got tough and she felt she should have been more successful, in more ways, than she was.

  She’d always thought that by thirty she’d be married, have kids, be living the life that had been taken from both her mother and herself. She’d thought she’d finally be starting to heal all the things that broke when she was six and her mother “disappeared.”

  Too late for that possibility. She was months away from thirty now.

  And even though she still clung to Marie’s words—you’re destined for greatness—as time marched on she believed them less and less.

  Nevertheless, that day in the attic had changed her life forever. At first she’d just sneak up there whenever her father—or whatever subsequent nanny was on duty—wasn’t looking and go through the trunk.

  She never dumped the whole thing out or tore through it, taking it all in and trying to understand it. Instead she lifted out all the books and made them into a pile, so she could tell what she was looking at as she went along, then took things out piece by piece, letting each one be the treasure of the day.

  The bag of stones was first. There were so many of them, and she sat in the attic—now with a flashlight—and looked through a metaphysical book she found in the library to identify each one and its magical properties. It was a cross between being a geologist and a witch doctor.

  The amber and blue lazulite was to reduce worries. She could use that.

  The purple amethyst was for peace and happiness. There had been a small one in the bag, but a large bookend of it as well, deep in the dark of the trunk, sparkling like treasure in Captain Hook’s lair.

  Moonstone was just a beautiful name, and a beautiful moon-gray stone, and according to the book it was for protection from negativity. But there was a warning not to be near it during the full moon, as the energy could get too frenetic. Prinny didn’t know what that meant, but it didn’t sound good, and since she didn’t know the phases of the moon, she set it aside so she would never accidentally interact with it at “the wrong time.” Later, of course, she learned the phases of the moon and their power and got quite adept at harnessing the power of the moon and the moonstone, if only in small ways.

  There were a bunch more, but the one that interested her the most was the selenite. It looked like an ordinary crystal, or, to be more specific, like the bauble on the end of a cheap necklace from Claire’s after it aged for a while, but the book said it called in the angels.

  Prinny was sure that her mother was an angel now, and she’d do anything to bring her back, so she kept the selenite on her at all times, a long, slim cirrus cloud, right up until it crumbled to chips and dust in the front pocket of her jeans.

  That was when the idea to have a metaphysical shop first occurred to her: when she was just a teen. Not that she would have called it a metaphysical shop, because she didn’t know what that meant at the time, or how it would work. All she knew was that this magical stone that she hoped to God would bring her mother to visit had broken to bits and she needed another one.

  Which isn’t to say that the crystals and stones were the only things of interest to her in the trunk. There were cards, not just the tarot cards that Marie had first pointed out, but beautiful cards decorated with fairies and flowers and positive messages, like happy fortune cookies. There were candles, too, that still smelled nice but were melted into lumps, and whose purpose Prinny would never know.

  For a long time, through three more nannies, Prinny kept the chest a secret. No one else ever went up to the attic, and she didn’t want anyone growing alarmed at the contents and deciding to remove it “for her own good.”

  That was exactly the kind of thing grown-ups did.

  But she did eventually take the books down to her room, one by one, and read them at night, trying to understand the workings of the occult. Except she didn’t like to think of it as “the occult” because that sounded so devilish, and everything she’d found in the box—as well as everything she remembered about her mother—was just so fun and kitschy and even frivolous. Cards with fairies on them, bright-colored candles, sparkling gems and crystals …

  When she was sixteen, five years deep into her ever-strengthening interest in fortune-telling, she broached the subject with her father.

  “What was Mama like?” she asked him one night as they sat, just the two of them, eating his favorite meatloaf and mashed potatoes—prepared by the new cook he’d given his mother’s old recipe to—for a late dinner.

  He looked taken aback. “What do you mean, what was she like? You remember her!”

  “Not so well, Dad.” She shrugged. “She’s been gone for nearly two-thirds of my life.” The words hurt, not so much because she remembered and missed her mother, because she really didn’t remember her very well, but because she hadn’t had a mother long enough to mourn her properly. All she had was the few remnants her mother had left behind, and her own imagination, which was putting together a picture that might or might not be accurate.

  “Not that long,” he said, frowning. “Surely not so long. It’s only been”—he thought about it—“nine years now.”

  “I’m sixteen.”

  A pained look crossed his face. It was as if he’d never considered the impact on her before. Then his expression softened, and he said, “You look very much like her, you know.”

  Prinny felt her cheeks grow warm. To be told she looked like the truly beautiful, sophisticated blond woman in the pictures was like being told she looked like Grace Kelly—someone had said that about her mother once. Prinny had had to Google the name, but when she did, the images took her breath away. To be compared to a woman who was said to look like her was a nice compliment, to be sure, but the kind of thing that was embarrassing to acknowledge graciously because then it sounded like she agreed.

  But coming from her father, it was a different thing. Maybe he really meant it. “Did you know her when she was my age?”

  “Very nearly. I met her when she was twenty. Imagine. Just a little older than you are now.”

  The fact that she’d died less than a decade later hung in the air, a sad little bit of dust floating between them, unacknowledged but fully known.

  “What sort of things
did she like?” Prinny went on carefully. “I found a book on tarot cards upstairs on one of the shelves a few years ago, and I guess it was hers, because that sure doesn’t sound like you.” She smiled, but something inside told her that this could be a touchy subject and she’d better tread very carefully.

  He laughed, genuinely. “Oh, she loved that stuff! Loved it! When we first met, she told me a psychic had told her I was coming for her. She said she was never afraid of being alone for too long because a psychic told her I was on the way to save her.” His smile dimmed, presumably at the thought that he ultimately couldn’t, and didn’t, save her.

  “Was she psychic?”

  He gave that wry smile that to this day she remembered as being quintessential him. “Every single time I tried to surprise her with a present or a trip she was.”

  Prinny had to laugh. “But was she really?”

  He shrugged. “Who knows? I never really bought into that stuff myself.”

  Prinny was incredulous. “Even though someone told her you were coming?”

  He stabbed at his meatloaf. “It’s not like they gave her my name, baby. They just told her a man was going to come into her life. She was nineteen and gorgeous, so who couldn’t have predicted that? If it hadn’t been me, it could have been anyone. It could have been Jean-Claude Van Damme. He could have been your father.”

  She screwed her face up, both at the obscure choice of celebrity and at the idea of that one in particular being her father under any circumstances. “That seems like a stretch.”

  “All I’m saying is, it didn’t take a psychic to tell a beautiful girl like that that a man was going to love her.”

  Prinny smiled. There was so much love in him still for the mother she’d never know except in the pieces he gave her, that she couldn’t help hoping such a good man was on his way to her, too.

  She wanted to know who the psychic was who had told her mother that, but she knew her dad wouldn’t know the answer. And even if he did, chances seemed slim that she could find the same person and that they’d remember Ingrid Tiesman. Or, rather, Ingrid Barclay, as she’d been at the time.

  “When they said you were coming along, did they tell her Leif was coming with you?” Leif had been ten years old when Prinny’s parents had gotten married.

  “Now, that”—he took a forkful of mashed potatoes—“is a damn good question.”

  “If they did, that would prove they were right, wouldn’t it?”

  “That they were lucky guessers. Or maybe that they were good enough at talking vague that she made it fit.”

  “If she believed, there had to be something to it! I mean, if that was her thing—”

  “Princess, it was just one of her things. Your mom had a whole lot of different interests. That’s just one of the quirkier. She told me that she liked playing those psychic games—that’s what she called them—when she was a lonely teenager. Those things brought her comfort, so I say why not? That doesn’t mean they were magic.”

  Prinny had had the same experience with them herself, though she was shy about admitting it, particularly since it would probably make her father feel like her loneliness was somehow his failing. “Did she keep on seeing that same psychic?”

  “Nah. Not that I know of. I never even heard the name. But now and then she’d see one of those neon signs, like in Georgetown, and she had to stop, no matter what time of night it was, and get a quick palm read or whatever they did.”

  “You didn’t go in with her?”

  He gave a dismissive shake of the head. “Not my thing. Gave me a chance to sit in the car and get the scores on the radio.”

  “You were never even tempted to find out your future?”

  He shook his head, but kindly. “You don’t get a lot out of it if you don’t believe.”

  “So you really don’t believe.” The idea that he didn’t gave her the uncomfortable feeling that he didn’t believe in her.

  He shook his head. “She loved reading those cards, though. She’d shuffle them up like a professional blackjack dealer, then ask me to pick one. Damned if she couldn’t make it all sound true, too. But that’s how those things work. Don’t be fooled by them. It’s like horoscopes—they’re just vague enough so that you can read whatever you want into them.”

  Actually, Prinny disagreed. She’d been teaching herself to do readings, and all the ones she’d done on her own life were spot-on. Her father would say that was a perfect example of reading into them to make things fit, but she knew there was more to it. She suspected her mother had had the Gift and that she’d passed it down to Prinny.

  The only thing was, she didn’t know how to use it. Or maybe, more specifically, she didn’t know how to harness it. Because the thoughts came to her wildly. She could ask a question and get an answer right away, but the problem was that all of the questions were hers and she didn’t always remember the answers so it was tough to say how fast or accurate her prognostications were.

  She had talked to plenty of psychics, though. Mostly phone psychics, though she stuck to the ones that had a money-back guarantee if you weren’t absolutely amazed. And most of the psychics she’d talked to, without any prodding from her, had told her she was going to open a business to light the way for other people.

  Other people like Prinny and Ingrid.

  So when her father died and Leif started making noise about her not being responsible enough to handle her portion of the inheritance—implication, she was not responsible enough to handle life—she knew she had to come up with a viable business.

  And what better than one her own mother would have loved? What better than a business that would help and comfort people, the way it had helped and comforted Prinny and her mother in their lost years?

  She could see it before she even bought it: the baskets of beautiful shining, glimmering, glittering stones and crystals; an array of oracle cards (now there were so many more than in her mother’s day: mermaids, unicorns, saints, and angels); colorful book spines lining the shelves with titles like Most Magikal Herbalism and A Wink from God. It was clearly Meant To Be, as far as Prinny was concerned.

  And as far as Prinny was concerned, she knew when things were Meant To Be.

  And, seriously, where better than in Georgetown, a place filled with funky little shops and at least one neon PSYCHIC light that had been up as long as Prinny could remember, and might well be the very one her father had spoken of stopping at in the middle of the night on her beautiful, eccentric mother’s whim?

  To say nothing of all the other browse-about places that made foot traffic so likely. Three seasons out of four the weather was nice enough to stroll along the streets and shop, and people also loved Georgetown in the snow.

  It was perfect.

  And so Cosmos was born.

  It had to be.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Twenty-eight Years Earlier

  “Did you see that?” Jessica, aka “the New Maid,” nudged Lena, the cook, who was the closest thing she had to a friend in the Tiesman household, and pointed into the dining room, where the family was getting up from dinner.

  “What?” Lena was distracted, trying to clean the plates, but the baby’s wailing turned her attention to the dining room. “What happened?”

  “That little shit just pinched her.”

  “What, the baby?”

  Jessica was instantly incensed. “Yes, that’s why she’s crying. He thought no one was looking, and I watched him do it! Jesus, she’s not having food allergies or any other reaction. She’s being abused by that kid!” She shook her head and tried to resist the urge to go in and beat the crap out of him in front of his parents. “Son of a bitch.”

  “She’s not a bitch, she’s lovely.”

  As if on cue, Ingrid Tiesman went to little Prinny and swooped her into her arms. The child settled quickly, but Jessica could see the angry red spot as if it were throbbing.

  Then, almost worse, she saw the little smile on Leif’s face.
/>   It was disgusting.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be clearing the dishes?” Lena asked. “And not gawking and judging?”

  “I don’t wanna go anywhere near the kid.”

  “It’s your job. And I can’t finish my job until you bring them in. So get on it.”

  “In a minute.” She watched the scene before her.

  Ingrid took Prinny toward the stairs, stopping, for a moment, to let her husband give the baby a kiss. She had quieted by then; the pleasant little thing was even smiling, despite the fact that tears still rested on her cheeks. She always rallied, that one. Such a good, easy baby. Such a contrast to her brother.

  “Do you want me to take her up to bed?” the boy asked, approaching his stepmother and sister. Jessica couldn’t tell if the gleam she saw in his eyes was real or just something she imagined because she expected it.

  And the poor baby reached for him! Actually reached for him! Her tormentor, yet her little eyes lit up when she saw him, like he was a movie star or something. It was horrible.

  “I’ve got to stop this.” Jessica started for the dining room, but Lena stopped her.

  “That is not your job.”

  “Fuck my job.” Jessica bustled into the room. “Leif, did you drop something?”

  “No.” He was reaching for Prinny, but it didn’t look like Ingrid was going to give her up. Thank goodness. Ingrid was no dink; she knew her stepson was a monster. No one could miss it, for Pete’s sake! He was mean as a snake, through and through.

  “I thought I saw something glinting under your seat,” Jessica went on, searching frantically for anything that might explain it. There was nothing, but at least she’d interrupted whatever his intentions were toward his poor little sister.

  It wasn’t only what he’d just done; that was icing on the proverbial cake. A cake he would happily have put snakes, snails, and puppy dog tails—along with a good measure of snot—into. In fact, he had put toothpaste in the middle of select Oreos in a package; that had been a delightful discovery. And the time he’d stolen the neighbor’s cat and kept it in a plastic grocery bag for two days before being discovered? Even though that could have ended much worse, Jessica was pretty sure the cat left with a haunted look it hadn’t had before.