But this vision of Jessie had been stronger than anything she’d experienced before. And a helluva lot more frightening.

What did it mean?

“Nothing! Face it, you’re just a freak,” she muttered under her breath. What she did not need now in her life, absolutely did not, was any kind of eerie visions or attacks or whatever you wanted to call them. She’d hoped they had died a quick and lasting death.

Trying to shake the weird sensation clinging to her, Becca drove from the parking lot, her wipers slapping at the rain. The sky had darkened, night dropping quickly. One of her packages had tipped over and the baby gift she’d purchased was spilled on the seat, a bright, whimsical mermaid puppet sewn in silver lamé and pink and green sequins.

That old sadness threatened to overcome her again, but she wouldn’t have any of it. Driving with one hand, she stuffed the puppet back into the shopping bag and headed purposely for the condo she’d once shared with Ben. Now the two-bed-room unit was all hers-all nine hundred square feet of “charming midcentury” architecture, as the literature boasted. In layman’s terms this meant an apartment building constructed in the late fifties and converted to condos with a little updating in the late nineties. But it was home. Even without Ben.

By the time she pulled into her designated slot, Becca had managed to push the damned vision and her own case of the unwanted blues aside, but dusk was gathering quickly and the clouds opened up again.

Rain tossed around her in shivery waves as she headed for the front door, fumbling with her keys. The evening paper was in a plastic sleeve on the stoop and she reached down and grabbed it, juggling it with her packages, as she spilled through the door. She dumped everything she was carrying onto the drop-leaf table that stood in the small foyer, then shrugged out of her dampened coat and hung it in the closet as the ticky-tick of Ringo’s nails across her oak floors heralded her dog’s arrival.