Chapter 1
Nell Finley stood at the big windows in the white-walled backroom-studio of her shop looking out over the Bluewater Cove neighborhood and at the ocean beyond. Dark clouds had gathered, low and thick, and a bolt of lightning flashed between them.
Beads of sweat formed on Nell’s forehead and her body turned cold.
“It’s only a quick thunderstorm. It will be over in five minutes.” Nell’s sister, Violet, called to her from the front of the store.
Nell didn’t answer. She closed her eyes and took in slow, deep breaths, but the not unexpected wave of anxiety started in her feet, climbed up over her legs, wrapped around her torso, and rattled in her head.
Iris, the light brown, medium-sized, Lab-Poodle mix stared up at the young woman and anxiously tapped her tail on the floor.
Whirling, Nell hurried towards the staircase that led to the finished basement of the large, antique Cape-style home where the sisters kept their shop in two of the rooms facing Main Street and lived in the rest of the house.
“Wait.” Violet came into the studio, concern showing in her green eyes. “I’ll stay with you in here. Let’s sit next to each other until it passes.”
“I’ll be okay. I have to go down to the basement.” Nell disappeared down the stairs with Iris running after her, and when she reached the lower level, she rushed to the rocking chair, sat down and wrapped a blanket over her shoulders, closed her eyes, and whispered to herself, over and over while patting the dog’s head … it will be over in minutes. I’ll be all right. Nothing’s going to happen.
Ten months ago, Nell and Violet’s mother passed away in the family home in central Massachusetts. Nell had gone to the house to start cleaning it out and, during a break, she sat at the kitchen table eating the lunch she’d brought along with her.
The day was hot and humid and the air was oddly still. When she’d taken a few trash bags to the garage, Nell noticed the strange yellow-green of the overcast sky.
Sitting at the table, she was about to take a bite of her sandwich when the sound of a train could be heard off in the distance. Even though there were no train tracks nearby, the rumble grew to a roar and then the heavens opened and rain fell like a tidal wave over the house.
Nell’s heart had pounded like a jackhammer and she stood up so fast her chair slid back three feet from the table.
Standing aghast as uprooted trees flew past the kitchen window, she took off for the cellar when the glass in the living room bay window shattered and blew out.
Crouching in a basement corner as the storm roared over the family home, the building began to shake and groan, and twenty seconds later, the house lifted from its foundation and blasted away with the tornado leaving Nell in the dark, open cellar hole, the wind pummeling her, and the rain lashing down on her body.
The F-4 tornado killed twenty-seven people that day as it tore through five small towns before dissipating over Westborough and Southborough to the east.
“Nell?” Violet walked softly down to the basement. “It’s over. The sky is blue again.”
Now, whenever a storm came up, Nell had to take refuge in the cellar, and no matter how kind and gentle her sister spoke to her or how many times she offered to stay beside her, Nell preferred to ride out the bad weather sitting alone in the rocking chair with the dog’s head pressed onto her lap.
The blanket slipped off Nell’s shoulders and she let out a long breath. “Will I ever stop reacting this way?”
Violet sat in the chair next to her sister. “It hasn’t even been a year. You lived through a terrible, traumatic event. It’s still raw. It will take time for the feelings to subside.”
“I feel like a fool. I can’t control my reaction.” Nell ran her hands through her long auburn hair.
“It’s not something you can control.” Violet gave a half-smile. “If it was me, I’d pass out right onto the floor every time a storm came up and you’d have to revive me with smelling salts.”
A little chuckle escaped from Nell’s throat. “Maybe I should be more dramatic in my distress and not just sit rocking in a chair when a storm comes up.”
The young women climbed the stairs to the shop and returned to their tasks.
Twenty-seven-year old Nell was an artist who sold original paintings in the store she shared with her sister. Violet, one year older, made handcrafted jewelry and pottery which she sold both online and in the shop.
After hanging a couple of new paintings on the walls, Nell returned to the back studio to work on a watercolor seascape. The early June sunlight streamed in through the windows calming her and banishing any remaining traces of nervousness that lingered after her storm-induced adrenaline rush.
Ever since she was able to hold a crayon or a brush, Nell loved to draw and sketch and paint and would spend hours each day hunched over her drawing pad creating colorful landscapes, portraits, and pictures of animals. Colorful really wasn’t a strong enough word to describe Nell’s pictures … tree trunks weren’t simply the chalky white of birch trees or the silvery gray of a Beech, or a mix of browns and tans and a little black of evergreens … they were hues and tones of purples, pinks, and blues, or reds and greens and orange. In fact, every single object in a scene was awash in hundreds of shades of colors.
Nell’s mother called her daughter’s artwork impressionist in nature and when she asked Nell why she always drew things with so many colors, the little girl said, “Because that’s what I see, Momma.”
Sometimes, Nell got headaches and had to wear sunglasses in the house. Other times, when she went to the grocery store with her mother, she would become overwhelmed by the lights and the tall shelves and long tables filled with item after item.
Nell’s mother became concerned and when she discussed her daughter’s drawings and sensitivity to visual stimuli with the pediatrician, the doctor simply shrugged it off, but it all still picked at her until one day, Nell’s art teacher took Mrs. Finley aside.
The teacher had suspicions about Nell and used a word Mrs. Finley had never heard before. Tetrachromat.
“A what?” Mrs. Finley asked, her eyes blinking in confusion.
“I really don’t know anything about it,” the teacher said, “but I’ve heard of people who have a fourth type of cone in their eyes. It’s usually females who have it. The extra cones allow these people to see many, many more colors than ordinary people. They’re called tetrachromats.”
After hours of reading about having the extra type of cones in the eye, Mrs. Finley took Nell for testing and the researchers at the university confirmed the reason why the young girl drew and painted the way she did … she was capable of seeing millions more colors than the average person could.
The little bell tinkled when the door of the shop opened and Nell could hear Violet speaking with a woman who had entered from Main Street.
For some reason, Nell wasn’t able to focus on her painting and with a sigh, she lay down her brush and listened to Violet explain the stones and finishes of one of the necklaces to the customer.
Leaning forward to peek into the front room, Nell saw the woman from the back. She appeared to be in her mid-thirties, had shoulder-length black hair, was slender and well-dressed in tan slacks and a white blouse. The woman held the piece of jewelry to her neck and looked into a small mirror set on the jewelry case.
For a half-second, a blinding light sparked in Nell’s vision. She blinked fast and rubbed at her eyelids, and when she glanced again at the woman standing in front of the jewelry counter, she nearly fell out of her seat.
The woman was awash in red … her skin, her hair, her clothing … everything was the same color … bright, brilliant, blood red.
Nell had never experienced anything like it before. With her heart racing, she turned away and stared out the window for several seconds, then turned her head back to look in the front room.
The woman was still covered in red.
Nell’s breathing rate increased and her heart pounded as she leapt from her chair and stepped back so she couldn’t see the woman in the salesroom.
Her mind raced.
What’s going on? Why am I seeing the woman this way? Why is she colored in red? Am I having a stroke?
Nell’s stomach tightened. She could hear Violet ringing up a sale and placing something into a bag.
The woman thanked Violet for her help, said goodbye, and left the store.
Nell dashed out to the counter. “Did you see that woman?”
Violet looked up with a grin. “You mean the customer who was the only one in here? The one I was talking to? The woman I sold a necklace to? Yeah. I saw her.” Violet’s forehead wrinkled when she noticed the look on her sister’s face. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing.” Nell hurried to the door and took a quick look outside before turning around. “I….”
“What?” Violet came out from behind the counter.
“Was there anything unusual about that woman?”
“Unusual? Like what? She looked at the jewelry. She admired your artwork. She’s going to come back. She wants to buy one of your smaller paintings.”
“I only saw her from the back,” Nell said. “Did she look funny from the front?”
Violet was growing concerned. “Funny how? What are you talking about?”
Nell cleared her throat and was about to explain what she’d seen when they heard the roar of a car engine.
Nell turned towards the sound. Through the window, she saw that a black sedan had pulled away from the curb and was hurtling away.
Someone yelled. A woman screamed. And then the terrible sound of a sickening thud filled the air.
Both sisters rushed to the door. Violet yanked it open.
Several people stood looking down at someone who lay in the middle of Main Street. It was the woman who had just been in the shop. She was on her back, her black hair spread out over the pavement, her right leg bent at an odd angle.
“Oh, no.” Nell’s words were like a whisper. She and Violet ran into the street to see if they could help.
A woman knelt beside the black-haired woman, blood pooling around her head.
“This woman stopped to help,” someone told the sisters, gesturing to the kneeling woman. “She’s a nurse. I called for an ambulance,” another person informed them.
The nurse shook her head. “There’s no pulse. There’s a head injury. It’s severe.”
Violet grabbed Nell’s arm. “How terrible.”
Nell looked up and down the street. “Which car hit her?” she asked the people standing around.
A man said, “He took off. He sped away after he hit her.”
Violet gasped and hustled her sister away from the crowd.
“Did you sense this was going to happen?” Violet asked, her eyes searching Nell’s face.
Nell’s eyes widened in surprise. “Of course not. I didn’t sense a thing.” A flush of fear ran through her veins.
Or did I?
Chapter 2
Nell and Violet sat with mugs of tea at a long work table in the studio. Iris rested on the rug near the table staring up at the two women.
“Tell me again what happened when the woman was in here?” Violet had asked her sister when they returned to the shop after speaking with officers about the accident.
Nell went over the story for the third time explaining how the woman seemed to be covered in red. “I got panicky. I was afraid something was wrong with me. Everything else looked normal. It was just that woman who looked strange to me. She was red from head to toe.”
Violet attempted to make sense of the odd phenomenon. “Maybe the extra cones in your eyes went haywire.”
“If the cones in my eyes went haywire, it would impact everything I see,” Nell said. “My vision is the same no matter what I look at. It isn’t one way for one thing and another way for everything else.” Taking a sip of her tea, she placed the cup on the table and looked out the window at the garden in the backyard.
“When you looked at that woman, were you able to see her future?” Violet asked tentatively.
Nell moved her eyes to her sister’s face. “See her future? I can only see more colors than regular people do. I’m not a psychic or a card reader or anything like that.”
“Your vision changed after the tornado,” Violet pointed out. “You could see even more colors than before. You got more sensitive to a lot of visuals. Your eyes get tired quicker. You need to rest them more. Maybe you’ve developed a new thing. Maybe now you can see other things … like warnings.”
Nell’s eyes darkened. She wanted to dismiss her sister’s crazy ideas and speculations, but she had to admit there could be a tiny grain of truth to what she was saying. “So you think the woman was giving off a warning and I saw it as red?” Nell shrugged. “But why would she give off a warning? How would she know she was about to be hit by a car? How could she know what was about to happen? And if she did know, wouldn’t she have taken steps to prevent it?”
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