The Water Remembers
The clock on Claire's bookshelf read 2:47 when she first noticed the light shift outside her window. Not dramatically—just a flicker of blue against the sheer curtains, there and gone, the kind of thing you'd dismiss if you weren't trained to catch the small tremors beneath the surface of things.
She was trained. It was, after all, her job.
"And when he says that to you," Claire said, returning her attention to the woman across from her, "what happens in your body?"
Denise Callahan pressed a tissue against the corner of her eye, careful not to smear the mascara she'd clearly applied with more optimism than the day had warranted. "My chest gets tight. Like someone's sitting on it."
"Where exactly?"
"Here." Denise touched the space just below her collarbone. "Right here."
Claire nodded slowly, the gesture practiced, warm, genuine despite its thousand repetitions. "That's your body telling you something your mind hasn't caught up to yet. We don't have to solve it today. We just have to notice it."
Outside, the blue light flickered again, this time joined by another, and then the faint, distant whine of a second siren layering over the first. Millhaven wasn't a town that…
