“You think that’s what dreams are? Messages from our deeper selves?”

“Sure. What else? The soul, the psyche, whatever you want to call it, has a way of looking out for us, even when we’re not paying attention. They come when our minds are quiet, when we have no choice but to listen.”

“I guess that makes sense. You can’t run away when you’re asleep.”

“No,” Dar said gently. “At least not for very long. So do you want to tell me what’s really going on? Are you having dreams? Is that why you can’t get back to sleep?”

Dar’s eyes, so keen and calm, were suddenly unsettling. “Did you glean that with your psychic powers?”

“No dark art required,” Dar assured her. “You keep looking at The Language of Dreams, and pardon the expression, but you look like you’ve seen a ghost—or like you’ve been dragging a few around with you. Please don’t take offense. It’s just that I’ve been there, and I know it’s no fun.”

Dragging around ghosts.

If there was a more apt description for the dreams she’d been having, she couldn’t think what it might be. “I’ve been having nightmares,” she said quietly. “Basically the same dream for months now. I’m exhausted.”

“Well then, that’s different.” Dar crooked a finger. “Come with me. I was going to suggest valerian root, but I think a little insight will do more good than tea.”

She led Christy-Lynn to a small reading area at the rear of the shop where a stick of incense in a leaf-shaped holder gave off a thin tendril of blue-white smoke. She smiled as she sat, patting the settee beside her. “Why don’t we talk a little? Sometimes that’s all it takes. Looking at it when you’re wide awake, saying it out loud, can help you see where the dream is coming from—and the message it has for you.”

“So we’re back to the message,” Christy-Lynn said uncomfortably.

“There’s no way to get around it really. Dreams are like public service announcements from your soul. The only way to get past them is to pay attention to what they’re telling us. If you’d like to share, I might be able to offer some insight.”

Christy-Lynn pulled in a breath then let it out very slowly. “I’m underwater,” she began tentatively. “At the bottom of the bay. Stephen’s car is there. He’s in it. So is the woman who was with him the night he went off the bridge. It’s just the two of them at first, dead in the car. But then the woman’s eyes open, and she starts talking, only I can’t make out what she’s saying. I just know she’s trying to tell me something.”

“What do you think she’s trying to say?” Dar prodded gently.

“I don’t know. That she’s sorry about stealing my husband maybe. Except it doesn’t feel like that. It feels like something else. I just don’t know what.”

“Is that all of it?”

“It was in the beginning, but a few weeks ago, I found out Stephen and Honey had child—a little girl named Iris—and now she’s showing up in the dream too. She’s in the car, and she keeps pushing at the windows, screaming for Nonny—her great-grandmother—but she isn’t there. It’s just me, and instead of helping her, I swim away.”

Dar’s eyes were full of sympathy. “You poor thing. After everything else, there’s a child to cope with. No wonder you’re exhausted. You obviously feel some kind of sympathy for this little girl, but I’m wondering . . .”

Christy-Lynn’s head came up slowly. “Wondering what?”

“If there isn’t something else going on, something that may run a little deeper. Like why you’d want or need to take that kind of responsibility on your shoulders.” She paused, smoothing her skirt over her knees. “In dreams, water generally represents the subconscious, so when someone tells me they’ve been dreaming about water, my first thought is something’s being repressed. Do you think there are things you might need to start looking at, things you’ve been trying to hide from?”

Christy-Lynn was tempted to dismiss the question, but that wasn’t going to make the dreams stop. “Maybe,” she answered finally. “But why now? After all these years?”

Dar folded her hands in her lap and smiled softly. It was the kind of smile mothers saved for children who asked impossible questions. “I can’t tell you that. What I can tell you is there are places in our minds where we lock up all the things we don’t want to remember, like a musty basement filled with all the stuff we don’t want anyone—including ourselves—to see. We think it’s safe, that we’re safe. And then one day, for reasons we can’t begin to fathom, something yanks those doors open, and all our psychic junk comes tumbling out.”

Christy-Lynn huffed in frustration. “It’s all this stuff with Iris and Stephen.”

Dar seemed to consider the answer. “Maybe. But it’s easy to reach for the obvious. Even comforting. I know this stuff with your husband’s been hard, and it probably feels like that’s all that’s going on, but it could be something else. You said you swim away in the dream. Maybe there’s something you’re afraid of, something further back. Or it could be something that hasn’t happened yet, something you’re afraid will happen. Is any of this striking a chord?”