Natalie's Legacy [sequel to Natalie's Diary]

[18] Exposure

[18] EXPOSURE

Jane

I followed the hourglass signs up the stairs to a conference room door where a woman sat at a folding table with blank nametags and pamphlets.

She looked up at me, blinking through the disguise of her makeup. Black paint surrounded her eyes, creating skeletal sockets, but brimmed in decorative petals. I liked Mexico's skeletons and their swirling, delicate Day of the Dead face paints. I liked the roses in the woman's hair, the vibrant reds nestled into the frills of her dress. La Catrina, a deathly figure so much more lively than the reaper.

She was a warm reminder of a sliver of beauty in the dark. Death was not always a shroud. Some superstitions were not about fear for the gone, but about honoring a memory.

"Good evening. Are you with us?" she asked.

That question could not have been meant to be as existential as it sounded to my ears, like La Catrina beckoning me toward a world past the one I thought I belonged in.

"Maybe? The concierge said a spot opened up?" I asked, half-hoping the slot was filled and she would send me on my way instead of letting me into a room of ghosts.

"Yes! Just fill out a nametag," she instructed, pushing a Sharpie toward me.

The glory of strangers knowing my name or my reputation. What more could I want from Salem?

I scribbled it into the square and paid while a final few others signed in and wrote their own names on their own nametags. Sarah. Alex. Olivia. Ordinary identities for ordinary people who had their own tragedies that tugged them toward a session with a medium.

La Catrina, in her optimistic outfit, offered me one last smile before I walked in the double doors to the conference room.

The only seat left was one in the back row between Hamburgler and Wilma Flintstone, a seat that I silently made my way to while pretending that everyone's eyes weren't on me.

Or maybe they were staring at the T-Rex costume struggling to fit their tail through the back of their chair. A T-Rex named Duncan.

When I settled into my seat, past the spectators, I finally paid attention to the woman at the front of the room. A woman who, in this particular instance, looked so underdressed compared to the characters in the room. Wolfmen, vampires, witches, witches, witches, and beloved cartoon characters. Beetlejuice. Michael Jackson as seen in the Thriller music video.

Elaine Delafosse was a woman who owned her space, dressed in simple, flowing black that draped over her body in such a way that she almost looked like she floated through the room. She was so much lighter on her feet that I would've guessed.

Warm in a sort of scattered way, the woman with graying flyaway hair had an easy aura.

Not mysterious, not intimidating or unnerving.

"So, as we get started, there might be statements that apply to more than one person. From there, we can get into where the energy is coming from. Yes and no answers are the best kind of answers. I don't need the whole life story. So, as we get started here, I have a father figure. I have a L connection. I have a sensation in the chest. Is there someone—thank you, miss. What's the B connection?"