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CHAPTER ONE

It was a gift, seeing what most people were afraid to see. It took her aunt Charlene to teach Bailey she wasn't hexed. "But did the visions have to be with naked bodies?" twelve-year-old Bailey asked one evening as she sat on the porch swing, watching fireflies.

"Turn it into what you need it to be. You have to control it somehow. Make your own signals. Make it a safe place," her auntie explained. "Your mama had the gift of sight. I wish she could've shared it with you before she passed. She used to describe people's pictures as flowers. A rose meant good things were coming their way. A thorny bush meant danger. Reading colors, auras, been in our family for years."

Bailey tried it, did her best to make the pictures into symbols. It only worked once or twice. But colors she could see. Bright blues, pinks, or grays, but unfortunately merely a haze over fleshy bodies.

She wasn't naive. She just found it hard to look someone in the eye once she'd seen them bare in her mind's eye. Especially when they were her clients. Turned out, the ladies of Mendol who came in for wedding dress fittings were far from virgin brides waiting to be declared honest women. The people Bailey saw, entwined limbs and the faces attached, weren't the same two people who were purportedly taking each other's hand in marriage. She felt like a Peeping Tom and said nothing about what she saw.

But then came Alice Ledge. Alice, dour and poised, had shown up on a Tuesday morning bright and early for the final fitting before her wedding day. Bailey and Alice were alone in the shop, just the two of them.

"Miss Alice, are you in love with someone else?" The question had climbed from Bailey's throat spontaneously.

How many times had Aunt Charlene warned her to leave white folks' business where it belonged? "Stick to pinning and sewing the dresses, Bailey. What they do with their lives is no concern of yours."

Bailey knew it was dangerous to speak out of turn, let alone to talk about someone's private love life. She would never forget the look of shock that filled Alice Ledge's narrowed eyes. "What do you mean? Why would you ask me that?" Red streaks of embarrassment appeared on her round face with frightful speed, very much at odds with her otherwise placid nature.

"I saw something. I know I have no right to say this, but it was you and another man. I've seen your future husband, Miss Alice. It wasn't him," Bailey said. The man Alice was to marry had made an appearance at the Regal Gown shop and had made it clear that Alice had an allowance of two hundred dollars for the dress, shoes, and veil and not a penny more. He'd accused the proprietor, Miss Jackson, of being a huckster and charlatan who caused the women of Mendol to spend hard-earned wages as if marriage were some type of beauty contest. It wasn't often Miss Jackson was left speechless. Bailey wouldn't forget Victor Kunely, or the way he filled out the check. He'd underlined the amount with three hard lines, nearly cutting the paper.

Bailey often wondered what brought two people together, especially when they appeared so different from each other.

"I have these visions," Bailey had continued that day. "They come to me in the night. Like when I do this," she said putting her hand lightly against Alice's cheek. "When I touch you, there's a charge. Just this tiny bit of light." 

"But why you?" Alice asked, placing a skittish pale hand to Bailey's before pulling it away from her face.

"I don't know. Now and again, it happens. I don't have any real control over it. I thought you should know what I saw. I mean no disrespect. I just thought maybe you needed to talk to someone, or maybe—"

"He's Pawnee," Alice blurted. "I love him. We've been seeing each other only a short while," she said, her voice raspy and on the verge of tears. "He knows I'm getting married to someone else. He knows we can't be together. We just can't."

Bailey understood and nodded.

The Pawnee people were enlisted as laborers to build homes in the ever-growing outskirts of Mendol. They'd been assigned land in kind to do with as they pleased.

"I met him at our church just a few months ago," Alice said quietly. "His name is John. Everything lights up when I'm around him."

Bailey felt their connection gently, in a wave, and forced herself not to reach out for stable ground. She waited for the feeling to pass and continued to listen.