Each of the “predictions” he knew of could, after all, be rationally explained, given a few reasonable possibilities. Months before, she had been mugged on her way home one night, and the resulting head injury had put her into a coma for sixteen days. She could have overheard information while in that coma, for instance, and—consciously, perhaps—forgotten where it had come from. That could explain her apparent foreknowledge of the early birth of a nurse’s baby, which had been her first recorded prediction. Some doctor with a suspicion of what could happen might have mentioned it within Sarah’s hearing. And though her prediction of a Chicago hotel fire that had killed forty people certainly seemed remarkable, Tucker had discovered that one of the men later arrested for arson had been treated for a minor traffic injury in the same Richmond hospital where Sarah had lain in a coma. It was a coincidence that bothered him.

Other minor predictions she had made could—with some ingenuity—also be linked to her stay in the hospital. Tucker had utilized quite a bit of ingenuity, so he knew it could be done. He hadn’t yet been able to explain away her apparent foreknowledge of several murders apparently committed by a serial killer in California, but he was half-convinced he could, given enough time.

All of which, of course, raised the question of why he had bothered to seek out Sarah Gallagher at all.

“You want so badly to believe.” Her voice was quiet, her gaze direct as she turned to look at him.

“Do I?” He wasn’t quite as unsettled, this time, by her perception—extrasensory or otherwise.

Instead of directly answering that question, Sarah said, “I can’t perform for you, Tucker. I can’t go down that list of questions you have in your mind and answer them one by one as if it’s some final exam. I can’t convince you of something you need irrefutable proof to believe. That’s not the way this works.”

“You mean it’s like believing in God?” His voice was carefully neutral. “It requires faith?”

“What it requires is admitting the possible. Believing the evidence of your eyes and ears without trying to explain it all away. Accepting that you’ll never be able to cross every t and dot every i. And most of all, it requires a willingness to believe that science isn’t the ultimate authority. Just because something can’t be rationally explained on the basis of today’s science doesn’t mean it isn’t real.”

“That sounds like the party line,” Tucker said dryly, having heard the same sort of “answers” for years.

She shook her head. “Look, I never believed in the paranormal, in psychics, myself. When I thought about it, which wasn’t often, I just assumed it was either a con of some kind or else coincidence—anything that could somehow be explained away. Not only was I a skeptic, I simply didn’t care; I had no interest in anything paranormal. It didn’t matter to me.”

“Until you found yourself looking into the future.”

Sarah tilted her head a bit to one side as she considered him and his flat statement. Then, with a touch of wry humor, she said, “Well, when you’re up to your ass in alligators, it’s a bit difficult to pretend you aren’t involved in the situation.”

Tucker appreciated the humor, but what interested him most was a glint of something he thought he saw in her eyes. Slowly, he said, “So, are you involved in this? Or just along for the ride?”

“I don’t know what you mean.” She turned abruptly back to the stove to check the stew and bread, then busied herself getting plates and bowls out of the cabinets above the counter and silverware from a drawer.

“You know exactly what I mean, Sarah. Are you resigned to dying next month because you believe that’s your fate? Because you believe your destiny is—literally—written in stone? Or do you have the guts to use what you’ve seen to change your fate, to take control of your destiny?”

She didn’t answer right away, and when she did, her voice was almost inaudible. “Strange questions from a man who doesn’t believe I could have seen my future—or anybody else’s.”

Tucker didn’t hesitate. “I’m willing to suspend my disbelief—if you’re willing to accept the possibility that what you saw—or at least the outcome—can be changed.”

Again, Sarah took her time responding. She sliced bread and ladled out stew, setting his meal before him and then placing her own so that she was sitting at a right angle to him. She tasted her stew almost idly, then said, “I saw a hotel fire that killed people, and I couldn’t stop it. I saw the man I loved killed by a train, and I couldn’t stop it. I saw a serial killer commit horrible acts, and I couldn’t stop him. A week ago, I saw my house burn to the ground, and today it burned.”

Tucker began eating to give himself time to marshal his arguments, and in the meantime asked a question he was curious about. “Why didn’t you call the police when you saw your house burn?”

“Oh, right. Officer, somebody’s going to burn down my house. How do I know? Well, I saw it in a nightmare. A nightmare I had while I was wide awake, not under the influence of drugs, and cold sober.” She gave Tucker a twisted smile. “Been there, done that. And I’d really rather not become the poster child for the Psychic Early Warning Society.”

Tucker shook his head. “Okay, so maybe nobody takes you seriously—at first. But sooner or later, that’s bound to change.”

“Is it?” She shrugged. “Maybe. But in my case, that’s hardly relevant, is it? I have this…rendezvous with destiny next month.”

Like most writers, Tucker had a head stuffed full of words, and a very apt quote sprang readily to mind. “‘I have a rendezvous with Death at some disputed barricade,’” he murmured.

“Who said that?” she wondered.

“Alan Seeger. It’s always stayed with me.”

Sarah nodded. “Appropriate.”

“I think so. Think of the phrase he chose, Sarah…some disputed barricade. Maybe there’s always room for argument about where and when we die, even if there is such a thing as fate. Maybe we change our fate, minute by minute, with every decision we make. Maybe destiny becomes the sum of our choices.”

She frowned. “Maybe.”

“But you aren’t convinced?”

“That I can choose to avoid the fate I know is in store for me?” She shook her head. “No.”

“Sarah, you didn’t see your death. You saw an image, a symbol of death. And symbols can’t be interpreted literally.”

“A grave is pretty hard to interpret any other way.”

He shook his head. “In tarot, the death card can mean many things. A transition of some kind. The death of an idea or a way of life, for instance. A turning point. The grave you saw could mean something like that. A change in your life that you’re thrown bodily into, maybe against your will—which would explain your fear. You never saw yourself dead, did you? You never saw your death occur literally, an accomplished fact.”

“I never saw David’s death as an accomplished fact either.” Her voice was quiet. “But I knew he was going to die at that railroad crossing. And he did.”

That stopped Tucker for only a moment. “But you saw the means of his death clearly. In your—nightmare—about your own fate, there’s no weapon, no method by which you could be killed. So it could have been a symbolic grave, a symbolic death. At least it’s possible.”

Sarah pushed her plate away and leaned an elbow on the bar, looking at him for the first time with her certainty wavering. “I suppose so. Possible, at least that I saw something other than a literal death for myself.”

Tucker didn’t make the mistake of hammering his point home. Instead, he said musingly, “I’ve always thought that if it was possible to see into the future, it would have to be with the understanding that what a psychic is actually seeing is only a possible future. Moment by moment, we make decisions and choices that change our path through infinite possibilities. And once a psychic ‘sees’ an event, that psychic becomes in some way involved in the event and so affects the outcome—which causes the ‘future’ event that he or she saw to change in unexpected and unpredicted ways.”