Out of Touch by Clara Ward Read Free Book Online Page A

“She tried when I came about the cat? Does she try everyone whose mind is silent?”
                  “We all do.”
                  “How many have you found that way?”
                  “None.”
                  “Oh.”  Like a roller coaster suddenly stopped, Sarah looked at Howard, leaning back across from her, hands tangled in his hair. But it felt like he was leaning toward her, like they were twins, separated at birth, but that was too tabloid. This was weirder than tabloids. Maybe she’d always wondered, but these people had been actively looking and found no one.
    Or were they lying? Whatever she’d been feeling for Howard suddenly cut off, and she was scared by the connection she’d felt.
                  “Can they hear all this? Are they going to join us?”
                  “I only had time to tell them the highlights. I mostly told them to shut up. It’s like having someone on the telephone while trying to carry on a normal conversation. Confusing.”
                  His experience had been completely different than hers, whether or not he was telling the truth.
                  “Is everyone in your family both teek and teep?”
                  “My mom and dad were both teeps, but my paternal grandpa was both. The Chens are my only living relatives, and none of them are teeks.”
                  “What happened to your mom and dad?”
                  “You remember that airborne Ebola outbreak in New Zealand two years ago? My parents chose a lousy time for a vacation.”
                  “I’m sorry.”
                  The rear door opened loudly as the others came in. Howard’s back straightened and his eyes flashed across the room. Evidently eye contact was still the norm even when talking telepathically. Sarah also stiffened, feeling herself more on guard than she’d been before. Why did the only teek she’d found have to come from a family of telepaths?
                  Mei Mei came in and sat beside Sarah, turned toward her, knees almost touching. Sarah forced herself to meet the other woman’s probing gaze. “You really can’t hear anything? I’m sorry. We didn’t mean to be rude. You’re the first person at all like us that we’ve found in this country. My husband and I met in Hong Kong. It was still a few years before their National Health Index was started, but my brother heard rumors that the government was looking for certain ‘superior’ genetics. He and his wife decided to move to America. Business being what it was, we decided to follow them. That was before any of us had children. I hadn’t thought how hard it would be to find someone for them to marry.”
                  “Mother, please,” Lisa smiled behind clenched teeth. She hadn’t sat down, but stood just in front of her brother, just inside the room. “We invited her for lunch. Why don’t we set something out?”
                  The silence that followed seemed a little too long to Sarah. But soon they all went to the dining room and made small talk out loud as Mei Mei served cream of asparagus soup in real china bowls. Sarah’s mind had shut down. She enjoyed the warmth of the soup and the graininess of the bread. Her eyes had settled peacefully on a vase of crimson orchids in the middle of the table. She imagined buying orchids just to sit on her table in March. Then they started moving, as if invisible hands were fussing with them. She looked up to see Howard smirking at her from across the table.
                  “Should we talk teek or wait ‘til after lunch?” he asked.
                  “Do you always use it that casually?”
                  “Don’t you?”
                  “I thought, maybe, if the power source was limited or caused some side effect--