Soul Whisperer by Jenna Kernan

only then that he could tell her and then afterward make her forget the conversation. He could unburden himself, release the demons he carried locked in his heart and let one person know how deeply he bled. Then he could take back the memory, reabsorb the tiny bit of energy that held those recollections, so that she did not have the power to use this information against him.
    â€œYes,” he said. “I’ll finish. This was summer, 1893. My friends and I built a tree house way up in a big old oak behind the house. I wouldn’t let Carlos up there. It was off-limits. He tried to talk me into letting him up, but I chased him off. Told him it was his fault we had to leave our old home.”
    He rubbed his temples. She reached for him again, but he lifted his hand to stop her.
    â€œDon’t. I can do this without your help. Carlos left the house that night.” Cesar’s voice broke. “He climbed up into that damned oak tree and shinnied out on the limb.”
    â€œOh, Cesar. No.” She reached again.
    He pushed his chair back, evading, while needing to hurry to get this out before the tears choked him. “I heard him scream and I was the first one there. When I touched him I could see from his eyes. I thought I was falling.” Cesar pressed his hand over his eyes at the memory, still feeling that drop. “I let go then, not understanding what was happening.”
    He removed the protective cover of his hand andstared at her, needing her to understand that terrible day. The day he lost his brother and discovered what he was.
    â€œI was touching my first corpse and I was experiencing his death. I started screaming for Mom and Dad. I told them how he fell.”
    Cesar used his index finger to follow the crease in the center of the tablecloth but in his mind, it was over a hundred and twenty years ago and he was crying in the wet grass beneath the great oak with the fireflies blinking all about him.
    He spoke just above a whisper, the shame choking him, but he forced his words past the clamping fingers of disgrace. “When I told them all that, my father thought I’d been there and I hadn’t stopped Carlos. He attacked me, slapped me in the face while my mother screamed. I tried to tell him that I didn’t know until after I’d touched him. If I had understood what would happen next I would have let him beat me, kill me. Anything would have been better than having them discover what I was.”
    â€œYou didn’t know until that day you were a Soul Whisperer.”
    He lowered his head. “You have to touch a body to know. My father figured it out. When he had me by the neck, he read the truth. It was as if I had suddenly become contagious. He leaped away and dragged my mother back toward the house. ‘Whisperer,’ he told her, and pulled her inside. I wasn’t welcome under their roof after that.”
    â€œBut you were only fourteen.”
    He shrugged. “My parent’s told the cops that I had pushed my brother to his death and they arrested me.”
    â€œBut you didn’t.”
    â€œI learned about my memory gift in reform school. Came in handy to erase the guard’s memories.”
    â€œWhat about your parents?”
    â€œI haven’t seen them since that night.” He finally lifted his head and saw her pitying expression. That ripped a new hole in him. Thank God she wouldn’t remember this conversation. He couldn’t stand to see that look again.
    â€œBut you did nothing wrong. I don’t understand how they could abandon you.”
    â€œIt’s just custom. Soul Whisperers are unclean.”
    â€œI don’t believe that.”
    â€œThey do. They all do. I lost my mother and my father and my little brother all in one day. I wish I could tell him…?.” His voice failed him and he rubbed his knuckles over his mouth while he composed himself. “I wish I had let him up in that damn tree house.