So Harper wouldn’t discuss it as Quentin had hoped, not without further prompting. Still, his casual manner laid to rest Quentin’s most immediate fears.
“Do you remember anything about the past few years, while you’ve been with the Schells?” he asked.
“Not much. Didn’t want to come out. Not until…” He shot Quentin a keen look. “Why’re you here, Mr. Forster?”
“We hardly need stand on formality.” He offered his hand. “Quentin.”
“You know my name.” Harper gripped his hand with strong, thin fingers. “I don’t remember when you first showed up, either.”
Quentin rested his palms on the rough, peeling bark of the oak. “I… stumbled across the Haven two weeks ago.”
“Seems longer.”
“It feels longer.” As if he’d known the people of the Haven forever. Wanted Johanna forever.
Harper closed his eyes. “My family sent me to the docs years ago. Guess I was too hard for them to care for, after I went back to Indiana. I know I was crazy. I owe whatever I’ve got now to Doc Schell.”
Quentin shifted on the branch. He didn’t want Harper’s personal confidences. The man bared his heart for all the world to see.
As he’d bared his to Johanna.
“She is a remarkable woman,” Quentin said stiffly.
“Is that what you think?” Harper nudged at the dirt with the toe of his boot. “I reckoned you had a slightly different opinion.”
Quentin jumped up and paced away. “I don’t understand you.”
“You understand.” Harper leaned back, clasping his hands behind his head. “You’re pining after that woman, and she feels the same. It’s just that neither one of you’ll admit it.”
Quentin clenched his fists. Was it that obvious, then? Or was Harper the only one sane, experienced, and observant enough to notice?
“One of your visions, Harper?” Quentin snapped without thinking.
“Guess I must have talked about that when I was hypnotized,” Harper said. “Seeing things, and all. Don’t blame you for doubting.” He scratched his beard. “It’s something I can’t help. Every time I touch a thing that people have touched—well, it happens. It’s just that for a long time I wasn’t letting anything through.”
Had Quentin been an ordinary man, he might have scoffed at Harper’s words. Who, after all, believed in visions spawned from merely touching an object?
Who believed in werewolves?
“I reckon you need proof,” Harper said.
“You have nothing to prove to me.”
“No. It’s always our own selves we have to prove to.” Harper stood up and reached for the handle of the axe that stood almost perpendicular to the stout oak branch in which it was embedded.
“You’ve been working with this axe,” he said. He tugged at the handle, but it wouldn’t be moved. “You didn’t work long, but you put a lot into it. Enough for me to see.”
The short hairs stood up on the back of Quentin’s neck. “See what, Harper?”
“A little of you.” He frowned. “Isn’t easy to explain. Sometimes… I can feel something about a person from a thing they just touched. If they only used it a brief while, it doesn’t linger. If it’s a thing people have had for a long time, that’s what makes the difference. Sometimes I see what a body’s been doing, or where he’s been in the past. Or I see what’s going to happen to him.” His prominent Adam’s apple bobbed. “Right now, I can see what you intended to do—chop this tree to bits because you wanted to stop thinking about other things.”
“Very good,” Quentin said with heavy sarcasm.
“You think you can stop wanting the lady if you tucker yourself out. But you aren’t going to finish what you started.”
“Perhaps because I’m sitting here instead of working.”
“I’m just telling you what I see. And what I don’t see.”
“Is that why you’re here, then? To predict my future?”
Harper clasped his fingers together until his knuckles stood out from the flesh. “I wasn’t able to help my friends when I saw what was coming for them. Maybe this time…” He sought Quentin’s gaze, his own earnest and grave. “I see that you have many trials ahead. Someone is following you—someone you know. He’ll hurt you if he can. You may find what you seek, but your fate depends on the decisions you make.”