Winnie Parsons stood at the granite-topped island in her kitchen and pressed her palms into a soft round lump of dough. She had awakened in the mood for bread. Not just for the taste of it, but mostly for the smell of a yeasty loaf baking in the oven, warming the whole house.

A cold February morning like today made her want to stay inside, bake, eat, sit by the fire with a mug of coffee or hot chocolate, and read. Her yellow Labrador, Clover, had different ideas of what was fun, and so Winnie had walked her on the nearby University of Arizona campus first to let the dog frolic on the frost-covered grass.

But now Clover was curled up on her dog bed beside the crackling fire, and Winnie could fulfill her urge to bake. There were a few steps between here and a hot, finished loaf, but Winnie's part in it was short. Just mix a few ingredients, knead, then let the dough sit covered by a dishtowel all day in the warmth of the kitchen window. Even in winter, the sun shone through golden onto one particular spot on the counter. The dough would be ready to bake by midafternoon.

Winnie's cell phone rang. Her hands were still deep in dough. She might have let the call go to voicemail, if not for the name she saw on her screen.

She used her relatively clean pinky finger to press the button to put the call on her phone's speaker.

Dr. Amanda Birkauer was usually in a hurry, and this morning was no exception.

"Got an interesting call just now," said Amanda without any greeting or other preamble. Winnie didn't mind. She liked her friend's ability to cut right to it, leave out the fluff, get to the interesting parts sooner.

Amanda had been Winnie's colleague in the University of Arizona Psychology department when Winnie was a professor there. Winnie—Dr. Winifred Parsons—had retired four years ago, but her decades-long friendship with Amanda endured.

They had another connection as well. Amanda Birkauer was the Assistant Director of the university's Consciousness Studies research lab, better known as the parapsychology lab.

Winnie was a frequent test subject there. As a clairvoyant and occasional medical intuitive, Winnie wanted both to share her knowledge and to learn more about her gifts herself. She thought of them as any talent, like the ability to play chess or to do the high jump. She had been born clairvoyant, but she could still grow and improve the more she practiced.

And the more she learned from Amanda's scientists and from other psychics who visited the lab, the more Winnie understood what she might be capable of if she expanded what she thought of as even possible.

"Remember Penny Bristol?" Amanda asked.

Winnie smoothed her dough into a ball and thought for a moment. "No." But as soon as she said it, an image flashed in her mind: of an elderly woman, well-dressed and obviously wealthy, pushing a rolling walker that had a cargo basket on top. A soft blue blanket lined the basket, and a small brown and white dog rode nestled inside.

"King Arthur!" Winnie said, smiling.

"The one," Amanda confirmed over the speaker.

It must have been five or six years ago. Mrs. Penny Bristol had brought her Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, named King Arthur, to the parapsychology lab to see if anyone could read the little dog's mind.

Winnie had been on her way out of one of the rooms where she'd participated in whatever new test Amanda and her lab assistants had cooked up for her that day.

Winnie came to a sudden halt in front of the woman and her dog. She hadn't planned on stopping—she had her own work to do, and needed to get back to her office—but something about the dog tugged at her and made her want to stay.

"Well, hello there." Winnie smiled at the spaniel and reached out to pet its soft head between the two long ears that hung over the lip of the basket.

The dog growled at Winnie and bared his small teeth.

"Arthur! Stop that!" Mrs. Bristol seemed embarrassed. "He's normally never like this," she said by way of apology. And then tears misted her eyes. "I … I don't know what to do with him. Something has happened. He's not himself anymore."

A phrase had come to Winnie's mind. A phrase and an image.

"He has a rib out," Winnie told Mrs. Bristol. "On his left side. He's been in terrible pain for over a week. He's sorry, but he hasn't known how else to tell you."

Mrs. Bristol gaped at Winnie. "How … how…"

Winnie waved the question away. "If you take him to your vet this morning, I'm sure they can fix it right away."

Mrs. Bristol had gripped Winnie's hand. "Thank you, oh thank you!"

Amanda came out of the lab then just in time to see the end of their conversation. Winnie gave her a nod, then hurried off toward the stairs leading up to her floor.

"Who was that?" Mrs. Bristol asked.

"I'm sorry," Winnie could hear Amanda tell the woman, "but we keep our test subjects' identities confidential."

Winnie was there that morning in her capacity as Test Subject number 2134, not as Professor Winifred Parsons.

She appreciated Amanda's discretion. Most of Winnie's colleagues had no idea she was clairvoyant. Winnie suspected that many of them would not handle it well. Although the university's Consciousness Studies program was well-respected among others pursuing that same research, some scientists still viewed parapsychology as a fringe subject, not worthy of serious study—and even less worthy of funding.

Winnie had already risen high through the ranks of the Psychology department by then, even acting as Chair of the department for a while. She wrote many well-respected articles and textbooks in her field of Consumer Psychology. Her students and colleagues thought of her as a typical academic.

So although Winnie was happy to help Mrs. Bristol and King Arthur solve their problem in the moment, she did not want to see them up on her own floor, Mrs. Bristol smiling in her office doorway, loudly thanking her for reading the little dog's mind.

And besides, Winnie hadn't read the dog's mind. That wasn't how she received the information. Instead she saw a flashed image of the misplaced rib, and heard a phrase in her own voice telling her everything else she conveyed to Mrs. Bristol.

"So what do the two of them need now?" Winnie asked Amanda.

"Nothing," Amanda said. "Penny Bristol died about three months ago—"

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that."

"—and believe it or not, she left you some money."

"She what?"

Amanda chuckled. "Not by name. That's why I got the call this morning. Someone at the Animal Adoption Center wanted to know who that nice white-haired lady was who told Mrs. Bristol that King Arthur had slipped a rib."

Winnie's hair was more of a natural blondish-white, but she didn't mind the description. The hair had made her look older than her years for at least a decade. Now at sixty-eight, Winnie knew that when strangers looked at her they saw an old lady. She sometimes used that to her advantage to fade unnoticed into a crowd.

"Apparently Penny left most of her money to the Animal Adoption Center. Isn't that nice?"

"It is," Winnie agreed. She thought well of anyone who used their wealth to take care of children and animals in particular.

"She also gave them a separate twenty thousand dollars specifically to spend on you."

**