Waiting for the Moon

by Kristin Hannah

When she closed her eyes, her other senses burst to life. She smelled the sweet, heady scent of pine and the tangy smell of the sea. A cool night breeze kissed her lashes, made her nightgown flutter against her breasts and ankles. They lay there forever, holding each other, dreaming whatever dreams slid through their minds. Gradually the sun drifted upward, pushed shafts of pale light through the still dark trees.

  "I wish I were blind," Andrew said quietly, gripping her hand in sweaty fingers. "I've seen things ... bad things___"

  For a second, Selena couldn't breathe. She felt as if he'd just shoved her out onto a precipice; below was a painful, ruinous fall, and she didn't know how to keep her balance. She needed Ian or Johann right now, someone smart and learned. But there was no one here, and she was the person Andrew had confided in.

  Very slowly, she rose to her elbows and turned to him. She brushed a damp lock of mousy hair from his blindfolded eyes. In the warm, early morning light he looked impossibly young and frail. "You are not crazy, are you, Andrew?"

  "Wh-What do you mean? We're all crazy here, except you and Ian."

  "No. Johann is a genius, but he's ill. I am hurt and

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  perhaps a little crazy. You ..." She paused, searching carefully for the right words.

  He shivered, drew slightly away from her. "You'd hate me if you knew what I've done...."

  "I cannot imagine anything-"

  "No. You cannot." He cut her off. "I don't want to be here anymore." He sat up and ripped the blindfold off.

  Sunlight splashed his face.

  Selena had never witnessed such stark, all-consuming fear. Andrew's eyes widened, turned glassy and fright-eningly bright. Slowly he shook his head from side to side and lifted his fists, as if to ward off a predator that only he could see.

  "Andrew?"

  He made a small, strangled sound and started to cry. Scrambling backward, he pushed through the damp earth and slammed into a tree trunk. Needles rained down on his moist cheeks and stuck; he seemed not to notice at all. Whimpering, he curled into a small, shaking ball. "Go away.. .." His soggy voice caught, trembled. He started clawing at the red scars on his wrists, as if he wanted to reopen the flesh. "Please ..."

  Selena crawled toward him. "Andrew?"

  His vacant eyes rolled back in his head and he started to scream.

  Selena lurched to her feet. "I need help." She yanked up the hem of her nightdress and raced from the clearing. Breathing hard, she bounded up the porch steps and careened into the house, taking the stairs two at a time. Without a knock, she wrenched open Ian's door and hurled herself inside. "Ian?"

  He was sitting up in bed, reading, his white nightshirt gaped across his naked chest. His face was drawn and too pale, as if he hadn't slept at all.

  He turned to her. "What is it?"

  "It is Andrew. I have done something wrong." The horror of it washed over her. She brought a cold, shak-

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  ing hand to her mouth and started to cry. "He is outside. ..."

  Ian closed the book. "Andrew never goes outside in daylight."

  "I ... took him outside." The words tumbled out of her, forming themselves into a desperate, rambling apology. "It was still dark out. I didn't know ..."

  "Christ." Ian threw the covers back and got out of bed. He grabbed a frock coat from the chair by the window and shrugged into it. "Let's go."

  Selena barely heard the command, and she was moving.

  She heard the screams the moment she opened the front door. The shrill, undulant cries echoed through the still, silent air and lodged in her heart.

  Without even realizing it, she skidded to a stop.

  Ian touched her hand. "It's not your fault, Selena. He just does this sometimes. Every few months something sets him off and we ... lose him for a while."

  She shook her head, knowing it wasn't true, knowing she'd done something terrible to her friend.

  He held her face in his hands and forced her watery gaze to meet his. "This is a place for lost and damaged souls, Selena. Andrew is sick. It's not your fault."

  "Whose, then?"

  Ian looked surprised by the question. "I don't know. How should I know what's bothering Andrew?"

  She frowned. Obviously she had phrased her question poorly. "But you are his doctor."

  Ian stiffened. "No. I'm his keeper. There's a difference." His hands slid away from her face. Without his touch, she felt colder, more alone. "Now, show me where he is."

  Selena tried to sort through the rubble in her mind. There were so many questions she wanted to ask Ian, points she didn't understand. She thought a "keeper" took care of animals and a "doctor" took care of people. But she was wrong. Again.

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  The questions jumbled and scrambled in her head until she couldn't think at all. She reached for Ian, but he was already past her, moving down the gravel path.

  She stumbled to catch up and led him into the woods. When they were halfway there, the screams stopped. One moment the world felt split by sound, and the next it was utterly, preternaturally silent.

  Selena picked up her skirts and hurried, scrambling over fallen logs and rocks and patches of lichen to get to the secret place. Andrew was still there, curled in a tight, trembling ball, his face stained with dirty tears, his eyes vacant.

  Selena came to a stumbling halt.

  Ian moved toward Andrew and crouched down close beside him. Selena followed cautiously, kneeled on Andrew's other side.

  "Andrew." Ian said the boy's name in a powerful, authoritative tone of voice. "Andrew. Can you hear me?"

  Nothing.

  "Andrew." Ian said the name again and again. With each repetition, Ian's voice became a little more strained, until finally it broke. He massaged his temple and looked away, sighing softly. "Oh, Jesus."

  "You need to get him to look at you," Selena said. She was fighting panic with everything inside her, but the insidious emotion nibbled at her composure, made her want to cry again.

  Ian drilled her with a desperate look. "How?"

  "Get closer, talk more softly."

  He flinched at every word, as if they were tiny darts flicked into his skin. He gritted his teeth and sidled closer, leaning down. "Andrew, can you hear me?"

  Once again, there was no answer.

  Selena inched closer. "Touch him the way you touched me earlier. Force him to look at you."

  "Touch him?"

  Selena heard the fear in Ian's voice and she under-

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  stood. Maeve had told her of Ian's gift and the pain it caused him. "You must."

  "I can't."

  Selena's gaze didn't move from his face.

  He swallowed and looked away from her. For a long, silent moment, he stared out at the trees and said nothing, then, finally, he turned back to Andrew. She noticed that his hands were shaking as he brought them to Andrew's face. Carefully he pressed his hands against Andrew's cheeks and tilted the boy's face up.

  "Andr-" Ian didn't finish. With a cry, he yanked his hands away from Andrew's cheeks. He careened backward and fell to his knees, burying his face in his hands. He started to shake. "Holy Christ ..."

  Selena went to him. "Ian, what is it?"

  Slowly he looked up. His hands plopped lifelessly in his lap. "I didn't know," he said, gazing at Andrew. "No one told me. Jesus, how could I not know?"

  "What did you see?"

  He bowed his head and rubbed his eyes, releasing a small sigh. "There are some things I hope you never learn, Selena."

  "But Andrew-"

  "Is too young to know that kind of pain." He shook his head again.

  She moved closer, lifted her gaze to his. "You will help him." She'd meant to frame the words as a question, but somehow they ended up as a statement.

  "He doesn't need medical care."

  "You will help him," she repeated herself, softly.

  He surged to his feet and backed away from her. "Enough of the hero worship, Selena. I'm not capable of he
lping people. Besides, what Andrew needs isn't possible. We can't change the past."

  "Then change the future."

  "Ah, Selena." Ian's whole body seemed to sag at her simple words. He turned and looked at Andrew. "This is a dangerous time for him. After a short period of cat-

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  atonia, he usually tries to kill himself. Fortunately, he isn't very good at it. Last year-"

  She gasped.

  Ian glanced down at her. She could see that he had no idea how callous he had just sounded, how ugly his detachment was.

  The insensitivity hurt her more than she could have imagined. It made her feel fragile, uncertain, as if she'd just discovered that the anchor in her world was wrought of spun glass. She touched his arm, curled her fingers around his wrist, tried to find the familiar strength and warmth in simply being beside him. But for once there was nothing strong or solid about him. Beneath her fingertips, he felt as ephemeral as a ghost.

  She gazed up at him, knowing her eyes held the heartbreak in her soul. "He needs you."

  He sighed heavily and shook his head. "Ah, Selena ..."

  "You will do what is right, Ian. I know you will."

  She tried desperately to believe her own words, but fear was a cold, hard lump in her stomach.

  She understood, finally, what a lie was.

  Ian stood beside Andrew's bed. The boy lay motionless beneath the mound of gray-white bedding, his cheeks a pale chalky hue, his eyes open and unseeing.

  Ian wished he'd been stronger with Selena, wished he'd turned and walked away from her pleading eyes. But he couldn't do it, couldn't destroy her so completely, even though he knew it was the safest, most honest course.

  He pulled up a chair and sat down beside Andrew. The dark window shade that Andrew insisted upon covered the window, blocked the bright sunlight and kept the room shrouded in shadows. Beside the bed, a candle flickered.

  Ian understood more than he wanted to now. So much more.

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  Andrew's frequent bouts of depression and habitual suicide attempts were no longer a tragic character flaw or symptoms of madness.

  The boy had suffered horribly in his short life, the most degrading, painful, humiliating physical abuse imaginable. And Ian would bet money that the pain had come from a relative. Perhaps even Andrew's father.

  Ian felt sick at the thought. He remembered his own father, his own childhood, and suddenly the pain he'd suffered because of his mother's illness seemed immature and misplaced. What Andrew had suffered was so much worse.

  On the bed, Andrew moved.

  Ian leaned forward. "Andrew?"

  The boy whimpered softly. Tears squeezed from his closed eyes and streaked down his temples. "Go away ... not again ..."

  Instinctively Ian reached out, brushed the hair from Andrew's eyes. One casual touch was enough. The sickening images slammed into his brain. He winced, fought the pictures, held the horror at bay by sheer force of will. After a few moments, they softened, turned dim and out of focus. He let out a harsh breath of relief.

  He had to help this boy. But how? How could such memories be eradicated?

  Common sense told him that it was impossible, that Andrew would carry these images like a stone on his heart until the day he died. Until one of his feeble suicide attempts succeeded.

  So what could Ian do? Return to Selena and apologize, tell her that some heartbreaks were irreparable?

  Such surrender was inconceivable. All of his life he'd accepted challenges that other men walked away from. He thrived on insurmountable odds, on beating the whims of fate.

  He felt a stirring of ambition. The doctor he'd once been lifted his tired old head, peered through the dusty

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  jacket of Ian's soul, and smiled. He was a trained physician-once he'd been the best of the best-and he'd sworn to help people in pain. And Andrew was in more pain than any patient he'd ever treated.

  Ian went to his bedroom and pawed through his books, pulling down anything about diseases of the mind. When he had everything, he went back to Andrew's room and resumed his seat.

  One by one, he read the books, kept reading until the sun began its lingering descent into the silver sea. He closed the last volume at seven o'clock that night.

  He threw it across the room and stared dully at the pile of books and papers beneath the window. He'd never studied psychiatry before, certainly not with so specific an inquiry in mind, but he'd always thought of it as a fringe science, a loose collection of tricksters and misguided doctors trying to cure the incurable or watch the inevitable. Still, he'd thought they knew something, that they'd at least developed a theory for helping their patients.

  But they were dangerous men, ugly and frightening in their narrow-minded view of the world in general, and women in particular. He stared at the paper at his feet. Thomas Hawkes Tanner's "On Excision of the Clitoris as a Cure for Hysteria."

  Hysteria. That's what they called it when a woman said she'd been raped as a child.

  "Hysteria." He shook his head, thinking of the articles and ideas he'd read. They left him feeling dirty and ashamed of his profession. Dr. Freud-supposedly one of the best alienists of the time-had been the only beam of hope in a dark, dirty, misogynistic profession. At first Freud had believed the women who reported that they'd been raped as children, and his theories excited Ian.

  Then, for no apparent reason, Freud had stopped believing. Suddenly these same women who years before

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  had been victims were now suffering from "hysterical fantasies."

  Ian had no source in his library that even allowed for the possibility of what had happened to Andrew. The respected psychiatrists would clearly treat the boy as if he were hysterical-no doubt they'd use electrical shock treatments on his genitals to cure him of the unacceptable "fantasies" that lurked in his mind.

  It was sickening.

  Ian shoved a hand through his hair, wondering what to do. Unlike his "colleagues," Ian had access to the ultimate, unvarnished truth. He knew Andrew was neither hysterical nor fantasizing. The boy was a victim, pure and simple.

  And so, it fell on Ian's shoulders to treat his patient.

  Anticipation nibbled at his consciousness again. He'd owned an insane asylum for ten years, and managed it for six; and now, finally, he was going to treat his first patient.

  Andrew released a quiet moan.

  Ian leaned forward and forced himself to touch the boy's shoulder. "Andrew? Can you hear me? It's Dr. Carrick."

  Andrew blinked groggily. Slowly his eyes opened.

  Ian felt a rush of pure adrenaline. Just like the old days. "Andrew? I'm here."

  Andrew turned his head. "Dr. Carrick?"

  Ian stared down into the boy's pale gray eyes. "Hello there, Andrew. You gave us quite a scare."

  "You touched me," Andrew said softly.

  "Yes."

  Tears glazed Andrew's eyes. His lip trembled. "You shouldn't have done that, Dr. Carrick. I was always so careful around you."

  "I'd like to help you, Andrew." .

  He turned his face away. "No one can help me."

  "Maybe if we just ... talked ..."

  I

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  Andrew pressed his face tighter into the pillow, said he'd kill me if I told anyone."

  "He'd have to kill me first."

  Very slowly, Andrew turned back toward Ian. "You'd protect me?"

  Ian nodded.

  Andrew started to cry quietly. It was a long time before he could stop.

  Ian said nothing, just sat there, waiting. Finally Andrew wiped his face and looked up at Ian through eyes that were pathetically hopeful. "I need help, Dr. Carrick."

  A lump formed in Ian's throat. "We all do, Andrew. We all do."

  Chapter Eighteen

  The moon was bright and full and ringed by clouds. It cast a bluish white aura of magic across the dark night.

  Selena followed Ian from the house.

  He sl
ipped through the garden's wrought-iron gates and went to the gazebo, sitting on the granite bench inside, leaving the gate open behind him.

  She followed slowly, careful not to step on a twig or branch or make any sound. At the gate she paused, allowing herself-just for an instant-to believe that he'd left it open on purpose. A silent invitation.

  But she couldn't lose herself in the fantasy. This morning she'd glimpsed another, darker side of Ian, and it had frightened and confused her. He had been cold and needlessly cruel.

  His selfishness made her feel frighteningly alone. As if some integral, necessary part of her soul had splintered. For hours she'd sat on the porch steps, trying to understand what had happened. There was no one she could ask. Johann would be sarcastic; she was certain of it. Edith wouldn't allow herself to speak of "the master" that way, and Maeve . . .

  Selena sighed. Poor Maeve had spent the day in the kitchen, making her long-dead husband a cherry tart.

  Selena had wandered through the silent house, time and again passing in front of Andrew's closed door. She

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  waited patiently, and not so patiently, for Ian to leave the boy's room, but the door had stayed closed until a few moments ago.

  In her need to understand Ian, she'd consulted book after book, but none of them answered her question. Until finally, when she'd almost given up, she'd opened a book of poetry that Ian had once read to her. Almost magically, it had fallen open, and she'd found the words she needed so desperately.

  If thoust must love me, let it be for naught Except for love's sake only. Do not say I love her for her smile-her look-her way Of speaking gently-for a trick of thought That falls in well with mine, and certes brought A sense of pleasant ease on such a day- For these things in themselves, Beloved, may Be changed, or change for thee-and love,

  so wrought May be unwrought so.

  It had taken her a long time to understand the poem's true message, but finally she saw that Miss Browning was explaining the very nature of love.

  With the words, Selena began to understand the emotion she'd given so freely. Her first true memory was of Ian. It sounded trite and ridiculous, but for as long as she could remember, he'd been her sun, her moon, her world. Naively she'd thought she loved him; it was the only word that fit the enormity of her feeling. But now she saw her mistake. She'd been mesmerized by Ian, bewitched by his quicksilver moods, captivated by the most brilliant smile she'd ever seen.

  It had been an illusion, though, a young girl's whimsy. If she was to cross the yawning channel between infatuation and true love, she would have to do it now, with her eyes wide open and her heart too vulnerable to bear. She would have to accept his imperfections, his vices,

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  his fallibility; just as he would have to accept hers. And it would only be a beginning, nothing more.

  She took a single step forward, her fingers resting lightly on the chilly iron bars of the gate. The sweet fragrance of hyacinths, jonquils, and blossoming snowdrops hung in the crisp air, their white faces peering through the shadowy lattice sides of the gazebo. Ian sat on the granite bench, his back turned to her. Moonlight caressed his hair, gave it the appearance of a golden halo against the stark, unrelieved black of his coat.