Mind Over Matter

by Nora Roberts

  “Mr. Brady, we need you upstairs.”

  For a moment longer he held her. Her gaze was locked on his and the fury was fierce and very equal. He wanted, God, he wanted to drag her just a bit closer, wipe that maddening look off her face. He wanted to crush his mouth to hers until she couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t fight. He wanted, more than anything, to make her suffer the way he suffered. He released her so abruptly she took two stumbling steps back.

  “Get lost,” he ordered, and turned to mount the stairs.

  It took her a minute to catch her breath. She hadn’t known she could get this angry, hadn’t allowed herself to become this angry in too many years to count. Emotions flared up inside her, blinding her to everything else. She dashed up the stairs behind him.

  “Ms. Fields, nice to see you again.” Alex stood on the top landing in front of a wall where the paint had peeled and cracked. He gave her an easy smile as he smoked his cigar and waited to be called back in front of the camera.

  “And I want to talk to you, too,” she snapped at him. Leaving him staring, she strode down the hall after David.

  It was narrow and dark. There were cobwebs clinging to corners, but she didn’t notice. In places there were squares of lighter paint where pictures had once hung. A.J. worked her way through technicians and walked into the room only steps behind David.

  It hit her like a wall. No sooner had she drawn in the breath to shout at him again than she couldn’t speak at all. She was freezing. The chill whipped through her and to the bone in the matter of a heartbeat.

  The room was lit for the shoot, but she didn’t see the cameras, the stands or the coils of cable. She saw wallpaper, pink roses on cream, and a four-poster draped in the same rose hue. There was a little mahogany stool beside the bed that was worn smooth in the center. She could smell the roses that stood fresh and a little damp in an exquisite crystal vase on a mahogany vanity that gleamed with beeswax and lemon. And she saw—much more. And she heard.

  You betrayed me. You betrayed me with him, Jessica.

  No! No, I swear it. Don’t. For God’s sake don’t do this. I love you. I—

  Lies! All lies. You won’t tell any more.

  There were screams. There was silence, a hundred times worse. A.J.’s purse hit the floor with a thud as she lifted her hands to her ears.

  “A.J.” David was shaking her, hands firm on her shoulders, as everyone else in the room stopped to stare. “What’s wrong with you?”

  She reached out to clutch his shirt. He could feel the iciness of her flesh right through the cotton. She looked at him, but her eyes didn’t focus. “That poor girl,” she murmured. “Oh, God, that poor girl.”

  “A.J.” With an effort, he kept his voice calm. She was shuddering and pale, but the worst of it was her eyes, dark and glazed as they looked beyond him. She stared at the center of the room as if held in a trance. He took both of her hands in his. “A.J., what girl?”

  “He killed her right here. There on the bed. He used his hands. She couldn’t scream anymore because his hands were on her throat, squeezing. And then…”

  “A.J.” He took her chin and forced her to look at him. “There’s no bed in here. There’s nothing.”

  “It—” She struggled for air, then lifted both hands to her face. The nausea came, a too-familiar sensation. “I have to get out of here.” Breaking away, she pushed through the technicians crowded in the doorway and ran. She stumbled out into the rain and down the porch steps before David caught her.

  “Where are you going?” he demanded. A flash of lightning highlighted them both as the rain poured down.

  “I’ve got to…” She trailed off and looked around blindly. “I’m going back to town. I have to get back.”

  “I’ll take you.”

  “No.” Panicked, she struggled, only to find herself held firmly. “I have my car.”

  “You’re not driving anywhere like this.” Half leading, half dragging, he pulled her to his car. “Now stay here,” he ordered, and slammed the door on her.

  Unable to gather the strength to do otherwise, A.J. huddled on the seat and shivered. She needed only a minute. She promised herself she needed only a minute to pull herself together. But however many it took David to come back, the shivering hadn’t stopped. He tossed her purse in the back, then tucked a blanket around her. “One of the crew’s taking your car back to town.” After starting the engine, he headed down the bumpy, potholed gravel road. For several moments there was silence as the rain drummed and she sat hunched under the blanket.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” he said at length.

  She was better now. She took a steady breath to prove she had control. “Tell you what?”

  “That you were like your mother.” A.J. curled into a ball on the seat, cradled her head in her arms and wept.

  What the hell was he supposed to say? David cursed her, then himself, as he drove through the rain with her sobbing beside him. She’d given him the scare of his life when he’d turned around and seen her standing there, gasping for air and white as a sheet. He’d never felt anything as cold as her hands had been. Never seen anything like what she must have seen.

  Whatever doubts he had, whatever criticisms he could make about laboratory tests, five-dollar psychics and executive clairvoyants, he knew A.J. had seen something, felt something, none of the rest of them had.

  So what did he do about it? What did he say?

  She wept. She let herself empty. There was no use berating herself, no use being angry with what had happened. She’d long ago resigned herself to the fact that every now and again, no matter how careful she was, no matter how tightly controlled, she would slip and leave herself open.

  The rain stopped. There was milky sunlight now. A.J. kept the blanket close around her as she straightened in her seat. “I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t want an apology. I want an explanation.”

  “I don’t have one.” She wiped her cheeks dry with her hand. “I’d appreciate it if you’d take me home.”

  “We’re going to talk, and we’re going to do it where you can’t kick me out.”

  She was too weak to argue, too weak to care. A.J. rested her head against the window and didn’t protest when they passed the turn for her apartment. They drove up into the hills, high above the city. The rain had left things fresh here, though a curling mist still hugged the ground.

  He turned into a drive next to a house with cedar shakes and tall windows. The lawn was wide and trimmed with spring flowers bursting around the borders.

  “I thought you’d have a place in town.”

  “I used to, then I decided I had to breathe.” He took her purse and a briefcase from the back seat. A.J. pushed the blanket aside and stepped from the car. Saying nothing, they walked to the front door together.

  Inside wasn’t rustic. He had paintings on the walls and thick Turkish carpets on the floors. She ran her hand along a polished rail and stepped down a short flight of steps into the living room. Still silent, David went to the fireplace and set kindling to blaze. “You’ll want to get out of those wet clothes,” he said matter-of-factly. “There’s a bath upstairs at the end of the hall. I keep a robe on the back of the door.”

  “Thank you.” Her confidence was gone—that edge that helped her keep one step ahead. A.J. moistened her lips. “David, you don’t have to—”

  “I’ll make coffee.” He walked through a doorway and left her alone.

  She stood there while the flames from the kindling began to lick at split oak. The scent was woodsy, comfortable. She’d never felt more miserable in her life. The kind of rejection she felt now, from David, was the kind she’d expected. It was the kind she’d dealt with before.

  She stood there while she battled back the need to weep again. She was strong, self-reliant. She wasn’t about to break her heart over David Brady, or any man. Lifting her chin, A.J. walked to the stairs and up. She’d shower, let her clothes dry, then dress and go ho
me. A. J. Fields knew how to take care of herself.

  The water helped. It soothed her puffy eyes and warmed her clammy skin. From the small bag of emergency cosmetics in her purse, she managed to repair the worst of the damage. She tried not to notice that the robe carried David’s scent as she slipped it on. It was better to remember that it was warm and covered her adequately.

  When she went back downstairs, the living area was still empty. Clinging to the courage she’d managed to build back up, A.J. went to look for him.

  The hallway twisted and turned at angles when least expected. If the situation had been different, A.J. would have appreciated the house for its uniqueness. She didn’t take much notice of polished paneling offset by stark white walls, or planked floors scattered with intricately patterned carpets. She followed the hallway into the kitchen. The scent of coffee eased the beginning of flutters in her stomach. She took a moment to brace herself, then walked into the light.

  He was standing by the window. There was a cup of coffee in his hand, but he wasn’t drinking. Something was simmering on the stove. Perhaps he’d forgotten it. A.J. crossed her arms over her chest and rubbed her hands over the sleeves of the robe. She didn’t feel warm any longer.

  “David?”

  He turned the moment she said his name, but slowly. He wasn’t certain what he should say to her, what he could say. She looked so frail. He couldn’t have described his own feelings at the moment and hadn’t a clue to hers. “The coffee’s hot,” he told her. “Why don’t you sit down?”

  “Thanks.” She willed herself to behave as normally as he and took a seat on a stool at the breakfast bar.

  “I thought you could use some food.” He walked to the stove to pour coffee. “I heated up some soup.”

  Tension began to beat behind her eyes. “You didn’t have to bother.”

  Saying nothing, he ladled out the soup, then brought both it and the coffee to her. “It’s an old family recipe. My mother always says a bowl of soup cures anything.”

  “It looks wonderful,” she managed, and wondered why she had to fight back the urge to cry again. “David…”

  “Eat first.” Taking no food for himself, he drew up a stool across from her and cradled his coffee. He lit a cigarette and sat, sipping his coffee and smoking, while she toyed with her soup. “You’re supposed to eat it,” he pointed out. “Not just rearrange the noodles.”

  “Why don’t you ask?” she blurted out. “I’d rather you just asked and got it over with.”

  So much hurt there, he realized. So much pain. He wondered where it had its roots. “I don’t intend to start an interrogation, A.J.”

  “Why not?” When she lifted her head, her face was defiant, her eyes strong. “You want to know what happened to me in that room.”

  He blew out a stream of smoke before he crushed out his cigarette. “Of course I do. But I don’t think you’re ready to talk about what happened in that room. At least not in detail. A.J., why don’t you just talk to me?”

  “Not ready?” She might have laughed if her stomach wasn’t tied up in knots. “You’re never ready. I can tell you what she looked like—black hair, blue eyes. She was wearing a cotton gown that buttoned all the way up to her throat, and her name was Jessica. She was barely eighteen when her husband killed her in a jealous rage, strangled her with his own hands, then killed himself in grief with the pistol in the table beside the bed. That’s what you want for your documentary, isn’t it?”

  The details, and the cool, steady way she delivered them, left him shaken. Just who was this woman who sat across from him, this woman he’d held and desired? “What happened to you has nothing to do with the project. I think it has a great deal to do with the way you’re reacting now.”

  “I can usually control it.” She shoved the soup aside so that it lapped over the edges of the bowl. “God knows I’ve had years of practice. If I hadn’t been so angry, so out of control when I walked in there—it probably wouldn’t have happened.”

  “You can block it.”

  “Usually, yes. To a large extent, anyway.”

  “Why do you?”

  “Do you really think this is a gift?” she demanded as she pushed away from the counter. “Oh, maybe for someone like Clarissa it is. She’s so unselfish, so basically good and content with herself.”

  “And you?”

  “I hate it.” Unable to remain still, she whirled away. “You’ve no idea what it can be like, having people stare at you, whisper. If you’re different, you’re a freak, and I—” She broke off, rubbing at her temple. When she spoke again, her voice was quiet. “I just wanted to be normal. When I was little, I’d have dreams.” She folded her hands together and pressed them to her lips. “They were so incredibly real, but I was just a child and thought everyone dreamed like that. I’d tell one of my friends—oh, your cat’s going to have kittens. Can I have the little white one? Then weeks later, the cat would have kittens and one of them would be white. Little things. Someone would lose a doll or a toy and I’d say, well, your mother put it on the top shelf in your closet. She forgot. When they looked it would be there. Kids didn’t think much of it, but it made some of the parents nervous. They thought it would be best if their children stayed away from me.”

  “And that hurt,” he murmured.

  “Yes, that hurt a lot. Clarissa understood. She was comforting and really wonderful about it, but it hurt. I still had the dreams, but I stopped talking about them. Then my father died.”

  She stood, the heels of her hands pressed to her eyes as she struggled to rein in her emotions. “No, please.” She shook her head as she heard David shift on the stool as if to rise. “Just give me a minute.” On a long breath, she dropped her hands. “I knew he was dead. He was away on a selling trip, and I woke up in the middle of the night and knew. I got up and went into Clarissa. She was sitting up in bed, wide awake. I could see on her face that she was already grieving. We didn’t even say anything to each other, but I got into bed with her, and we just lay there together until the phone rang.”

  “And you were eight,” he murmured, trying to get some grip on it.

  “I was eight. After that, I started to block it off. Whenever I began to feel something, I’d just pull in. It got to the point where I could go for months—at one point, two years—without something touching it off. If I get angry or upset to the point where I lose control, I open myself up for it.”

  He remembered the way she’d stormed into the house, strong and ready for a fight. And the way she’d run out again, pale and terrified. “And I make you angry.”

  She turned to look at him for the first time since she’d begun to speak. “It seems that way.”

  The guilt was there. David wasn’t certain how to deal with it, or his own confusion. “Should I apologize?”

  “You can’t help being what you are any more than I can stop being what I am.”

  “Aurora, I think I understand your need to keep a handle on this thing, not to let it interfere with the day-to-day. I don’t understand why you feel you have to lock it out of your life like a disease.”

  She’d gone this far, she thought as she walked back to the counter. She’d finish. “When I was twenty, scrambling around and trying to get my business rolling, I met this man. He had this little shop on the beach, renting surfboards, selling lotion, that sort of thing. It was so, well, exciting, to see someone that free-spirited, that easygoing, when I was working ten hours a day just to scrape by. In any case, I’d never been involved seriously with a man before. There hadn’t been time. I fell flat on my face for this one. He was fun, not too demanding. Before I knew it we were on the point of being engaged. He bought me this little ring with the promise of diamonds and emeralds once we hit it big. I think he meant it.” She gave a little laugh as she slid onto the stool again. “In any case, I felt that if we were going to be married we shouldn’t have any secrets.”

  “You hadn’t told him?”

  “No.” She said i
t defiantly, as if waiting for disapproval. When none came, she lowered her gaze and went on. “I introduced him to Clarissa, and then I told him that I—I told him,” she said flatly. “He thought it was a joke, sort of dared me to prove it. Because I felt so strongly about having everything up front between us, well, I guess you could say I proved it. After—he looked at me as though…” She swallowed and struggled to keep the hurt buried.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I suppose I should have expected it.” Though she shrugged it off, she picked up the spoon and began to run the handle through her fingers. “I didn’t see him for days after that. I went to him with some grand gesture in mind, like giving him back his ring. It’s almost funny, looking back on it now, the way he wouldn’t look at me, the way he kept his distance. Too weird.” She looked up again with a brittle smile. “I was just plain too weird.”

  And she was still hurting. But he didn’t reach out to her. He wasn’t quite sure how. “The wrong man at the wrong time.”

  A.J. gave an impatient shake of her head. “I was the wrong woman. Since then, I’ve learned that honesty isn’t always the most advantageous route. Do you have any idea what it would do to me professionally if my clients knew? Those I didn’t lose would ask me to tell them what role to audition for. People would start asking me to fly to Vegas with them so I could tell them what number to bet at the roulette table.”

  “So you and Clarissa downplay your relationship and you block the rest off.”

  “That’s right.” She picked up her cold coffee and downed it. “After today, I guess that goes to hell.”

  “I told Sam I’d discussed what had happened in that room with