by V.
Concealed by a weeping willow, Alexander observed the funeral scene from afar, his eyes as grey as the fog around him.
A preacher approached Shirley and the boy. “Shirley, Danny, I understand how tragic and confusing this is for you, but I’m sure that God will provide an answer for what has happened.”
“God has nothing to do with it,” Danny retorted. “My father killed himself in a selfish act of shame.”
“Daniel,” Shirley interjected, wiping away her tears, “watch your tone. I’m sorry, Adam. He’s distraught. We both are.”
He turned toward the boy. “Danny, you of all people must try to understand. There can never be a simple explanation for suicide. It is never the answer to our problems, but for some, when the circumstances surrounding their lives become too overwhelming, they decide that it’s their only option. I’m sure your father—”
“You know nothing about my father. No one did.” Danny spat on his father’s grave and walked away.
“Daniel!” Shirley called out. “Please!”
“I need to be alone,” he yelled back without turning.
“The reception—”
“Let him be, Shirley,” Adam said as he took her arm. “It’s always difficult for a boy his age to handle the death of his father, especially when that death is self-inflicted. He needs answers.”
“How can I help him to understand when I don’t even understand it myself?”
Adam eased Clara away from the graveyard and toward a nearby car. “Maybe you’ll come across a letter or something he left behind that will make his actions clear to you.”
“No, I’ve done that and didn’t find a thing. All he left was that little note on the kitchen table asking us not to judge him too harshly. Whatever it is he did, he kept it to himself. Was he in trouble with the congregation or with the church?”
They walked past Alexander who had been eavesdropping on their conversation.
“No, not at all. I’d received a couple of complaints that lately he’d been a bit remiss in his duties, but you’re familiar with how that is. There are always malcontents who must complain about this or that. Nothing out of the ordinary.”
“He’d been very busy this summer. He was gone a lot.”
“Well, I can assure you that his death had nothing to do with his duties or the church.”
When they reached the car, Adam opened the door for Clara. “I pray that in time you and Danny will be able to make your peace with what’s happened, and hopefully find an explanation for his death. I am available if either of you should need me.”
Clara dropped her head and silently slid into the car and shut the door.
The car drove away as Alexander hurried off to find Danny.
He spotted him heading through the forest to the lake.
Within the safety of the lonely woods, Alexander called out to the boy, “Danny, wait up.”
Danny stopped and turned toward him, the moisture in the air mixing with the tears that streamed down his cheeks. “What are you doing here?”
“I was at the funeral. I followed you here. I’m sorry about your dad.”
“You should be.” He stormed away from Alexander.
“It’s a good thing to mourn, but make sure you don’t let this anger eat you up.”
“I’m done with you and your sick advice.”
Alexander caught up to the boy and placed a hand on his shoulder.
Danny slapped it off. “I need to be alone. Go away. I don’t need you or your stupid advice.”
“You need to let out your rage. So if being angry at me helps, go right ahead.”
Danny spun around, his face a mask of fury. “Angry at you? No, you stupid man, I hate you! I despise you! I listened to you, and it ruined my life!” He turned and ran away.
Alexander hurried after him. “Listen, anger is good. But you have to direct it where it belongs. It’s okay to be angry with your father. He deserves it. Don’t turn away from it.”
The boy came at him again with his hands clenched into fists. “Enough with your stupid opinions! My father’s dead because of me, because you told me—”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I’ve never been more serious.” He kept coming at Alexander forcing him to step back. “My father is dead because I did as you told me. I confronted him. I shamed him. Don’t you get that? Because of you, I.. .killed my father.”
Alexander stepped toward the boy, who raised his fists in defiance. He stopped and raised his hands in a gesture of appeasement, and cleared his throat. “Danny, you didn’t kill him. This isn’t your fault. He made that choice. He’s responsible for his own death and no one else.”
“No! I made him do it. Me confronting him made him do it. I killed him!”
“Please, you can’t think that. It isn’t true.”
Overcome with anguish, the boy closed his eyes. After a long pause, he whispered, “I wish I could erase the summer months. I wish it could start all over again. Most of all, I wish I’d never met you.” He opened his eyes and glared at Alexander with utter disdain. “Look at me, same hands, same legs, same feet, even these woods are the same, and so is the lake. And yet, everything is different. Everything has changed. I have changed.”
Alexander stepped forward and reached for the boy’s shoulder. “In time you’ll—”
Danny smacked Alexander’s hand away. “Don’t touch me! All of this has happened because of you. So stay away from me. I don’t want to see you ever again.”
“Danny, please, you—”
“Shut up! It’s my turn to dish it out. I’ve been nothing more than a source of amusement to you. You brainwashed me into having sex with a married woman, and then you made me kill my father. I bet you were after something to use in your damn book. So stay the hell away from me!”
Danny ran off into the woods, leaving Alexander behind, stunned, and heartbroken.
Sarah gasped, her hands clutching the armchair in her attic. She bolted up and scurried down the stairs to the phone. Her hands shook as she dialed.
“Dr. Lawrence, please. This is Sarah Thompson. Please tell him this is a very important call. He must take my call.. Thank you.”
She waited for a moment.
“What is it, Sarah?” the doctor asked with obvious concern.
“Thank God, Doc. I found out that Daniel’s father committed suicide right after the boy confronted him with his mistress. Daniel blames himself for his father’s death. He’s convinced that by facing his father he pushed him to kill himself.”
Dr. Lawrence remained silent for a moment. “That’s certainly a serious burden to carry around all these years,” he finally said. “Fifteen, you say his age was?”
“Yes. Conrad should get there with Daniel any moment now, so I needed to tell you before your session. As a boy he blamed Alexander for it all, including Mrs. Foster’s seduction.”
“Thank you, Sarah. I appreciate your call. You’re certain about these images, right?”
“The movie playing in my head is definitely from Alexander’s point of view, so it could be distorted or it could be the real thing. Until the police find more evidence, it’s hard to say. All I can do is tell you what’s been presented to me.”
“Hold on a second, please, Conrad’s here.”
Sarah could hear agitated voices in the background.
“Sarah,” Conrad said on the phone, “Daniel’s gone.”
“What do you mean, gone?”
“He wasn’t in his room this morning. Tom and I opened the store as usual, but Daniel wasn’t there. We assumed that he might have taken a walk after breakfast. When he didn’t show up we went upstairs. No sign of him. My second assumption was that he’d decided to make his way to the hospital on his own. He hates being dependent on us, so I drove up here. No sign of him.” “Oh my God, Conrad, where could he be? What if he remembered who he is and he’s on his way to Alexander’s?”
“Doc’s calling Williams on the other line to
find out.”
“I’m on my way. I’ll meet you at the estate.”
“No. I’ll come get you. We need an okay from Williams to go to the estate. Hold on, Doc is telling me something.”
Sarah heard their muffled voices at the end of the line.
“Sarah, Doc asks that you please call Elisabeth, and without telling her that Daniel is missing, find out if he’s with her. Call us right back.”
“Okay,” she said and hung up.
She dialed Elisabeth’s number. The phone rang and moments later the answering machine came on. She waited for the welcome message to end. “Hi Elisabeth, sorry I missed you. This is Sarah and I’d hoped we could bake some bread together. You’ve been waiting to ‘master the art,’ as you call it. Give me a buzz if you can. I’ll try you on your cell.”
She looked for the cell number and dialed again, but it also went into voicemail.
“Hi Elisabeth, this is Sarah. I just left a message on your answering machine. I’d hoped you could come by to bake some bread. Anyway, give me a buzz as soon as you can so that I don’t wait in vain.”
Quickly she dialed again. “Hello, this is Sarah Thompson, my—”
“Your husband is right here, hold on a moment please,” the doctor’s receptionist clicked off and Conrad came on the line.
“Well?” he asked.
“Voicemail both at home and cell. They probably ran off together.”
“I seriously doubt it. Where would they go? What would they gain by it?” “They’re distraught at not being able to be together. They may not be acting rationally.”
“I guess you’re right. Anyway, Williams is checking if it’s all right for us to go to the estate. I’ll mention to him that Elisabeth is not reachable either. Maybe he’ll have some idea where to look for them. I’m on my way to get you. Call Tom and Alyana and bring them up to speed.” He paused.
Sarah felt his hesitation. “What is it?”
“Do you have any sense of what’s happened? Have you felt—”
“With the exception of the last scene that played in my head about—” “Doc’s told me all about it. What I mean is, have you had any images or sensed something that might help us.”
“Nothing. Not a very helpful psychic, am I?”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Nonetheless, I have no clue.”
“I’m on my way. In the meantime, why don’t you go to your attic in case it has anything to offer?”
Sarah sighed. “I don’t expect it will, but I’ll give it a shot.”
She hung up the phone and climbed the stairs to the attic. She huddled into the armchair, but immediately got to her feet and roamed the room, running her fingers across the furniture.
“Well attic, here we are again, together in an unusual mystery. What’s real in this movie?”
Silence.
“I figured as much. We’re pawns in a game we don’t know how to play.” A creak followed by a crack.
“Don’t suppose you can tell me where they are?”
Silence.
“Of course not. We can sense these things, you and I, but only when the time is right.. .or when we’re supposed to.”
Crick crack.
She stopped. “So you have something to show me. What is it? Why would—” The enraged shadows swirling around Daniel as he looked up the staircase in Alexander’s foyer exploded into her mind. The violence played out before her, only this time she could see through the shadows, the blood, the pain, and then.. .a man, tall, dirty, unshaven, with greasy long hair, furiously punching Daniel with his fists. A ring.no, two rings.one on each hand, a skull and a cross, each with protruding purple stones.or were they green stones covered in blood?
The images vanished. Sarah steadied herself against the wall and caught her breath.
“Has Daniel gone after his attacker? Is that what he’s doing? Who is that man?”
Silence.
“Elisabeth, please stop crying,” Daniel begged, “you’re going to kill us.”
Elisabeth swerved off the road, stopped the car, and shut off the engine. She turned to Daniel. “How can I? First you dump me. Now you tell me you think you’re unhappily married and that you have a teenage daughter. How do you imagine that makes me feel?”
“I didn’t dump you.”
“You didn’t tell me you weren’t sure how you felt about me when I threw myself at you?”
“I did say that, but—”
“But nothing. You dumped me, you walked away,” she managed to say between sobs.
Daniel reached for her hands, but she yanked them back.
“Elisabeth, please listen to me. I did say that I needed to be sure of my feelings and didn’t accept your offer, but I didn’t dump you. I needed to sort out whether I truly loved you or was merely attracted to the.. .‘forbidden fruit,’ to coin a phrase.”
She looked up at him, her pink swollen face bathed in tears. “What forbidden fruit?”
He caressed the tears off her cheek. “You.”
“Me? What do you mean?”
He continued caressing her tears away as he answered in a soft voice. “I enjoyed the excitement I felt stealing a kiss from you, a touch. It drove me crazy. It was in my mind constantly. I dreamed of ways I could come close enough to catch the scent of your hair.”
Her face softened, but her eyes continued to shed tears. “You thought of me like that?”
“All the time.” He smiled. “But Doc told me I needed to sort out—”
“You told Doc how you felt about me?”
“I did. I needed to tell someone. I needed to let it out. It was killing me not to be able to be with you.”
“Really?” she asked with an attempt at a smile.
His hand caressed another tear away and then made its way to her lips. Softly, he ran his fingers over them. “I can’t begin to tell you how much I desire you—what I’d give to kiss those lips.”
She whimpered.
He pulled his hand away and looked down. “I needed to find out if what I felt for you was more than the desire to have what I couldn’t.”
“And.” She hesitated, looked away, and whispered, “What did you find out?”
He gazed into her eyes as his own filled with tears. “That I love you more than I can bear. There’s something about you that tugs at my soul. I desire you something awful, but it’s more than that. It’s as if I’ve loved you all my life. When I’m with you, something deep inside me feels a sense of comfort, of belonging, and a peace that transcends all other emotions. I feel we are one.
I can’t explain it because it makes no sense. But no matter what happens next, I need you to believe that I love you and will always love you. Have no doubt of that.”
Blind with tears, she reached for him, and somehow found his mouth. They kissed with the passion of unfettered desire.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
He pulled her to him and kissed her again and again, then whispered into her mouth, “I love you, I adore you, and I long for you.”
She inhaled his love, allowing its power to penetrate every single cell in her body. “I’m head over heels in love with you, and nothing will ever take that away from me.” She rested her head on his shoulder and kissed his neck.
They remained locked in the safety of their embrace for a while, allowing the anguish and fear of loss to slowly dissipate. They both understood that this moment might have to last them an eternity, so they savored it as long as they could.
At length he kissed her one more time and let her go. “Now, shall we find out what awaits us?” he said in a raspy voice.
Elisabeth nodded, wiped her face, and smiled at the man she so desperately loved. “Let’s do it.”
She started the engine and merged onto the highway.
Daniel sighed, wiped his own cheeks, and looked out the window. “I’m not entirely sure this is the road to the house I remembered. It’s like finding a needle in a haystack.”
“Well, this is pretty far from where Sarah found you, so we may indeed be on the wrong road. On the other hand, folks do talk about a gothic ranch somewhere near Conconully.”
“A gothic ranch, sounds like a horror movie.”
“But that’s the look, isn’t it?”
“Gothic yes, but not a ranch, a house. The image of that house keeps popping up. Strange for a house like that to exist around these parts.”
“There’s lots of open land up here, so folks can build anything they choose. It’s a coincidence that I’ve heard mention of such a ranch. I’m glad you told me.”
“So am I,” he said as he reached for her hand on the steering wheel and softly caressed it.
“It’s awful,” she added, “that Doc and the Thompsons refuse to tell you the truth about you. They should be helping you like I am.”
Daniel turned to her. “I understand their reasoning. They’re afraid I’ll snap. Something in my past must be bad enough to make them scared of how I’ll react. I don’t like it, but I understand it. You’re different.”
“They knew I’d help you.”
“That’s why they asked me not to tell you. But I’m sure we’ll put together whatever this horrible past of mine is, one piece at a time.”
“I love that your real name is Daniel. It would’ve been hard getting used to calling you Tom or Larry, or Gordon. You look like a Daniel.”
He laughed. “Oh? How do Daniels look?”
She giggled. “Like you. What a coincidence we named you that.”
“That was all your doing.”
She smiled and nodded. “I wonder why I picked that name? It wasn’t merely the book on Daniel Boone that we were reading. Somehow, you looked like a Daniel to me.”
“Whatever the reason, thanks.” He reached over and caressed her shoulder. She smiled and rested her cheek on his hand. “I’m glad we’re doing this—although you shouldn’t have walked all the way to my house at dawn. I could’ve picked you up.”