by Vicki Hinze
“Oh, you don’t have to be polite with me, Dana. With all the upset going on, all the kids and their parents on edge, you don’t need me dumping on you, too.”
That cutting loose and letting go was the purpose of girls’ night out. At least, it was for Dana. “I’m a psychologist, remember? I’m trained for it.” Dana sat down and placed her handbag and tote on the floor at her feet. “Dump away.”
“No, seriously. I’m okay.”
“Laney, we’re friends. If I can’t be here for you when you clearly need me, that’s a fail. Friends are there for friends, whenever they’re needed. Now stop being the strong one who can handle everything—most of the time, you are—but right now, you need a friend. Let me be one, okay?”
“Okay.” Laney chewed a bite of cupcake slowly and then swallowed. “You know I worked homicide in Los Angeles, right?”
Dana nodded. Now wasn’t the time for her words. It was time for her ears—to listen.
“Do you know I left because I shot and killed a twelve-year-old boy?”
Pain ripped through Dana’s chest. She hadn’t known, and gave Laney a negative nod. With Laney, this might be a first, voluntarily saying those words out loud. Dana schooled her expression, careful it remain a non-judgmental mask.
“Well, I did.” Laney’s chin trembled. “It was dark and he had on this hoodie. I couldn’t really see his face, just his silhouette. He’d already shot my partner, and I was chasing him. All of a sudden, he stops, turns and draws down on me. I’m looking down the barrel of his gun.” She stopped, clearly reliving that moment in her mind.
Dana intruded. “It was shoot or be shot.”
Laney nodded, lowering her gaze to the half-eaten cupcake. “When I saw he was a kid…” Her voice cracked. She took a sharp breath and let it out slowly. “I quit.” She forced her gaze to Dana’s. “I was cleared of any wrongdoing, but…I quit. And then I came here.”
“For the peace and tranquility,” Dana said in low hushed tones, just above a whisper.
“Exactly.” Laney rubbed her thigh, as if drying a damp palm.
“And now, with Sylvia’s murder, what happened then has followed you here and stirred up all those old memories.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re having trouble coping?” Dana understood only too well. How could she not?
“Nightmares, Dana. Bad ones.” Laney started to reach for her coffee, but her hand trembled so badly, she drew it back. “I keep reliving it.”
“He’s haunting your dreams?”
“He is.” Laney shook it off, setting her long ponytail to sweeping across her shoulder. “I don’t get it. He would have killed me.”
“Yes.”
“And it’s not like I haven’t regretted what happened. I have, a thousand times. I was cleared of wrongdoing, but in my dreams…”
Dana folded her hands atop the table. “You try to change the outcome. You look for other actions you could have taken, for anything—anything—different you could have done.”
“Yeah.” Laney seemed surprised.
“And yet the same thing happens over and over again, and because it does, the wound inside you keeps festering and stays raw.”
Laney straightened and stopped rubbing her thigh. “You know exactly what it’s like.”
“Unfortunately, I do,” Dana admitted. “Before I came to Shutter Lake, for peace and tranquility, I taught at an elementary school in Phoenix. There was a mass shooting. Long story short, I lost four students. When the shooting started, we weren’t in our classroom, we were in a hallway, and there was nowhere to go. Finally, we ran back to a janitor’s closet and piled into it. I sat closest to the door. It was hot and locked and the kids were so scared. I told them we had to be quiet and maybe the shooter wouldn’t know we were there. He’d turned his back and started firing in another direction.”
“So you saved the kids.”
Dana let her agony show in her eyes. “Four died.” She recited their names. “Cara, Misty, Sara and Joshua.” She tugged at her earlobe and swallowed a lump of fresh tears from her throat. “Part of me died, too.”
“Yes.” Laney sparked recognition. “Exactly.” She sipped from her coffee. “So you have nightmares, too.”
“I did for more than five years. But this with Sylvia...it’s brought them back.”
“So they never end.”
“Regret is merciless, Laney. That’s the simple truth. But we get better at coping with it. And that, my friend, is also the truth.”
“Merciless, I’ve got down pat. It’s something…else, something that eases this stuff, I’m still searching for.”
“Yes, I know.” Dana tapped her folded forefingers. “We search because we feel guilty that we couldn’t prevent the incident. Because we couldn’t do more. Guilt tells us we’re there to protect and defend, and when we fail, for whatever reason we fail, we might receive forgiveness from everyone else in the world, but we struggle—oh, how we struggle—to forgive ourselves.”
Laney stilled and stared at Dana for a long time. “It’s not regret, it’s guilt that rises up again and torments us.”
“It does, but guilt can’t ease things in us any more than regret could, because it isn’t what’s really tormenting us,” Dana said.
“Then what is?”
“Our lack of forgiving ourselves.”
Laney winced. “I’m missing a step here.”
Dana had, too. For a very long time. “Forgiveness is tricky. We think we forgive others so they can move forward, and so we do. But we don’t accept that we must forgive ourselves so that we can move forward, too.” Dana let that sink in. “It’s really hard for us to admit, especially to ourselves, that we were helpless. Or that we tried and just plain failed. So we forgive everyone else, no problem. But we don’t forgive ourselves because way down deep in places we don’t talk about or even acknowledge exist, we have this spark of doubt. We hang onto it with all we’ve got, and we continue to believe there is something else we could have done. Some way we could have changed the outcome.”
“Second-guessing ourselves, so it comes out in our dreams.” Laney grunted. “I get it.”
“Here’s the most important part,” Dana said. “Until we accept that what happened did happen and it’s done, we’re stuck on this hamster wheel of hell. There’s only one thing that can stop the wheel so we can get off.”
“What?”
“Us actually forgiving ourselves. That is the only act that can set us free. It’s simple but complex and hard to do, yet once we do it, we’re free to move on.”
“You did that.”
“I had done that,” Dana corrected her. “Last summer, I went to Shutter Lake and had a picnic all by myself. It was a beautiful day. Warm, the sun felt so good. The sky for some reason seemed even more blue than usual, and I knew it was time to face my past head on.” Dana dropped her voice even lower. “The school in Phoenix gave me an award for saving fourteen kids. I went to the lake that day to burn it because I lost four.” Dana lifted her thumb and stared at it. “So I lit this lighter and, when the flame got close to the paper, it hit me.”
“What?”
“In mourning the four and not forgiving myself, I was failing to show any gratitude at all that fourteen kids lived.” Tears shimmered in Dana’s eyes, blurring Laney’s face. “That night, fourteen beautiful children went home and not to the morgue because I got them into that closet.” Dana smiled. “Until that moment, I had never, not once, ever looked at what happened that way.”
Laney smiled back. “You didn’t burn the award.”
“I framed it.” Dana’s voice came out stronger. “It’s on the back of my bedroom door where I see it last thing at night and first thing every morning before going to school.”
“Wow.” Laney blinked, and her smile faded. “But you’re having nightmares again.”
“Just for a couple of nights.” Dana shrugged. “The bad stuff is easier to remember and harder to forget than t
he forgiveness.”
“Seems to always work that way.”
“It does.”
Laney took a bite of cupcake, mulled all that over. “So if I forgive myself, the nightmares should stop.”
“Maybe,” Dana said, not wanting to pass false hope. “You might still have some, but if you really forgive yourself, you’ll have more strength and be better able to handle them. They won’t cut as deep. You might get an acid stomach, but what happened and your part in it, won’t eat your heart out like it has been. In your work there, think about the ones you helped spare, Laney.”
“Makes sense.” Laney nodded. “I’ll give it a try.”
“A tip from the trenches, friend to friend. Don’t try. Do it.”
“Total resolve.”
“Definitely.” Dana stood up, scooted her chair back under the table. “Total resolve.”
“Thanks, Dana.”
“Any time.” She tilted her head. “We’re survivors, but we’re not alone. Everyone who has reached puberty is walking wounded from something.”
“It helps to remember it.” Laney smiled up at Dana. “You’re a good psychologist.”
“Thank you.” Dana sniffed. “But I’m shooting for being better at protecting kids.”
“After all that happened, I can see why you would be.”
No better time to tick an item off her to-do list, Dana thought. “When we were dealing with the DNA trash, I should have mentioned that Vinn and Kristina were more than friends. I got sidetracked, but I didn’t forget it. I am sorry for the delay.”
“It’s okay, Dana. I’m sure it staying on your to-do list irritated you a lot more than me.” Laney smiled. “I kind of thought there might be more between those two.”
“Pretty innocent, I think,” Dana said. “But speaking of Vinn, there is something—“
Laney’s expression shuttered, but regret tinged it. “Dana, you know I can’t talk about the case.”
“Oh, of course, I do. I don’t want to talk about the case.” Laney’s relief was immediate, so Dana went on. “I want to talk to Vinn.”
“Why?”
She didn’t dare reveal her thoughts. “I expect he could use a friendly eared psychologist right about now.”
“I don’t doubt it.” Laney paused a second, then added, “I might be able to get McCabe to agree on those terms—you being Vinn’s psychologist—if Vinn wants to see you.”
Hope raised in Dana. She tried and failed to tamp it. “Let me know.”
“I will. I’ll talk to McCabe when I get back to the office.”
“Wait until a little later in the afternoon,” Dana whispered. “I hear he’s more receptive then.”
Shock pumped through Laney. “How do you—“
Dana pressed a fingertip over her lips. “All is well.”
Laney nodded.
At the counter, Dana called out to Heidi and checked her watch. The emotionally charged conversation with Laney had seemed to last a lifetime, but time-wise, Dana was okay. “Heidi, are you back there?”
She popped her head through the door. “Been hiding out. You and Laney looked pretty intense over there and I didn’t want to intrude.”
“That was very thoughtful of you.”
“Trying to make amends after yesterday, but they say Connie is doing okay today. I still can’t believe I said that out loud.”
“It happens.” Dana brushed the faux pas aside. “I need two German Chocolate cupcakes.”
“Ah, you’re tempting Pam again. What’d she do this time?”
“Nagging,” Dana confided.
“You do hate that.”
“Yes, I do.” Dana let out a little laugh.
“She means well. Pam’s a good person.”
“The best. Would I reward her with your cupcakes if she weren’t?”
“Ha.” Heidi beamed. “I guess not. “ She reached for a small box and her tongs.
An item from Dana’s to-do list sprang to mind. “I’d like to arrange something, if you are open to it.”
“What’s that, Dr. P.?”
Heidi had always called her Dr. P. From the first time they’d met. “Every Wednesday, Sylvie used to take Troy Duval a treat.”
“A bagel. Blueberry, if it’s available. He’s fond of blueberries and they’re great antioxidants, so they’re particularly good for him.” She dropped her voice so only Dana could hear. “He loves my butter cream frosting, too, but Sylvia won’t bring it to him because he’s supposed to watch his sugar.”
Everyone in Shutter Lake loved Heidi’s butter-cream frosting. “Can you continue that—a Wednesday treat for him—and bill me for it?”
That surprised her. “Well, I could if I made blueberry bagels, but I don’t. You have to get them from The Grind.” Heidi hooked a thumb next door.
“Oh, gee. I know that. I’ve stood in line with Sylvia a hundred times.”
“No problem,” Heidi said. “Nolan Ikard will probably do it. Tightwad will likely add a delivery fee.”
“Sorry, Heidi, and thanks. I’ll set it up with him then.” Dana stretched out a bill to settle up.
“Wait. Why are you doing that?”
“Mr. Duval is ill and a shut-in. Since Sylvia died, I don’t think he sees anyone except Renata Fernandez.”
“I heard she’s doing his house on Wednesdays. Sylvia always took care of him herself.” Heidi leaned against the counter. “Renata’s a sweet girl, but she’s no Sylvia. She’s scared to death of Troy Duval.”
“Why on earth would she be afraid of him?” The man was a senior and frail. He posed no threat to anyone.
Heidi lifted a hand. “She’s scared to death of everybody and everything.” Heidi turned an assessing eye on Dana. “So why are you getting involved?”
Why was she? Maybe because she was alone in the world, too. Maybe because she hoped that one day someone remembered she was alone and let her know she hadn’t been forgotten. “Because I can.”
That set Heidi back on her heels. “I’ll tell you what, Dr. P. It’ll be hard—Nolan and I don’t exactly get along—but I’ll get the bagel from The Grind and drive it out to Troy Duval for a while. Maybe we can set up a monthly rotation with some of the gals from church or something. Get some more people out there to see him.”
“Thank you, Heidi.” Considering she and Nolan Ikard had been at war ever since Dana had moved to the lake, this was a big concession on Heidi’s part. “That’s a great idea.”
“I’ll take it on and set it up. Consider it done.”
“Wonderful.” Happy inside. It felt good. “You just bill me then.”
“For the bagel. Delivery is on me,” Heidi said, adjusting her chef’s hat. “No way is a penny of my money going to Nolan Ikard.”
“Well, it’s very good of you to do this. I appreciate it.”
“It’s nothing.” Heidi waved off the praise. “If I were good, I’d have trotted myself out there to see about him a long time ago. But after yesterday, I’m going to try to be better.”
Blurting out that comment about Vinn had kept Heidi up last night, too. “Being better is a great example. We all need to try harder.”
“I guess.” Heidi wiped off the counter. “Shame it takes losing one of our own to treat those left a little kindlier, but…”
“Never kick a silver lining to the curb, I say.” Dana picked up the pink-striped box of two German Chocolate cupcakes and headed to the door.
If she hurried, she’d make the meeting with Wade Travis without being late. He’d been so edgy about it, it wouldn’t surprise her a bit if he seized a one-minute delay as a justifiable reason to bolt.
Certain of it, she rushed her steps.
Chapter Twelve
For the most part, the students had left the school grounds. Small groups stood clustered chatting with friends, but the buses had departed and Dana had passed the bulk of the walkers about a block down the street.
She climbed the steps then But entered the building, nodding
at a couple of basketball players heading to the gym for practice. Oh, how she wished Vinn were with them. He had to be scared to death, even in a small jail like McCabe’s.
In the outer office, Wade Travis sat waiting on the far end of the row of four chairs. Pam heard Dana enter and looked up. “Ah, there you are, Dr. Perkins. Mr. Travis is here.”
Dana glanced over at him. His skin looked gray, his expression solemn. His white shirt, black sweater and slacks just made him look more ashen. The worst was, his hands were shaking…and empty. “Mr. Travis, are you ill?”
“I’m fine, Dr. Perkins.”
He wasn’t fine. He had dreaded this coming conversation all day and seemed to be unraveling right before her eyes. Why?
Kristina Sharapova stepped into the office. “Dr. Perkins, I need to talk to you.”
She seemed excited, eager to share something she deemed important. That was obvious. “Of course, Kristina. Wait in my office, please.” Dana paused until she was seated inside her office, then pivoted to look at Travis. “Why don’t you grab your laptop? This with Kristina will only take a minute.”
He stared at her as if struck dumb. “Why?”
“It’s school-issue. I need to see it. Now, please.” The best way to get the information she needed to help him quickly was to see where he was before the murder and compare it to where he is now. His lesson plans and correspondence with students would show her that faster than he could tell her. He was troubled and needed assistance now.
Flustered, he gained his feet and left the office.
“He isn’t himself.” Pam asked, worry and curiosity burning in her eyes. “School issue?”
Likely she was curious. Rarely before had Dana inspected any teacher’s laptop. But rarely had there been a need. “The laptop is school-issue, and we do have the right to inspect them at any time without notice. I need unfiltered information fast if I’m to help him,” Dana said. “I want you to access Mr. Travis’s laptop right now and let me know if you see anything on it I need to know about. Do it quickly, Pam.”