by Keary Taylor
“I’m starting to think they were right,” she croaks.
Chapter Thirty-Six
IONA
Sully puts a bowl of oatmeal with brown sugar before me, and watches as I eat.
One spoonful. My throat tightens against it.
Two spoonsful. My stomach knots.
On the third bite, I actually gag.
Sully shakes his head, a hard look in his eyes. He places his hands on the counter top, staring at me. “Again,” he says, nodding at the bowl.
I’m not hungry. But I look down at my hand, the one holding the spoon, and it looks so breakable. The bones are so obvious.
I just keep staring at it.
When did this happen?
My eyes move up my arm, which is just as withered. I actually reach up and feel my face. My cheekbones are protruding. My jawline is sharp.
“Take another bite, Iona,” Sully says.
My eyes rise up to his. A dozen emotions rest in them. He nods at the bowl once more.
I grab the spoon. My hand shakes. I raise it up to my lips, and put the mush in my mouth.
Every muscle in me quakes, my stomach tightens.
I clamp a hand over my mouth, forcing myself to make it go down. To not wretch up the few bites I got down earlier.
“You are physically unable to eat more than a few bites.” Sully says it so matter-of-factly. He keeps looking at me. Like a scientist studying a lab rat. “You’re eating only just enough to keep you from dying.”
I nod, even though tears sting the back of my eyes. I think back, to the past few months. To really, the past six or so of them. I’m never hungry. Food has held no interest for me.
“Everyone kept telling me I was losing too much weight,” I say, my gaze blurring as I stare at nothing. “But it’s been like…like I didn’t even hear them. The words, they didn’t connect.”
“You need to start connecting again, Iona,” Sully says, leaning forward slightly. “You need to see the damage that has been done.”
I look up, meeting his eyes. But it’s hard to keep him in focus.
I get to my feet and head into my bedroom. I pull my shirt up over my head. Unbutton my slacks. My clothes fall to the floor.
I step in front of the mirror that hangs next to the closet.
And the tears burn my eyes. A sob gets caught in my throat.
My collarbones cut sharp lines across my chest. My rib bones are so visible I can count every one of them. My hipbones jut out sharply against my panties. There is a wide gap between my thighs.
My skin looks a little loose on my own body.
“This is dangerous, Iona.”
I look to the side to see Sully standing in the doorway. He turns away sheepishly, but there’s that look in his eyes, like he can’t help but look at the sad sight. Can’t help but stare at the horror.
“You’re literally wasting away,” he says.
I look back in the mirror, and my lower lip trembles.
The woman I see is not me.
I don’t know when I morphed into this…this thing. It took time to get here, but I don’t remember the effort it took to become this.
“I…” I shake my head, and words fail me. “How? How could this be because of Jack? This is my body. I have control over it. How could he have anything to do with it?”
Sully takes another step into the room. “The mind can do powerful things to the body. The body has to obey.”
There’s a dark echo in his voice that tells me he knows from experience.
A tear breaks free from my lashes and slips down my cheek. “I…” I can’t accept it, that someone I loved so fiercely could do anything like this to me.
“Would you have ever chosen to do this to yourself?”
But there it is. The brutally honest question.
I have to answer truthfully.
“No,” I breathe. “Never.”
I more sense than see Sully nod. “Get dressed. Let’s go find some answers.”
“Jack had no family or relatives left,” I say as we walk down the street. I pull my coat tighter around me, slush washing over my boots. “So everything of his went to me. Not that he had much.”
We cross the last street and Sully and I walk up to his office. I should be at work. But it is the very last thing I care about today. Sully called in sick for me.
“I’ve been paying the lease since he died,” I say as I fish the keys out of my purse. “Though I’m not going to be able to afford it next month. I’ll have to clear all of his stuff out in the next few weeks.”
The door opens and the bell above it chimes.
I have to take in a deep, steadying breath when we step inside. I’m washed in the scent of him, and the ache in my chest is enough to bury me six feet under.
“You can do this.”
Sully’s deep voice billows against my back, standing me straight again, reminding me to look at myself in each individual moment.
I stand a little straighter, rolling back my shoulders.
“He only had a part-time secretary,” I say, indicating the desk immediately inside the lobby. “I haven’t heard a word from her since he died. I think she got a new job with Dr. Sparrow, across town.”
I walk past her desk. There’s a small restroom just beyond it, a set of stairs beside that, and then off to the right, is Jack’s office.
I push open the door, and the two of us step inside. His desk is pushed under the window. Filing cabinets sit to either side of it, filled with his notes, medical records, secrets he was sworn to keep as a psychologist.
There’s a comfortable chair to one side, where he spent hours and hours listening to the problems of his patients.
And then a big, overstuffed, leather couch. Where his patients could sit, or slump, or lie down if they wanted.
Jack’s diploma hangs on one wall. There are various soothing-looking paintings hung on the walls here and there.
And on his desk sits a framed picture of him and me.
I reach for it, studying our faces.
We’d been dating for about five weeks. We’d gone for a walk through the park in town and then laid out on a blanket to watch the sunset and the stars wink into view. It had been awkward and difficult for Jack to take the picture of the two of us with the new camera he’d just gotten a week prior.
Our faces were too close. But we were both smiling, looking so joyful and happy.
“Viola was right,” I say as I study the two of us. “We were so happy, and Jack did always say and do the right things. All the way until the very end.”
“I understand why it’s hard to have others question the authenticity of it all,” Sully offers sympathetically. “When you were so happy.”
I nod, and I feel it again. This questioning of words. Just like my mother’s, and Cressida’s and Viola’s. The words don’t quite connect. Don’t sink in.
“Why couldn’t I ever really hear them?” I say. “Their warnings? When they told me something wasn’t right. It was almost like they were speaking another language. I got the general message, but the root of it all? It was lost, somehow.”
“It sounds like obsession,” Sully says as he begins a slow walk around the office. His eyes take it all in, looking at the things on Jack’s desk. Opening the top drawer. “When something occupies your mind so thoroughly, nothing else really matters.”
That turns on a little light bulb.
Because I have to be honest with myself.
That’s exactly what it was.
Nothing else mattered after a while.
Nothing, but Jack.
“I have the keys to those filing cabinets,” I say, pulling a set from my purse and dropping them on Jack’s desk. “Raymond said to look for files. If they exist, maybe they’ll be in there. He kept all his patient records in there.”
Maybe I was one of them all along, and just didn’t know it.
The very thought makes me ill and I shove it out of my mind.
I
turn, walk out of the office, and head up the stairs.
Jack’s apartment rests right above his office. It’s a loft style. A kitchen occupies the far wall. A bathroom is walled off to the side of it. His bed and a closet dominate the left side, and a couch and chair are off to the right.
My knees quake. Because this is Jack up here.
There’s still a coffee mug next to the sink. One of his jackets is slung over a chair at the dining table. The bed is unmade, as if just waiting for him to climb back into it.
And the smell of him doubles.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” I breathe when I hear Sully’s heavy boots step beside me. “I don’t know if I can go through his things, looking for incriminating evidence. Looking for proof to damn what I felt for him.”
Sully shifts, as if to put an arm around my shoulders. But he stops, and takes a deep breath.
“Then you tell me where to look,” he says. “And you watch me do it.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
SULLY
Besides more ties than any man should ever possess, there’s nothing strange in Jack’s apartment.
I start in the kitchen, the least likely place to find anything. Boxes of crackers, snacks, pasta occupy the cupboards. Exactly four plates, bowls, and cups. I run my hand along the drawers, the cabinets, searching for anything hidden. All I come away with is two splinters from the old wood.
There is nothing suspicious or hidden in the dining table or the chairs. The bathroom yielded nothing strange. I pull apart all of the couch cushions, ransack the chair. I go through the cabinet against the wall and find it to be completely empty.
“How long had Jack lived here?” I ask as I move on to his bedroom area. I rip the blanket, pillows, and sheets off.
“He moved to Ander a few months before we met,” Iona says. “January, I think. So, just over a year.” She stands by the stairs, watching me. She hasn’t moved once since I started going through everything.
“And before that, where did Jack live?” I ask as I lift the mattress, looking between it and the box spring.
“In New York,” she explains. “He went to school at NYU. It’s where he got his degree.”
“In psychology?” I say. I get on all fours and look under the bed. There’s a single box underneath it. I pull it out.
“Yes,” Iona confirms.
The box rattles. I lift the lid off.
Inside I find four keys.
They seem simple enough. Normal house keys. Gold or silver colored. Sharp ridges and indents.
Iona walks over, peering into the box.
“Any idea what this is about?” I ask, reaching in and picking up two of the keys. I lay them one on top of another. They’re all different cuts.
“No,” she says, shaking her head. She kneels down on the ground beside me, studying them. But her eyes narrow.
She gets up, reaching for her bag on the floor by the stairs, and pulls out her keys. Crawling back over, she kneels beside me again, and takes the key with the biggest head.
Holding it on top of the mystery key, we both look at the cuts.
They’re the same.
“It’s a key to the office,” Iona says. She turns them over, double-checking, and I can tell, they are in fact identical.
“But the other three are different,” I say out loud.
Iona compares the other three keys to her own house key, but they don’t match.
“Maybe they’re just old keys,” she muses, sitting beside me, leaning her back against the wall. “They could be to his parents’ house back in Toronto, before they died. They could be to his old apartment back in New York.”
An idea sparks and my hand goes to my pocket, and I feel the ring wrapped up in it.
“Did Jack only recently graduate from university?” I ask, climbing to my feet.
Iona looks up in confusion, and I extend a hand, pulling her up.
“No, he’s been done for…eight years,” she calculates.
“But he had only been here in Ander for just over a year,” I say, walking back downstairs to the office. Iona quickly follows me. I turn into his office, going to look at the diploma. Sure enough, the date is from eight years ago. “What was Jack doing before he came here?”
Iona stands at my side, looking at the diploma, as well. “He was still in New York, working at the public library. He only started his practice when he moved here.”
I shake my head. “You said Jack was good. If he was so good, why would he wait so many years before practicing what he studied?”
Iona looks over at me and I see the wheels turning behind her eyes. She doesn’t respond.
“Where was Raymond Douglas from?” I ask, turning, my eyes sweeping the room, looking for answers.
“Pittsburg,” she answers.
I nod. A map hangs on one wall above the client couch and I cross the room to it. I place my finger on this town. Trace over to New York, and then over to Pittsburg, forming a triangle.
Iona crosses the room and reaches into the box I hold. She lifts out the keys. “You said there were three other women tied to my ring,” she says, her voice holding a little quiver. She holds up a key, one, two, three. “And then me.” She holds up the last key, the duplicate of the one that unlocks that front door.
“Maybe Jack wasn’t in New York that entire time,” I say, my eyes locking on the dot labeled Pittsburg. “Maybe there are really three other offices those keys open.”
Iona drops the keys back in the box and turns away.
“If what you say is true, you can find out the answers by reaching into your pocket.”
I look over my shoulder to see her cross the office and sit in Jack’s chair. She rests her chin against her knuckles and stares out the window.
What am I doing? I mentally ask myself. Why am I here? Why do I care?
This has nothing to do with me.
This isn’t my life.
But my hand drifts to my pocket, and I feel the outline of the ring through the thick material.
I’ve helped grieving widowers. Mourning mothers. Despondent children.
Every one of them was heartbreaking in their grief.
But they were all natural. They lost a loved one. Were going through the grief process. Were only looking for closure.
But in opening the gate between Jack and Iona, I’ve found myself tangled in a web of deceit and black veils that now wrap an echo around three hearts.
“I will ask them,” I say, sinking onto the couch. “But only if you want me to. Only if you want to find out the truth.”
My eyes rise up to Iona, and at first I don’t realize what she’s doing. She twirls a letter opener between her two hands. Her eyes study it. Never looking away.
A drop of red falls to the wooden floor. Followed by another.
She’s pricked every one of her fingertips with the opener. Blood drips from every one of them.
“Iona!” I bark, darting forward to grab it from her hands before she can prick her thumb again. “What…what are you doing?”
I kneel at her side, and looking up into her eyes, I see they’re distant. Hazy. Just like when she was up on the rooftop last night.
“Iona?” I say, gripping her arms and giving her a little shake.
She blinks. Once. Twice. And I see her vision come back into focus.
“Your hands,” I say, grabbing one of them, holding them up for her to see. Blood drips in tiny trails.
Her face fills with confusion, slight horror.
“Did you even realize you were doing it?” I ask, my voice breathy.
She holds up her other hand, looking at the blood. They begin to tremble.
“Yes,” she says. “No. I… I wasn’t even thinking. I just… My hands just started doing it and…and I didn’t care.”
I grip her shoulders, giving her a tiny shake, dragging her eyes to mine. “We have to fix this, Iona. This isn’t just obsession, anymore. This isn’t just mindless love and a loss
of appetite. This is dangerous. This is your life on the line now.”
Iona’s eyes redden. She gives a tiny, tiny nod.
I nod too, and feel as if every one of my organs has recently been rearranged.
“Why are you here, Sully?” she asks, leaning forward just slightly. Her eyes are locked on mine. “You didn’t want me there in Roselock. You weren’t kind to me. So, why are you here? And why do you care?”
I lean back fractionally. My eyes shift from one of hers to the other.
I look internally for an answer.
“Because no matter what, I’m going to die in two months and thirty days. I’ve spoken to the dead my entire life. I know hundreds of souls who reside on the other side of the gate. There is no reason you need to go live there early. And I am the one and only person who can get answers from the dead.”
Iona keeps looking at me, giving me a teary nod. And she leans forward, wrapping her frail arms around my wide shoulders, burying her face in the mane of my hair.
But my mind has moved on from the moment. To the solution.
I can get answers, anytime.
Go straight to the source.
I could open the gate straight to Jack again.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
IONA
“Take me home,” I tell Sully. I look at my hand, just staring at it. The little drops of blood are already trying to clot.
He immediately stands and waits for me at the door.
I hurt. My joints ache. The amount of energy it takes to get off the chair is astronomical.
But I make it. My knees tremble a little, but I rise to my feet, and I cross the office.
Sully locks the door for me and, side by side, we walk down the sidewalk. And I know I need to move now. Because along every square of this sidewalk, a memory of Jack and I is held.
Where we first ran into each other. Where he first held my hand. He kissed me beside that newspaper stand. When he asked me to go on that camping trip with him.
I have to put some distance between myself and these heavily traveled paths we had together.