She slams the door and sashays away, leaving me no choice but to follow.
* * *
I was expecting a church with a steeple like the one I attended every Sunday as a kid, but what I get instead is a building that resembles a big box store. Squat and unattractive, it’s painted a sickly beige and doesn’t have any windows. It sits alone in the middle of a large grassy lot, surrounded by a chain-link fence.
“It looks like some kind of detention center for the criminal justice system.”
Walking beside me through the parking lot, Suzanne laughs. “I admit it doesn’t have much in the way of visual appeal, but I promise what it lacks in beauty, it more than makes up for in awesomeness.”
I wrinkle my nose. “Blech. You drank the Kool-Aid.”
Suzanne pulls me along by the sleeve of my sweater. “Oh ye of little faith.”
I plaster a pleasant smile on my face as we approach a group of people standing outside the open front doors. One of them is Coop, looking handsome in a dark gray suit.
He sees me coming and does a double take. “Megan. What a surprise.”
“Hi, Coop. I’m here under duress.” I shoot a look at Suzanne, who’s stopped beside me. “This one seems overly concerned about the state of my soul, so here I am.”
Coop looks at Suzanne. In one swift glance, he takes in her tight black dress, her skyscraper heels, and her brilliant smile. His cheeks go ruddy. Though she’s not showing any cleavage—for her, the dress is actually demure—the woman oozes sex appeal.
That evidently isn’t lost on Coop.
He clears his throat and squints up at the cloudless sky. “Well, that’s great,” he says, voice rough. “We’re always glad to welcome new folks.”
I wonder if I can take Coop aside for a moment to ask him about Theo, but my thoughts are derailed when Suzanne puts her hand on Coop’s arm.
“I’m so sorry to hear about you and Christine,” she says softly.
Coop shifts his weight from one foot to the other, scrunching up his face as he turns his gaze from the sky to his shoes. “Yep. Thanks.”
Oh, boy. This doesn’t sound good. And Coop is squirming, which isn’t like him. I assume Christine is his wife, and I’m proven right when the conversation continues.
“How are the kids handling it?”
“They’re good kids,” he says gruffly, running a hand over his unruly blond beard. “They’ll be fine. They’re living with their mother until we can figure out a custody agreement.”
“Please let me know if I can help in any way. You know I’m here for you, Coop.”
She’s not trying to be provocative, but his face flushes a deeper shade of red at those words, like a teenage boy with a crush.
“Should we go inside?” I say into the awkward pause.
“Yes, service is about to start.”
Suzanne turns away, but Coop stops me from following her.
“Megan, can I talk to you? It’ll only take a sec.”
My heart flutters. I know what he wants to talk to me about. “Sure. Suzanne, I’m right behind you.”
She shrugs. “Okay. I always sit in the first row, left side. Come find me when you’re done.”
The front row. I’m cursed.
Suzanne smiles a farewell smile to Coop, who nods back. Then Coop takes my elbow and steers me to the side of the entrance, a few steps away from the people streaming in the front doors. He starts the conversation with no preamble.
“Theo left.”
“I know. Suzanne told me. What’s going on?”
Coop searches my face for a moment. His normally bright blue eyes are clouded. “I was hopin’ you could tell me.”
“Me?”
His gaze steady on mine, Coop says, “Theo was stable before you moved here. Fucked up, but stable. Then one rainy night last month, he pounds on my door, out of his mind. I’ve never seen him so agitated. He needed to get drunk, he said. He didn’t trust himself to be alone, but he had to get drunk. He had to forget. When I asked him what he had to forget, he said not what. Who.”
Goose bumps pimple my arms. My heart leaps into my throat.
“I’ve never seen a man so tormented,” Coop continues, his voice low. “And I was in Afghanistan with the corps. I saw a lot of guys lose their shit. People tryin’ to kill you for too long can make your brain crack. But this…this was different. This scared me, Megan, and I don’t scare easily.”
My mouth is dry. My hands are sweaty. There are people all around us, talking and laughing as they walk into church, but all I can see is Coop’s face. All I can hear are his words, underscored by the roar of my heartbeat.
“So we got drunk. Eventually, he passed out. Slept on my couch. Like a dead man, he never moved once. I sat up and watched him because I was afraid if he woke up alone, he might do somethin’ stupid. Next day, he wouldn’t communicate. Wouldn’t eat. He sat on my sofa with his head in his hands for hours. I thought I was gonna have to call a doctor. Then he gets up all of a sudden at seven o’clock and leaves. Just takes off, no explanation. I send him a text, where you goin’? No answer. Few hours later, he’s back, in worse shape than the night before. Goes into my kitchen and heads straight for the liquor cabinet. Drinks a bottle of Jack in one go.
“That can kill a man, Megan. But I let him do it because I knew if I got in his way, it would get ugly. He doesn’t normally have a temper, but he was as close to snappin’ as a man can get without goin’ over the edge. He passed out again. Next mornin’, he left without a word.
“By chance, I had breakfast at Cal’s Diner that day. My friend Jean McCorkle told me she met a nice young woman two nights prior who bought the Buttercup Inn. Happened to mention Theo was in at the same time. Happened to mention he left in a state.”
Coop’s voice drops even lower. “Happened to mention she almost ran Theo over the night before on the road in front of Sunday Anderson’s house. Came to a screeching stop just inches from his legs, she said. Appeared out of nowhere and scared her half to death. He never even looked up. Then I find out later from Sunday that you were at a party at her house…the same night Jean McCorkle almost ran Theo over on the street outside.”
My heart races so fast, I can’t catch my breath. I remember the look on Theo’s face as he gazed out at me from the shadows of Sunday’s back porch.
All that hostility in his eyes. All that strange, unsettling longing.
Coop runs a hand over his head, adjusts his tie, and exhales a long breath. “Couple weeks pass, Theo’s a bull to handle the whole time. Just a bull. He’s antsy, sleepin’ less than usual—which isn’t much to begin with—drinkin’ too much. Somethin’s wrong, and it’s big. Haven’t seen him that fucked up since right after the accident. So I sit him down and tell him I’m worried. You know what his response was?”
Afraid of what Coop’s going to tell me, I shake my head.
“‘How can you remember someone you’ve never met?’”
That startles me to the point of speechlessness. My mind forms the word What? but nothing comes out of my mouth. My tongue is frozen, like the ice water slicing through my veins.
Coop’s still talking. He hasn’t noticed my sudden stillness or the way all the blood has drained from my face.
“So I told him you can’t. It’s not possible. They just remind you of someone you already know. He agreed, but I got the feelin’ he was only placatin’ me because I looked so worried. I hoped that would be the end of it, that maybe he was just goin’ through a rough patch…”
Coop focuses on me. He says quietly, “But then he told me I had to go visit a new client. Said he couldn’t do it himself, though he wouldn’t say why. But he made sure I knew that this wasn’t any client. Told me to make sure Hillrise got the job no matter what. Even if we had to do it for free. I almost laughed, that was so dumb, but he was dead serious. So the next mornin’, I find myself knockin’ on the front door of the Buttercup Inn…and there you were. And now Theo’s gone.”
; Coop pauses. His gaze is piercing. “You comin’ to town and him fallin’ apart and leavin’ so soon after isn’t a coincidence.”
Coincidence.
There’s that word again. The word I’ve been telling myself over and over again is the explanation for everything where Theo is concerned.
“I know you’re loyal to him, Coop,” I say, my voice tremulous. “I don’t expect you to answer this. But did he say anything before he left? Anything about me?”
Coop stares at me long and hard. I get the sense he’s trying to decide something. Then he reaches into his jacket pocket, pulls out a folded piece of paper, and hands it to me.
“He left this for you. I have no idea what it’s supposed to mean, but he said you will.”
I take the note. The paper is almost blindingly white in the bright morning sunlight. Hands shaking, I unfold it and read.
Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened.
The world tilts dangerously sideways.
Coop was right: I know what it means. It’s chapter seven, verse seven from the gospel of Matthew, but that’s not what makes it so extraordinary.
I have that particular verse memorized because Cass had it tattooed on his back.
I hear myself ask, “Coop, how long ago was Theo’s accident?”
He looks at me strangely. “Five years. Why do you ask?”
Scalding heat flashes over my skin. I begin to hyperventilate. “By any…” I have to stop to force breath into my lungs. “By any chance, do you remember the date?”
“Yeah. May seventeenth.”
Everything starts to spin.
Theo’s accident was exactly five years ago to the day that Cass died.
20
“Hello, Megan. It’s Dr. Singer.”
“Oh, thank God! Thank you for calling me back so fast!”
“I was in a meeting, or I would’ve called sooner. You sounded upset in your message. What’s going on?”
I’m in the ladies’ room at the church, where I fled without saying a word of farewell to poor Coop, who must think I’m a lunatic. I chew my thumbnail as I pace back and forth in front of the row of sinks. I avoid looking at myself in the mirror because I’m frightened of what I might find lurking behind my eyes.
“I need your honest, professional opinion about something.”
“Of course. What is it?”
I stop pacing, close my eyes, and take a deep breath to calm my thundering heart. “Am I insane?”
Dr. Singer’s silence is almost as loud as one of Theo’s. It makes me nervous.
“Like, on a scale of one to ten, with one being a fully healthy, functional person and ten being the writer who tries to murder his family in The Shining, where do I fall?”
“In my professional opinion, I’d say you’re at two and a quarter. Perhaps two point five.”
Clammy with relief, I sag against the sink. “Really? I’m not even a three? That’s good, right?”
“There’s no such scale in clinical psychiatry, but I answered that way because you’re an accountant. I knew you’d appreciate my being exact.”
“Was an accountant. In my former life. Which no longer exists. Like most of the reasoning capacity of my brain.”
I laugh. It sounds crazy. I know it does, because in his most gentle I’m-dealing-with-a-cuckoo voice, Dr. Singer says, “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”
I start to pace again because it feels productive. Like I might be in control of at least this one little thing. I can’t control my thought processes, my fantasies, or the psychotic little voice in my head whispering impossible things in my ear about Theo Valentine, but I can march back and forth over this terrifically ugly brown tile.
“Um. God. Where to start?” This time, my laugh is nervous.
“Start at the beginning.”
“Okay.” I blow out a hard breath. “There’s this man.”
“Ah.”
I stop pacing. “What do you mean, ‘Ah?’ That sounds important.”
“May I ask you a few questions about this man?”
“Yes. Ask away.”
“Are you attracted to him?”
Oh fuck. “I’m…I’m…”
After it becomes clear I won’t add anything more, Dr. Singer says, “It’s all right to admit it, Megan. You’re not betraying Cass’s memory if you find another man attractive.”
I start pacing with renewed vigor. Back and forth I go, my heels clacking on the tile, my hands shaking, my armpits damp. “Let’s just say he affects me.”
“Go on.”
“He…we…I keep running into him everywhere. Everywhere. And, uh, there are a lot of things about him…many, many things…that sort of…remind me…” I suck in a breath and blurt it out. “Of Cass.”
“That’s normal.”
Dr. Singer sounds completely blasé. Meanwhile, I’m about to collapse onto the hideous brown tile and never get up. “Normal?” I shout. “It’s normal that a stranger reminds me of my dead husband?”
“Do you recall our talks about what might happen when you started dating?”
“I recall I told you I’d rather be fed limb by limb to a pack of wolves than start dating.”
Dr. Singer is unfazed by my snappy tone. “Indeed. And for five years, during the prime of your life, you refused to even look at another man. I counseled you that not allowing yourself the possibility of happiness again was unhealthy. I believe your response was ‘There is no happiness for me without Cass.’ So without knowing anything other than this new man ‘affects’ you, I can surmise from what I know of you, Megan, that you’re now paralyzed by guilt.”
Cold blasts over me, as if I’ve been doused with a bucket of ice water.
I whisper, “Guilt?”
“We’ve already established that you suffer from survivor’s guilt. Guilt for living when someone you loved so deeply is gone. Now it seems we can add guilt for feeling a normal, natural attraction to a man who isn’t Cass. Honestly, I’m surprised this didn’t come up sooner.”
No. No, this is too easy. Too simple. Guilt can’t be the explanation for everything I’m thinking and feeling, all this madness running rampant through my veins.
“But…there are all these things that can’t be explained…like the bear claw, and the sweet peas planted along the porch, and he knows how I like my coffee! And there was this painting of lightning that had his initials, and he put out a fire at my house—and the Denver omelets! The note that was Cass’s tattoo! May seventeenth!”
I’m not making sense. I’m also starting to worry Dr. Singer, because his tone changes to the stern one he used to use when he was insisting, for the nth time, that I get on antidepressants.
“Let’s talk about your panic attacks. Have you had any since you moved to Seaside?”
It feels like I’ve been utterly defeated when I mumble my answer. “Yes.”
“I see. And the nightmares? Insomnia?”
He sounds smug, the prick. I grind my back teeth together. “Hmm.”
“I’ll take that as an affirmative. And from what I gather from your mention of things that can’t be explained, you’re still having episodes of magical thinking?”
Ah, yes. The infamous magical thinking, at which my brain is especially adept.
“This is different,” I plead, sounding pathetic. “This man, he’s… There are too many things that have happened. It can’t all be coincidental. It can’t all be meaningless. Can it?”
“Megan, I want you to listen to me carefully. You survived an incredibly violent car accident that killed your husband. He died in your arms. The day of his funeral, you miscarried your child—a child you’d been trying desperately to conceive—and almost died yourself from blood loss. Subsequently, you were told the chances of conceiving again were virtually none.
“You were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and clinical depression but refused medication that would help you cope.
You dealt with your suffering like no other patient I’ve ever seen, with a combination of stoicism and plain old stubbornness I was unable, in two years of weekly sessions, to make even the smallest inroads toward healing. You embraced your pain because the alternative was to let it go…and in your mind, letting go of your pain meant letting go of Cass, the baby, and everything you’d lost.
“Now you’ve moved to a new town. You have a new home, a new life. There’s a new man you’re drawn to. And because you never worked through your grief, the only way your mind can cope with what it perceives as a betrayal of the bond you had with your husband is to try to convince you that this new man is your husband.”
Dr. Singer pauses, and it lends his next words more weight. “Subconsciously, you believe that somehow, through some magical combination of events, Cass has returned to you in the body of another man.”
There it is. The ugly truth, dragged out from the rock I’ve been hiding it under.
I’m breathless with the utter foolishness of it.
In a voice as dead as my heart, I say, “Tell me what to do.”
“For starters, make an appointment with Dr. Anders as soon as we get off the phone. I spoke with him earlier in the week, and he said he hadn’t heard from you.”
As if from far away, I hear myself say yes.
“And please—I’d like you to start Lexapro. It’s not a cure for depression, but it will help manage the symptoms. I can also prescribe something to help you sleep. You need help, Megan. There’s no shame in getting it.”
He waits patiently until I give him the name of the local pharmacy so he can call in the prescriptions. Then I listen with half an ear as he talks about possible side effects, dosage instructions, levels of serotonin, blah, blah, blah. By the time he stops talking, I’m exhausted.
“Thanks, Dr. Singer. I appreciate you calling me back.”
“You’re going to be all right, Megan. I promise. It’s a positive sign that you’re willing to start medication. Commit to your therapy with Dr. Anders, please. You’re a wonderful woman. You have so much life ahead of you. So much to offer. And remember, whenever you feel the need to talk, I’ll always be here.”
Midnight Valentine Page 18