The sun gleamed through the streaky panes of the picture window behind him. A bird captured my attention, flitting around a tree outside as if its nest had been disturbed. The sun reflected off the steel and glass structure across the street, shining in my eyes and making me blink from the glare.
“Mrs. Cristobal?” he prompted me. His chair squeaked under the strain of his movements.
I returned my attention to him. He slid his wire-rimmed glasses up his nose and started to rise from his chair.
“So which is it? You can’t help me or you won’t help me?” I asked.
He dropped back into his seat. The chair rolled a bit. “I don’t know what you think I can do.” He spread his hands as if he was helpless. As if I’d asked the unreasonable.
“Couldn’t this cellular memory thing explain—”
“Someone else’s soul cannot inhabit your body. Even theories of reincarnation—if you believe such nonsense—do not suggest such as this. You cannot have another woman’s memories. The combination of medications you have been taking must have produced delusional thinking. Your mind has tricked you,” he explained as if instructing a slow student. “I suggest you see a psychiatrist. I can give you the names of several well-respected doctors in your area.”
My neck muscles tightened. “You know, somehow this doesn’t surprise me.”
He leaned back as if my vehemence surprised him. “What doesn’t?”
“That you can’t explain what’s happening to me. If you can’t, what makes you think a shrink can?”
“This is some sort of psychological—”
“So you’re saying I’m psycho?” I fumed.
“This might be a psychotic break or—”
His telephone interrupted his analysis. He grumbled, but it continued the hideous buzzing.
“Excuse me,” he said and snatched the bothersome instrument from its base. “What?” He listened and then his brow creased. “No. No. Send him back.” He dropped the receiver onto the base with a thud. “You’ve been to see Mr. Prentiss?”
My pulse jumped. “Is Alex here?”
“You cannot interact with Mrs. Prentiss’ family. I thought we discussed this the last time you were here.”
Knocking interrupted our conversation. The doctor flew to the door and I stood when Alex entered the room. My stomach muscles tightened. He had refused to help me. Why was he here?
He addressed me instead of the doctor. “I thought I’d find you here.”
“Please, Mr. Prentiss, come in. Sit down. It seems we have a…situation.” The doctor returned to the sanctuary behind his desk.
Alex studied me. “Are you all right?” I nodded. Concern radiated from his eyes while he held my gaze. “I believe her.”
My knees nearly buckled, the relief was so overwhelming. I dropped into the nearest chair.
The doctor mumbled something beneath his breath before responding to Alex’s incredible declaration of support. “You do realize her story is unbelievable?”
Alex still stood, one hand supporting his weight on the back of my chair, the other hand resting on my shoulder. His warmth permeated my blouse. His reassuring presence overcame my weariness. Despite his infidelity, it was comforting to have someone on my side.
“I don’t understand it, but I know she has Rhonda’s memories. She told me things only Rhonda would know. She talks like Rhonda and she acts like Rhonda. I feel…I sense Rhonda’s persona in this woman I don’t recognize. Whoever she is, she needs help to cope with this.” His fingers pinched my shoulder a little more with each word. His statements echoed around the small office. Yet somehow the recitation of what he believed sounded stilted, as if he’d rehearsed what he should say.
The doctor huffed. “I have seen two or three instances of what might be considered cellular memory phenomena. But never have I seen anything such as Mrs. Cristobal suggests.”
The two men conversed and, within the context of the situation, what they said made sense, but their words rang hollow as if they were sight-reading lines from a play.
I wiggled out of Alex’s grip. “What am I going to do?” I cried in frustration because they talked around me and about me, but not to me. “I need to know what happened to me. I need to know who I really am.”
“Mrs. Cristobal,” Crane began, once again patronizing me with his seemingly self-diagnosed superior intellect. “No matter what is causing this strange situation, you cannot reinhabit Rhonda Prentiss’ body. If you could, would you really want to?”
“No, of course not. That—”
“No. Of course not. Do you want to go back to Rhonda’s life? I think that would be impossible as well. And how can you be sure the things you remember are instances of her life? You can’t.”
An unshakeable isolation invaded my soul. I pressed my palms to Jennifer’s chest. “I feel like Rhonda. I have her thoughts and her temperament. Her memories. I am who I am. But if I am Rhonda, what happened to Jennifer? She has things in her life she needs to deal with. She can’t just disappear and leave me to fix the mess she’s created. I don’t like her and I don’t like the people in her life.”
The doctor studied my outburst, but offered no words of wisdom to drop on my ignorant head. A long, heavy, expectant silence ensued.
Alex held my hand. His touch stung. I hadn’t forgiven him for his affair with Kristen and probably never would. Yet I didn’t draw back from him. “Jennifer’s soul must be buried inside you somewhere. You have to go back to Virginia and find her somehow. Rhonda must become less and Jennifer must become more. You have to regain Jennifer’s memory. You can’t be Rhonda anymore. You have to find a way to reconcile yourself to living Jennifer’s life.”
The idea appalled me. “I can’t.”
“You have to. It’s the only way you can survive this,” Alex insisted, his advice heavy with meaning.
“I won’t survive it.” I rose from the chair, unsteady on my feet. My panic increased until it hit a crescendo. “There’s nobody to help me. I can’t live like this.” I had no more options. I had to exist inside my personal horror movie—a screenplay with no end, a series of incredible plot twists.
How much more can Jennifer’s life bend before it breaks?
“Mrs. Cristobal, I hope you won’t be so foolish as to try and do something to yourself,” the doctor admonished with a disturbing lack of sincerity.
I spun on my heel and left his office without a backward glance, slamming the door behind me.
****
Alex found me in my hideout, sitting on the bottom flight of stairs. My eyes wandered toward the exit door only a few feet away. His shoes clanged on the steel braces that edged the runners. Each reverberation shot a piercing ache through my pounding head. He was breathless as he dropped onto the step beside me. I closed my wet eyes. I had nothing left to say to him.
“What do you want me to do now?” He exhaled, weariness seeping from around the edges of his question.
I opened my eyes and turned an intentionally empty countenance on him—devoid of emotion. “Go home to Kristen.”
“Rhonda—”
“Don’t…don’t call me that,” I returned with a new emotion that had no name and lifted my shaking hands as if to push his belated sentimentality away from me.
“I want to go to Virginia with you. I want to help you—”
My stomach lurched. “No.”
“I have to do something…”
Sharp pains zipped through my insides. Fire inched up my torso. “You want to know how you can help me?”
He nodded, his entire body leaning toward me. The essence of contrition oozed from him. It smelled like a guilty conscience.
“Go home and be a good husband to Kristen.”
His face fell as his enthusiasm seemed to falter. “But what about—”
“Treat her with respect.”
His mouth flew open, but I didn’t give him a chance to dispute my assertion. “I saw how you treat her. Like she’s a puppy in traini
ng. She doesn’t need your discipline, Alex. She needs your love. She’s your wife. It’s not her fault you cheated on me with her—no matter how much your guilty conscience wants to shift the blame. Accept the life you’ve chosen. Make it up to me by being good to her.”
His groan implied I had imposed a life sentence. He sputtered something incoherent, then said, “You don’t know what you’re asking—”
“I don’t want a pound of flesh. I want you, for once in your sorry life, to do what’s right.”
In pronouncing his punishment, I had defined my own course. If I couldn’t be Rhonda, I’d be Jennifer. I would go back to Anson and Virginia Beach and make Jennifer’s life right.
I grabbed the handrail, hoisted myself from the bottom step, and then turned to the man I once loved with all my heart. “I just have one more question.” I paused to catch my breath. “Why?”
He turned his head away from me. “I had plenty of reasons at the time. But now when I look back, all my reasoning seems stupid. There’s no excuse for what I did to you. And you’re right. I wake up in the morning and wonder how I made such a mess of things. But there’s one thing you have to believe. Losing you was hard. Much harder than I thought it would be. Hard for me…and hard for the girls.”
Why can’t he look me in the eye?
Resentment bubbled to the surface of my pride. “So hard you married Kristen before my memory had time to fade?”
“It’s not like that. I broke it off when…”
“What’s the matter? Can’t you say it? You broke it off when I died, didn’t you?”
He nodded. “But then we met again—”
“I don’t want to hear any more.” I rushed across the concrete slab at the bottom of the stairwell, busted through the heavy steel security door and into the sunlight, leaving him to deal with his shaky life.
Chapter Ten
“Sudha,” I shouted as I passed through the back entrance of the Cristobal house and entered the living area. My voice bounced around the room. The darkened first floor gave the impression of desertion, the detritus of everyday living absent.
“Sudha!” I hollered up the front stairs.
Silence answered me. I trudged upstairs to the second floor. No lights illuminated the balcony. I flipped the switch and stared down the long hallway that ran the length of the second floor. Nothing disturbed the quiet. Stale air invaded my sinuses. If Sudha was in the house, she was avoiding me.
Absolute quiet surrounded me, not even broken by the hum of the air conditioner. I descended the back stairs.
“Sudha!” I called once more, impatience resonating in my voice as I shoved the kitchen door open. It banged against the wall and swung closed behind me. Something shifted and emerged from the shadows. I jumped at Anson’s sudden appearance.
He didn’t look good—stubble darkened his usually clean-shaven face. His shirttail hung loose from the back of his crumpled pants. In the short time I’d known him, I’d never seen him that way. Never a hair out of place. Shoes always shined. Slacks always pressed.
“She’s not here.” His voice lacked inflection.
“Where is she? I need to talk to her.” Unanswered questions bounced around my cranium like rubber balls deflecting against each other.
“I let her go.”
“You canned her!” Relief flooded me.
“You don’t have to be so crass.” His comment was part admonishment, part amusement.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” I assured him, lowering my volume and softening my belligerent stance. “Why did you let her go?”
“That’s what you wanted.”
I cocked my head, one side of my flippy hairdo bouncing around my left ear.
What’s wrong with him? What happened while I was away to cause the man to wallow in this nasty, cantankerous funk?
His scowl petrified me. My interrogation stalled on my tongue.
“Price Whitaker called after you left his office.”
My stomach flipped. “He did?”
“You shouldn’t take barbiturates with your heart medication.” A distinct note of accusation underscored his criticism.
“No, I shouldn’t, should I?” My hands gripped the back of a barstool. I needed the remainder of the conversation to finish its merciless unwinding so I’d know how shaky the ground was under my size six feet. “I was also taking an anticonvulsant. Did he tell you that?” Anson lifted one eyebrow. “Whitaker’s name is on the labels, but he denies prescribing them for me. I came here to confront Sudha because I suspect this is her doing. I told you—”
“Do you still have the bottles?”
I raised my chin. “Yes.”
“Can I see them?”
I pulled them from my purse. He held his hand out and I hesitated. Can I trust him? I stared into his eyes and dropped the bottles onto his outstretched hand.
He seemed relieved until he examined them. “These two medications should never be taken together. And neither of them should be taken with cyclosporine.”
How does he know so much about drug interactions? Should I suspect Anson of tampering with my meds instead of Sudha? Or maybe they’re co-conspirators.
“I wasn’t taking cyclosporine.”
“You have to take cyclosporine. It’s not optional.” His tone fell flat, landing between us with a dull thud.
I refused to go on the defensive. “Dr. Patton said my blood levels look good. He wrote me a new prescription for Sandimmune. I’ve been taking it as prescribed. I should be all right—no harm done.”
“No harm done?” He puffed his cheeks out. “You saw Patton?” I nodded. “He’s a good man. He’ll take care of you.” He shifted his attention back to the bottles in his hand. “They’re empty.”
“I flushed the pills down the toilet before I left for California. Did you know Sudha kept them in her bathroom? Why were they in her cabinet instead of mine? And where did she get them if she didn’t get them from me? And why wasn’t I dealing with my own meds? Wouldn’t I fill my own prescriptions?”
“You ask a lot of questions—questions I would think you would know the answers to,” he pointed out.
“But I don’t.”
“Sudha kept your medications in her room because she dispensed them to you. She was your caretaker.” He stood and closed in inches from me, looking down at me, his face unreadable, almost tranquil, as if we were discussing the weather or what we were having for dinner.
“My caretaker? She didn’t take care of me. She was the housekeeper.” I shifted from one foot to the other.
“No, she was hired as your caretaker. You’ve never been inclined to deal with your own meds before. In fact, you’ve never been inclined to deal with much of anything so she took on the housekeeping as well.” His comments had turned from even to sarcastic.
“She said she kept them in her room for my protection.” The edge in my voice cut with neat, clean slashes.
He flinched and his face reddened as if I’d slapped him, hard and without merit. “Are you accusing me of messing with your meds? Because that’s preposterous.” He rolled the bottles in his hand. “Cristobal Pharmaceuticals doesn’t manufacture either of these drugs.”
Cristobal Pharmaceuticals. Drug manufacturing. A family-owned company. Explains the wealth. Explains his knowledge of prescription drugs.
His absolute denial of any wrongdoing rang true.
“I’m not accusing you of anything.” I shifted, bracing myself for his counterattack. He nodded and puckered his mouth to acknowledge my retreat. “Did Sudha think I was suicidal? Did she think I might overdose…on purpose?”
“You know enough to know you can’t take these drugs. Are you trying to kill yourself?”
“Why are you accusing me of this? I haven’t taken anything she’s given me since the party. I thought she might be messing with me.”
“You should recognize these drugs when you see them.” I detected no dissembling. His comment added another layer to the mystery, prod
uced more questions.
“Should I?” My question addressed not only his accusation but his motive. He grunted at me. Lifted one hand and dropped it. I licked my lips before I tried again to defend myself. “I didn’t know what she was giving me.”
“If you didn’t acquire these drugs, then that means Sudha got them for you.” His eyes strayed as if recalling some faraway scene. “Actually, considering what she said when she left…” He sighed. “The barbiturate isn’t hard to get if you know where to look. But the anticonvulsant? That’s not a street drug. Someone had to write the script. Whitaker’s name is on the bottle.” He looked at me for the answer to his unspoken question. Did Whitaker prescribe the drug or not?
“I don’t think he wrote it.”
“Then who did?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” Another glimmer of suspicion hit me. The doubt just kept coming at me.
Isn’t Jackson Prentiss a drug rep? A customer of Cristobal Pharmaceuticals and maybe other manufacturers, as well?
“This could have killed you. You know that, don’t you?” He stuffed the bottles in his pants pocket. My upper teeth grabbed my bottom lip. I was glad I’d said nothing of the two pills I’d kept just in case.
“I’m well aware of that,” I replied, careful not to accuse him of neglect. “I don’t want to die, Anson.” This perhaps explained the emergence of Rhonda. She didn’t want to die. Neither did Jennifer.
“No, I don’t suppose you do.” He smiled and dropped onto a barstool. “So did you find out what you wanted to know in California?”
I sat next to him, glad to get off my aching feet. “I learned nothing that would make a difference, but I found out some things I didn’t want to know.” I waited for a reaction, but he remained quiet. “I met with Dr. Crane.”
He raised his eyebrows. “And?”
“I’ve had trouble with my memory. I thought maybe the problem was related to my heart. I did some research on the internet—”
“That’s what got you into trouble last time.”
I pushed a wayward bunch of hair from my face and ignored his pointed comment. “He refused to believe my memory lapses were connected to my surgery. He suggested I see a shrink.”
Deceptions of the Heart Page 6