Never Fear

by Heather Graham

  Up close and personal, his brown hair was a mass of loose curls on top--the kind people with straight hair like me always envied. It was his best feature, if you didn’t count the green eyes behind the horn-rimmed glasses. And maybe the dimple in his chin.

  He looked up and smiled and I had to add perfect lips and straight white teeth to the list.

  Dammit.

  I took another sip of coffee, intending to wait him out. He seemed equally content to sip coffee and stare back.

  “Hey, Stu. Long time no see. You two want to order or are you waiting for Monica?” Dot asked, making me jump again.

  Sitting with my back to the door had definitely been a bad idea. Dot seemed to know the man, so that made him local. Or at least not a stranger-danger.

  I started to answer her question. “We’re not--”

  “Waiting for Monica,” Stu finished for me. “She called and said she couldn’t make it. Some emergency at the store. Since Hannah was going to be here, I decided to come anyway.”

  I blinked in surprise. Stu and Dot continued to chitchat, but I pulled out my phone and immediately texted Monica.

  WTF? I typed and hit send without elaborating. She would know exactly what I meant.

  Trust me. Her reply was so fast I wondered if maybe she had already typed it in anticipation of hearing from me. I was framing a response that didn’t include the five-letter word I was thinking, when I realized they’d stopped talking.

  “Did you want something, Hannah?” Stu asked politely.

  “Oh, she’ll have the special. It’s what she always gets, right, honey?” Dot said.

  “Uh… sure. But maybe…” I glanced at the sugar jar then back to Dot. “Could I get an extra side of bacon today?”

  “You got it, doll. Two specials and a side of bacon, coming right up.” Dot tore the order from the pad and whisked off to the kitchen.

  “I’m sorry. That was a little unfair to ambush you like that,” Stu said, by way of an apology, I supposed.

  “You think so?” I murmured, determined to play it cool until I knew what was going on.

  Stu’s laughter spilled out, and my mouth twitched in an automatic need to smile.

  Damn. Now I had to add ‘really great laugh’ to the ever-growing things-to-admire-about-Stu list.

  He held out his right hand to shake. “My name is Stu Maxwell.”

  I accepted the handshake--nice and firm, and in no way condescending. Resisting the urge to add it to the list, I smiled in return.

  “I’m Hannah Bosch. No relation despite the initials.”

  “Is that so? Too bad, I love Michael Connelly.”

  Oh sweet Mary Sunshine, this man got obscure Harry Bosch references and liked my favorite author. If this was Monica’s idea of a setup, the woman hit a serious home run. I immediately took back the pending insult.

  He released my hand and smiled again. “I’m a clinical psychologist. Monica thinks we should talk.”

  “Well, fuck.”

  Stu’s smile widened. “Not on the first date and never with a client.”

  The laughter was forced from me--I couldn’t help it. The man was totally outrageous.

  When I finally regained my composure, I shook my head. “That won’t be a problem, since I’m definitely not going to be your client. So… should we plan the second date for tomorrow night, then?”

  “Oh, very nice deflection. Okay… not a client. Definitely not a patient,” he said, his mouth turning down as he shook his head. “How about we hold off on the second date discussion until you tell me about this morning. Strictly as a friend, of course.”

  “Seriously, Monica might have stepped in it a little here. There’s nothing to tell, and I’m not looking for counseling. It doesn’t--” I grabbed my coffee cup to keep from completing my sentence, but I needn’t have bothered. It seemed Stu understood my point.

  “It doesn’t work?”

  I met his steady gaze with one of my own and waited.

  “I don’t want to jump to conclusions based on anything Monica may or may not have told me--because unless it comes from you, it would only be her interpretation of events anyway. But, Hannah, if a person rearranges her schedule or routine in order to avoid going near a certain place, it might signify a perfectly normal fear has morphed into something unmanageable.”

  “Look, Stu-- Doctor Maxwell… this stuff just doesn’t work for me. I’m non-compliant when it comes to medications, I refuse to be hypnotized, and I--”

  “You hate being out of control. I can see that. And it’s Stu.”

  Before I could respond, Stu’s head whipped up and he flashed a killer smile at something… someone… over my shoulder.

  Following his gaze, I sighed in relief when I saw Dot approach with a tray of food. Now we could get down to business and eat. No matter what Monica had told Stu, neither of them could ever understand. Besides, other than the cemetery, there really wasn’t anything that bothered me. Not much anyway.

  “So, what do you say?” Stu asked as he forked a bite of eggs into his mouth.

  “I say yum. I’m hungry, but I’m kind of in a hurry.”

  “Oh, Monica said to tell you not to worry about coming in today, she’s got it covered.”

  “Oh good,” I said, struck by a sudden brilliant idea. “That works perfectly. I thought I might look for a place in Sedona instead of driving in from Juniper Springs. If I got a place a little closer, I wouldn’t have to--”

  “Pass the cemetery? You seem like a very intelligent woman, Hannah. I’m sure you realize driving an hour out of your way or moving are extreme responses. A fear of death isn’t unusual, but allowing it to control your life--”

  “I’m not worried about dying, Doctor. I’m… It’s about…”

  For a moment, I was back on the road leading to the cemetery. A shudder twisted through me, racing along my backbone as if someone had tugged on a cold wire threaded through each of the thirty-three bones in my spine. I didn’t want him to notice and draw some erroneous conclusion. I tried to smile to deflect any simmering concern, even as a pale face with wide eyes and a screaming mouth appeared in front of me waving her arms for me to slow down.

  “Dead things?” Stu said, dragging me back from the edge of an unseen precipice.

  “Exactly,” I said, relieved he understood and that his steady voice caused the image to fade.

  Stu smiled his killer smile and snagged a piece of bacon from my side order. He used the bacon like a pointer and waved it at my nearly full plate. I was surprised to see his food was almost gone.

  “Perfect. Now that we have that cleared up, I think we can figure out a plan to have you functioning more comfortably in just a few visits. Eat up.”

  Chapter Three

  “Okay, tell me again how we got here?” I asked. “Why am I standing at my kitchen counter, brewing a cup of coffee for a relative stranger who expects me to share my innermost secrets after an hour together at breakfast?”

  “I see you have me confused with someone else. I’m not your relative--it’s Monica who is my cousin, remember?”

  “Hmm… I remember that’s what she said on the phone. It makes me wonder why I’ve never heard of you before though.”

  “Probably because she didn’t think you would take too well to knowing her favorite cousin is a psychologist. She’s spoken about you ever since you first met. What was that, about a year ago?”

  “Fourteen months.” I finished brewing the second cup of coffee and brought both mugs to the table and set them down before I took my seat. “Why? Is that important?”

  “I have no idea what’s important. At least not yet. This is called small talk. It’s the part where we exchange information and get to know each other.”

  “And how much an hour do you charge for this part, Doctor?”

  Yes, I realized just how bitter I sounded. But if Stu knew the number of doctor offices I’d sat in over the years, he might understand. It was the fundamental difference between
us. Stu believed in the value of what he did for a living. I knew from personal experience just how futile the effort could be. Still… Monica was my friend, so I suppose that made him family.

  “Oh, wanna be a wise guy, huh?” Stu narrowed his eyes and made nyuk nyuk sounds that made me want to bop him on the head. “Come on… give me a try. What’s it going to hurt?”

  This time the smile wasn’t nearly as blinding as the one in the restaurant, but somehow it seemed all the more sincere because of the subtle curve of his lips. When I realized I’d been staring, I quickly scrambled for something sensible to say.

  “I-I’ll try. But if it doesn’t work this time, I swear, I’m moving.”

  “It’s a deal. I’ll help you pack.” He reached into the briefcase he’d brought with him and retrieved a pencil and a steno pad. Opening to the first clean sheet of paper, he slid them across the table to me.

  “The scene you described to me from this morning… do you have any objections if we classify that as a panic attack? It’s a rather overused term, but I think in this instance it works to give us a focus for our discussion.”

  I shook my head, so Stu continued.

  “We’re going to talk about events and objects known to trigger panic attacks in people who fear dead things…”

  “Necrophobia.” I said the word matter-of-factly to show I could be as dispassionate about the subject as he could. Which of course, I couldn’t be. Especially not once he started asking about my past. I pushed the unwelcome thought aside. Stu had questioned me deftly enough about the morning’s panic attack--amazing how easy it could be to talk to someone over a meal. And now here we were over my kitchen table.

  Clever man.

  “Sure… necrophobia. When we break down the word itself, we have nekros, the Greek word for corpse, and phobos, which is the word for fear.”

  A roaring started in my ears. My heart rate accelerated rapidly and my palms moistened. This was it. He was going to make me tell him, and I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.

  “Hannah,” Stu said sharply. My gaze flew to his, my mouth already open as if preparing to scream. “Hannah,” he said again, his tone gentler. “Look around you. Do you see where we are?”

  Blinking against the bright morning sun reflecting on the gleaming white cabinets, I slowly nodded my head as where we were settled around me.

  “My house,” I said, my voice a little huskier than normal, but strong enough. I cleared my throat and tried again. “We’re at my house, in my kitchen.”

  “Yes.” Stu smiled as if I’d solved some particularly difficult equation. “You need to try to stay with me, stay in the moment as much as possible.” He stretched his arm out across my small dining room table and squeezed my hand. “Don’t worry, I’ll bring you back before you get too far away.”

  I swallowed hard, and damn if it wasn’t dusty or something because my eyes started to sting. “Yeah. Okay, thanks. Uh… what should I do?”

  He pushed the pencil and paper closer. “I want you to write the word necrophobia and then the two root words.”

  “But--”

  “Go on, you can do this. It’s just letters. Add dashes between if it helps.”

  I scrawled necrophobia in my usual messy cursive, but the point of the pencil seemed to freeze. Biting my lip, I did as he suggested.

  C-o-r-p-s-e

  “It has six letters,” I said. “Why does that surprise me?”

  “Because it’s become larger than anything else in your life. Six letters, huh? Can you make any other word out of those six letters? Like an anagram?”

  I started to write.

  Crops e

  Scorpe

  Corps e

  I couldn’t find a way to use all the letters, but I could make multiple short words. Stu scooted his chair closer and brought out his own pen.

  Copers

  “Oh, good one,” I said. “Oh, wait, it would need two p’s.”

  We went at it a few more minutes, but couldn’t come up with anything useful. It dawned on me finally what he’d done. I swapped my pencil for his pen and scrawled in big, bold letters.

  CORPSE

  “Atta girl,” he said softly. “Nothing but letters. Did you ever notice how old people read the obituaries?” he asked, seemingly apropos of nothing.

  “My parents used to read them every day,” I agreed. “Out loud over breakfast. I think it was an Italian thing.”

  “You’re Italian?”

  I laughed. “Can’t you tell by the coloring?” I pointed to my dark brown hair and eyes and olive skin.

  “The last name threw me off. I think I’m going to demand proof.”

  “Proof? You want to see my mother’s name on my birth certificate? It was Del Vacchio.”

  Already shaking his head, Stu sat back and crossed his arms over his chest. “Prove it. Make lasagna for dinner tonight. Don’t worry, I’ll wait.”

  I burst out laughing. “It’s not even ten in the morning. And what makes you think I have the ingredients?”

  His mouth opened then snapped shut, and I could see he fought his own laugh.

  “Monica told you--”

  “Maybe,” he cautiously agreed. “But I think it’s safe to say we have time. And since the kitchen seems to be a comfortable place for you, I think it’s a win-win.”

  “You really plan to keep at this… therapy all day?”

  “Therapy? I prefer to think of it as two friends uncovering a mystery. If you like Harry Bosch, you can’t tell me you don’t like a mystery.”

  The room seemed to dim around me and there was a tell-tale flutter of my heart as my pulse rate started to rise. Refusing to let another wave of panic envelop me, I stood suddenly, tipping my chair in the process. Without looking at Stu, I stomped over to the freezer.

  I tossed a package of bulk sausage on the counter, enjoying the solid thunk of frozen meat versus granite. I grabbed a package of ground beef and threw it down too. Next came jars of tomatoes and sauce, onions and peppers, garlic and fresh basil from the pot on the windowsill.

  Once the ingredients were spread all over the counter, I put the meat in a skillet to start thawing before I browned it, muttering to myself the whole while. “Who the hell does this man… this Stu Maxwell think he is to come in here and tell me this is a mystery? What happened to me isn’t a damn mystery. It’s not a goddamn book.”

  “I worded that poorly, Hannah. Of course, your history isn’t a mystery to you. The only mystery is why--”

  “Why? You mean why it causes this… this…” I waved my arms wildly. “Why it’s ruined my life?”

  “We can start there,” Stu said evenly. His reasonable tone made me sorry I’d already added the meat to the frying pan. I heard they made good weapons.

  Sensing my mood, he raised his hands in a peace gesture. “I don’t mean to downplay whatever it is that happened in your past, Hannah. I hope you’ll become comfortable enough to tell me--but the truth is--it may not matter.”

  “May not matter?” The words came perilously close to a screech. I’d seen dozens of doctors and every single one of them had insisted the accident was the root of all my problems. They’d wanted me to relive every agonizing moment, as if once wasn’t enough for a thousand lifetimes. I opened my mouth to tell him so, but he cut me off again.

  “Not really. You see, whatever your initial trigger event is--I’ve no doubt it was something terrible. The death of a pet, losing a loved one, seeing a dead body, accidentally causing the death of another… whatever the source of ground zero… that situation was long ago. You dealt with it. Locked it away.

  “Bad things happen to a lot of people, Hannah. Most people cope and eventually move on. But some of them get caught in a loop--just like you. Most everything in their lives is absolutely normal--until it isn’t and then a trigger sets off a panic attack.

  “So do we have to dig into your past? Only if you want to. You are in control of which path we take. What’s it gonna be? Do you want to te
ll me what happened? Or shall we continue with games and exercises to work our way up the fear ladder? You are familiar with the term?”

  Hell yes, I was familiar with the term… The theory was, you would list key words, objects, and actions--in order from least to most disturbing.

  One by one, starting with the easiest, you conquered each fear, until voila, you were cured.

  Yes, I might have traveled that road a time or two, but the therapist du jour always insisted the list had to contain elements from that long ago night--which I steadfastly refused.

  Thank you, no.

  Still--Stu’s method entertained, and if he was true to his word that reliving the past wasn’t required--then I was game to give it a try.

  Chapter Four

  Four weeks later…

  I walked through the house, double and triple checking the locks on the doors and windows. The ADT security panel was a reassuring green and the night-lights in each room glowed softly. Not that I was afraid of the dark… because I wasn’t. But having one anxiety often led to others, so this was my proactive approach to monster-in-the-closet repelling techniques. Finally assured the house was locked down for the night, I went to my bedroom and pulled on my silk tank and boxers before washing the makeup from my face.

  As I crawled into bed, my gaze settled on the blue readout of the digital clock on the dresser. 11:07.

  Sighing, I turned onto my side and punched the pillow a few times before settling into my favorite position with a piece of foam rubber tucked between my knees. Tomorrow was a big day, and I’d planned to go to bed earlier than this, but as usual, thoughts of Stu Maxwell filled my brain.

  I had no idea what he planned for our regular meeting tomorrow, nor could I pinpoint exactly why my anxiety had been increasing the last two days… maybe it was tied to the approaching full moon. Or maybe it was the realization this would be our fourth official meeting--and he’d made a point to tell me many phobias could be managed in as little as four weeks with the right strategy. I didn’t feel anywhere close to capable in that arena.