by Dale Mayer
“How did you know?”
“I don’t know.” Hannah frowned. “It sounded like his footsteps?” Yet, how many times in the last day had she heard that man’s walk? Once? Twice? “That sounds stupid.”
“What’s stupid?” Trevor walked in holding a bag in his hand.
She recognized the label. “Beignets?” she cried out in delight. “You stopped in at the Voodoo Deli?”
He laughed. “I did. Glad to see you recognize the place.” He walked in and placed the bag on the small side table then wheeled it closer. He searched her gaze. “Especially considering the state you were in last time I saw you.”
Her face fell. “Dr. Maddy said I didn’t recognize you earlier. I’m sorry about that.”
“But you do now?” He grinned hopefully at her.
She let his gaze search hers. “I do.”
“What happened that brought your memory back?”
Silence.
Then Dr. Maddy spoke up. “She fell unconscious again and when she woke up she was in her normal mind.”
“Interesting,” Trevor said but without any apparent shock.
She studied these two. “Did you ever consider that maybe this isn’t my normal mind? And that other state whatever it was, was the normal one?”
“So you want to live in a world where Will is your husband.”
“God no. That was my father’s constant threat. I pleaded with him to not force me into that.”
“Why would he want you to marry Will? Is Will rich? Famous? From a huge mover shaker family?”
Each time Hannah shook her head. “No, he’s just a lackey of my father’s.”
“That doesn’t make much sense unless he figured that this man would take good care of you, but if he’s someone you feared…”
“Exactly.”
*
“I’d like to speak to you for a moment too.” Trevor waited at the doorway for Dr. Maddy to join him. When she stepped into the hallway he said in a low tone, “I’d like you to see her eat.”
She shot him a curious look then stepped to the side where she could talk to him but observe Hannah. “Why?”
“Just wait. Maybe it won’t happen, but I’d like your take without influencing it.”
She nodded.
Hannah lifted the silver cover off her plate and smiled at the large clubhouse sandwich in front of her. Glenda had really come through. Hannah picked up one of the three pieces and dug in. She had that piece gone in five bites and had moved through the second while they watched. When she picked up the third piece and took another huge bite, Dr. Maddy sighed.
“See what I mean?”
“I do. She’s burning through food as her main fuel source, and the fuel is to keep her energy as low as possible.” She rubbed her temple. “That strong aura is a self-defense mechanism.”
“Why? That’s the opposite of what she should be doing.”
“Why does any animal try to keep their energy low, their footprint almost non-existent?”
“To avoid detection,” he exclaimed in a low voice. “But she can’t store enough food to keep this up, and she’s beyond lean.”
“She’s a healthy weight, but on the light end of that,” Dr. Maddy said. “Her body won’t allow for anything else with this much food, but she’s channeling all that energy into keeping her guard up.”
“But there are easier ways.”
“There are, but I suspect she has no idea what she’s doing or why?”
“And do we tell her?”
“We’ll have to but not yet. We need to learn more first.”
“About what?”
“Will. He’s the only person she’s shown any emotion toward so far. Except you,” Dr. Maddy turned to look at him. “I’m not sure how she feels about you.”
“Grateful and that’s about it,” he said. “She was in a hellish place, and I helped her out.”
Dr. Maddy smiled. “She knew you were coming down the hallway. She already recognized you on an etheric level.”
“I found out about that florist shop. Can’t say I like that either.” After he explained, he added, “The car belongs to her.”
Maddy’s breath gushed out. “Wow. That can’t be good. So the police are thinking she did it herself for insurance money.” She studied Trevor.
“Is she broke?”
“I have to get a court order to get into her financials to find that out.”
“Do you?” Dr. Maddy studied him. “You’re her husband. Do you still need that?”
He raised his eyebrows. “I forgot.”
She laughed. “Well, I suggest you remember.”
“I’ll speak with her too. With her permission I can have access to any information we might need.”
Dr. Maddy nodded. “I’ll have the kitchen bring up double dinners for you and her tonight. Likely, she will need a snack before she goes to sleep at this rate.” Hannah had finished the sandwich and was working on the small bowl of Jell-O.
“Good. Can I coax a couple of coffees out of your fancy machine too?” he asked with a smile. “I could sure use one.”
“I’ll send someone in with two lattes for you.”
And she turned to walk down the hall. Trevor walked back inside the hospital room.
Hannah was wiping her mouth and said with a happy smile, “This place rocks.”
“You don’t know the half of it.” He sat down beside her. “We’re getting coffee delivered in a few minutes too.”
She beamed. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. I have some news you won’t like.”
She frowned. “You couldn’t find Tasha?”
“I might have found her,” he said in a soft voice. “A body was found in the same fire that burned your store to the ground.”
Chapter 13
Hannah gasped in shock, tears filling her eyes. “What? How?”
“The florist shop was burned to the ground, and a body was found inside. They are presuming it was her but an autopsy is pending.”
Hannah shook her head. “No. She can’t be. She was such a beautiful person.”
“This happened just yesterday.” He took a deep breath and added, “Arson.”
The color faded from her face yet again. She’d taken several major hits today, and at one point they were going to be too much. She wanted to curl up in a ball and crawl back into a hole at the same time.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Where was I?” she asked bitterly. “When my best friend was dying, where the hell was I?”
“And don’t you also mean, where were you when your business was burning to the ground? Or how about when your car was torched in the back parking lot.”
She stared at him as the hits kept on coming. “I can’t believe it.”
“Well, you need to because the cops are looking at you as being the guilty party.”
She stared at him in shock. “But I wasn’t even there.”
“Good. So where were you?”
Her eyes overflowed and she started to sob. “I don’t know,” she cried. “I have no idea because I don’t remember anything about that time. I have no idea even when this blackout started. As far as I know I can only remember a week ago – and even that is full of holes.”
He stared at her. “Surely you can remember later than that?”
She shook her head. “No, I don’t. Images keep moving in and out but nothing makes sense.” She wiped at her wet eyes. “It’s like I wake up one day and I’m in one world, then I go to sleep and wake up in a different world. I don’t know which is right or wrong but some people are in both.”
“Your father and Will?”
“Why them?” she cried. “Why can’t it be people who love me and are nice to me? I had Tasha and we were really having fun. She knew about my blackouts. I’d had two in the months she’d worked for me, but they were short and not a big deal. Then I just woke up on the highway outside of Stefan’s house.”
Collapsing back aga
inst the pillow she said in a low voice, “My father is right, isn’t he? I am a danger to society. I should be locked up.”
“No. He’s not right. You should not be locked up. But yes, we do need to fill in the blanks so that we can clear you of murdering your store manager.”
At that she slapped her hands over her ears and curled up in a ball. After a moment she said in a small voice, “I need to rest for a little while.”
“You can have ten minutes,” he said in a hard voice. “That’s it. Then it’s down to business. Unless you want to be locked up – and this time not in a gilded cage.”
She shuddered. How had her life gotten to be so bad? She lay there trying to let his information roll over her and through her. “My life has always been like this. Dr. Maddy had asked me about the traumas in my life and if they lined up with the blackouts, but you walked in then and I didn’t have time to tell her. Not sure that I know all of them anyway.”
“Then start at the beginning and I’ll take notes.”
She nodded. Closing her eyes, she started on that day so long ago. “My mother died when I was eight. Apparently I killed her.”
*
As a place to start that was a doozy.
His breath gusted out on a heavy sigh as he stared at her to see if she was serious. Lying as she was, speaking in a monotone she said, “I was eight, close to my ninth birthday. We were outside by the lake and I went into the water. I wanted her to play with me but she didn’t want to come in. I had no friends back then. I wasn’t allowed to play with the neighbor kids, and they lived so far away it wouldn’t have worked out anyway most likely. They were as rich and locked up as I was, so they wouldn’t have been allowed to come to my house either.” She paused for a long moment and Trevor wondered if he should prod her.
“I pretended I was drowning,” she whispered, in shame. “It was just a joke. I wanted to have someone play with me…”
Ah shit. He knew where this was going, and it wasn’t going to be a good place.
“She screamed for help and jumped in,” Hannah said. “There were two guards so I don’t know how or why, but she drowned and I survived,” she said in a bitter voice. “Life was never the same again.”
“You know you aren’t to blame, right?” Her gaze opened and shot him such a sad look, he knew she’d carried the guilt forever. “You were a child.”
“I was a stupid, selfish child,” she corrected.
“Did your mother know how to swim?”
She nodded. “I have memories of the two of us swimming. For all I know she might have had one of her fits but if she’d had them on dry land, which is when she always had them, then she’d have been fine. But my father said that the shock of believing I was drowning likely triggered the episode.”
“Episodes?” He stared at her. “As in, fits?”
“She was an epileptic and had seizures occasionally. Apparently they were often triggered by stress.”
“They can be, but there are many other extenuating circumstances. Sometimes even metabolic imbalances cause episodes. Medical science doesn’t know everything.”
She snorted. “I am a prime example of that.”
“Tell me about her.”
“She was a lovely person,” Hannah said tearfully. “But moody. She was either smiling and happy – or she was in one of her melancholic moods. She went from one to the other often with little warning. At those times she’d go to her room and spend some time alone until she felt better.”
“That made for a lonely childhood.”
“It did. But I had everything I could want, so many kids were jealous. We were rich but I was so unhappy. My father worried I was getting the same issues as my mother, so he kept me protected all the time.”
“He would have anyway. He’s a rich man. Kidnappings are all too common. He’d have had to keep a close eye on you.”
“Whatever the reason, I lived with guards. What I didn’t understand was after that incident, the guards followed me everywhere. They had before but not as close, or as constant. I was always in mother’s care before so the guards were in the background but after her death, well, there was nothing left for me at all – I was a virtual prisoner.”
Not unexpected in many ways. He’d heard variations of the same complaint from many members of wealthy families. Money was a nice bonus in life, but it was also a huge headache with side effects many couldn’t see or understand.
“And when was your first blackout?”
She looked at him in surprise. “Right after my mother died. I blacked out for several days apparently.”
“So what you just relayed to me is what you were told?” he asked carefully.
“Yes,” she said bitterly.
“Maybe only by one person,” he suggested gently. She studied him as if thinking about what he’d said, but she never commented. Good.
“When was the next time?”
“They were fairly frequent but minor for the first year apparently. Every few months, but I don’t remember why or if anything preceded them. Knowing I killed my mother was likely enough of a trigger to do that.”
“It quite likely was,” he agreed. “What was the next incident that you remember?”
“The guard dying.” She snorted at the look he shot her. “No, I didn’t kill him. There was an attack on the estate. Some kind of attempt on my father’s life. The guard had grabbed me and was carrying me from the living room to the panic room.”
Trevor raised an eyebrow at that bit but stayed quiet.
“On the way, he was shot. I fell to the ground and he collapsed on top of me.” She frowned. “Another vivid memory, but yet distant very foggy almost at the same time.”
He shook his head. Lord, one personal death was difficult, but two… “Both are traumatizing. Were the blackouts worse after that?”
“Oh yeah. Much, but still minor. A few hours, a day, max.”
“Was there another major incident after that?” He knew she didn’t need big triggers to set off the blackouts. If her way to deal with a difficult life was to black out, well that might have been all she could do at the time. But it would become a habit. It was an easy way to avoid dealing with stressors but not a good one.
“I don’t know,” she said, her voice fatigued. “There were fights at school, arguments with my father. When he fired my guards, I had more to replace them.” She shrugged. “I don’t know what to say but it seemed like the blackouts were always an issue, but they were short and I recovered fast. I didn’t have any major triggers before these events, though.”
“That’s good,” he said, cheerfully trying to lighten the mood. “Considering the options. So when did the longer blackouts start?”
She swallowed. “After my father suggested that marrying Will was the perfect answer for me…”
Yeah, that would do it. “Tell me about Will. When did he first start working for your father?”
“Before I graduated. Father fired all the guards at that time, something he did on a regular basis, especially after my mother’s death.”
“I would too,” he admitted. “Unless they hadn’t been responsible, but it’s an emotional decision. If you lose someone you love and have people hired to look after them then you assign guilt, right or wrong.”
“You’re making a big assumption,” her voice slipped from guilt to cold and detached.
He leaned back. “What was that?”
“That he loved my mother. We lived in a separate house from him, and I think that was why she was so melancholic.”
Interesting. He made a note to dig into her mother’s background. “If she was unhappily married that might help explain her moods.”
“And she had health problems. I tried to get some information about her from my doctor a few years ago, thinking that genetically I needed to know, but he said I had to ask my father for that information.”
“That’s not typical.”
“There is nothing typical about my family, remember?
My father is the ruler of his universe and we all live in it.”
“Anything else I need to know about your family? The blackouts? How long does it take for you to come out of them?”
She sighed. “Didn’t you say coffee was coming?”
As a delay tactic it worked. “I did. Let me see if that’s coming.”
He got up and walked out of the room. In the hallway he watched Maddy’s assistant walking toward them with two large coffees.
“I’m sorry. Things got a little busy.”
“No apologies needed,” he said from the doorway. “I’m sorry for causing you extra work.” He took the tray from her and walked back inside. Hannah had rolled into a small ball and appeared to be sleeping.
“Hannah?” he said quietly. “The coffee is here.”
“I don’t like coffee,” she said in a low flat voice. “You always say I’m too young to drink it.”
He froze, then silently moved forward to place the tray down on the small table.
He never took his gaze off of her. Taking a step closer, he whispered, “Who are you?”
“Hannah of course, silly.”
Mentally he sent out a message to Maddy, Can you come? Something is happening to Hannah.
He shifted his focus to look at her aura and stifled a gasp. It was expansive and wildly colored. Maddy, if possible I need you now.
*
Dr. Maddy lifted her head from the paperwork. She caught his first message but the second came faster and more urgent. She was up and flying toward Trevor before he finished talking. She reached the bedroom and paused as she caught sight of Trevor standing at the end of Hannah’s bed, his energy so close, his aura almost touching Hannah’s. The same Hannah who had kept her energy so tight to her body that she’d appeared to be dying.
Yet now her aura sprawled with the enthusiasm of an innocent child. Only one without boundaries. And that was also unusual. Hannah had gone from one extreme to the other.
Then she heard Hannah’s voice.
“Can I go outside today? Please?” Only the voice wasn’t happy. Or pleading. It was flat. Monotone. As if knowing the answer ahead of time. That it was a predetermined, no.
“Yes, you can go outside today,” Trevor said quietly, staring at Maddy.