Her tone had clearly given her away. His quick glance said volumes. And asked a question, too.
One that his mouth followed up. “He was unfaithful to you, wasn’t he?”
“I told you about his erectile dysfunction...sometimes the only thing that worked...was young coeds.”
“He slept with his students and you knew it?”
“Not his students.” Turning her head away from him, Bloom closed her eyes. “Never his students. Just girls he met in campus bars. And I didn’t know about it until the last year or so.”
“When you were drugged.”
“My theory is that he got lazy about hiding his activities once he was confident that I’d be too dumbed down to do anything about it.”
He knew everything else about her. Why not that, as well? He was a professional. Saw and heard all kinds of atrocities. And when this was over, she’d never see him again.
A lump rose to her throat and pressure gathered behind her eyes. The morning was getting to her.
She needed air.
A paintbrush.
Something.
“Ken Freelander spent last night in the emergency room, Bloom.”
She sat up. Stared at him.
“The twenty-two-year-old he was with brought him in just before eleven with an accidental laceration due to...well, let’s just say things got a little exuberant between them...”
Bloom felt the wave rising within her. She knew, clinically, that it was hysteria based. But knowing didn’t stop the burst of laughter from escaping. Again and again. Reverberating around every surface in Sam’s sedate, unmarked, law enforcement SUV.
* * *
SAM HAD WORK to do. Two abuser suspects with sisters to question about their whereabouts the night before.
He didn’t yet have an explanation as to how they’d known to go after Bloom’s paintings when they got in her home, but he was confident there was an explanation. One he’d get out of them as soon as he got the guilty party into interrogation.
What he did know was that the attack on her home had been personal. Meant to unnerve her in the darkest, most personal way.
To warn her.
If she didn’t back off, if she continued to try to take a man’s wife from him, she would pay in a way that hurt her to the core. As he felt he was being hurt.
“I tell a lot of my patients about my painting,” she said as he pulled onto the dirt drive that led up to the cottage. It was the first thing she’d said since she’d stopped laughing.
“And they could have told any of their family members or friends...”
He’d already figured that out but was still glad for her confirmation. Glad to know that she was thinking logically. That she was okay.
“Many of them have done paintings of their own,” she said now. “Painting and collaging are offered as therapy at The Lemonade Stand.”
A buzz of anticipation shot through him. “I’ll cross-reference your patient list with those who’ve done therapy painting.”
She nodded silently and Sam wondered what she was thinking. If she was frightened. He didn’t ask.
He had to find the guy and stop him. He had to check alibis of the three suspects he liked most. Had to have Chantel access painting therapy records for Bloom’s patients who’d given them permission to access their records. And if none of those things turned up their perp, he’d look deeper into Bloom’s files and into the lives of her patients who might not be from The Lemonade Stand but might have ties there. And if none of those fit, he’d start looking into former patients. Bloom had only been taking private clients for a couple of years. He was going to find this guy who had a woman front running for him.
And while he worked, he had to protect Bloom. He could investigate from the cottage. Could log into the networks he needed. Use his phone. Send Chantel on initial interviews and to check alibis.
But he couldn’t just leave Bloom sitting by herself in his living room, especially after the morning she’d had.
Except...when he came out of the bathroom, she wasn’t in his living room. She was out on the porch, facing the ocean, her canvas and the two metal boxes with her. He’d figured, after seeing the blank canvases, that the boxes contained painting supplies. As he came out, she was leaning a canvas against a can that was tied to a porch rail, trying to right it.
If she’d had an easel, she hadn’t brought it with her.
“Hold on,” he told her, going down the steps two at a time and at his storage shed in record time. He was almost excited as he turned on the light and pulled leftover trim board from the rafters in the shed. He moved to the workbench and turned on the miter saw. Twenty minutes later, after raiding his screw and hinge boxes, he had made a rough, but fully serviceable easel.
He heard Lucy come in as he was finishing, recognizing the sound of her pads on the wood floor. She wasn’t alone.
Easel in hand, he spun around.
And was shocked to see tears in Bloom’s eyes as she saw what he’d done.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
TIME PASSED WITHOUT Bloom’s awareness. She painted. Color to palette, brush to color, color to canvas. She never consciously saw the yard in front of her. She might have heard the waves she knew were down below. Or might have just been hearing them in her mind’s ear. Sam brought out an unopened water bottle for her. She opened it and drank. When she turned around he was gone.
Lucy arrived and put her head in Bloom’s lap. At some point she left, too.
Bloom wasn’t making anything. She wasn’t creating. She was...grieving.
When the sun went down behind the cliff above the beach, she blinked. The day was gone?
She hadn’t eaten.
Had Sam? Or Lucy?
Putting down the brush, she flexed her fingers, surprised at their ache. She hadn’t used the bathroom all day. Had only consumed that single bottle of water.
The canvas caught her attention and she stared at it. She blinked. Stepped back. It wasn’t like anything else she’d ever done before. There wasn’t any definition. No specific lines.
But looking out at her from those colors was a little girl with not quite red hair, her hand on a dog that was nearly as tall as she was. Colors swirled around them. Bright blues and yellows. Oranges and greens. Some purples.
The hues grew darker as they spread out on the canvas.
Bloom didn’t like that part, but had to accept that the darkness was there.
Leaving the canvas to dry, she went inside.
* * *
SAM HAD SET up shop on the kitchen table with two laptops and a portable printer. Papers were piled on either side of him, with cords threaded through them on their way to the floor.
He looked up when she came in. Studied her like he was a scientist and she was his specimen. He didn’t speak, So she didn’t, either. He nodded and went back to work.
Bloom pulled ingredients out of the refrigerator for fettuccine Alfredo with chicken. She chopped onion. Brought sauce ingredients to a slow boil and turned down the heat. Grilled chicken in a pan, then sautéed it in a bit of Worcestershire and vinegar. She gave the tasks her full focus. Creating culinary art. Paid attention to every color. Every scent. To the precise size of the chicken bites as she cut them. The perfect doneness of the fettuccine when it cooked.
If Sam noticed the aromas wafting around him, he didn’t indicate it. She poured him a glass of tea. And when it was empty, refilled the glass.
He typed. Scrolled. Studied. Printed. Circled. Highlighted. And typed some more.
Dinner complete, Bloom plated her offering for both of them and put one serving on the table. She took the other with her to the couch. Petting Lucy as the dog joined her.
She’d done well. Dinner was good. And still difficult for her
to send down. She did what she could. Chewed and swallowed as many times as she thought her throat and stomach would allow. And then she allowed herself to stop.
Taking her plate to the kitchen, she picked up Sam’s empty one as she passed. He didn’t seem to notice she’d been there.
She did the dishes and cleaned all of the countertops. Fed Lucy, washed and filled her water bowl. She thought about making brownies. Betty used to make brownies from scratch. Bloom had never learned how.
She tried not to think about the information Sam was perusing so avidly. Tried not to worry. She’d come so far. She wasn’t going back. Wasn’t going to be that helpless, frightened woman again.
Or the girl who knew that darkness surrounded her. The tiny little girl who’d somehow understood that someday she was going to have to leave the safety of the life her parents had built for her, filled with all the colors nature had to offer, and venture into the darkness all alone.
But she wasn’t alone right now. Sam was there. And she didn’t know why.
What drove him to share the darkness with her?
She should go to bed. Lie there and watch mindless television until she drifted off. But a careful assessment told her that sleep was not going to happen anytime soon.
She’d rather be awake all night than take a sleep aid. Not that she had any.
But maybe a glass of wine...
She’d purchased a carton of single-serving sealed bottles the day before. Pinot Grigio. Chantel had done the same. Zinfandel.
Opening the bottle, she pulled out a chair and sat with Sam. He didn’t look at her but he wasn’t looking at the computer, either.
“I’m not going to sleep. I thought I could help you,” she told him. “I have eyes. Can compare lists.” She should have been doing so all day.
It wasn’t her job. But he wasn’t being paid for all of the hours he was spending. Wasn’t being compensated for giving up the freedom of his home.
His phone buzzed, something she’d noticed a time or two before, and he picked it up. Read. Typed, his thick thumbs flying over the tiny screen.
Then he looked at her. “I need to get back to work,” he said.
She hadn’t noticed him leaving work. But she took his not-at-all-subtle hint and moved over to the couch.
* * *
COULD HE BE any more of an ass? Bloom Freelander was more than a victim. She was a respected psychiatrist who spent eighty hours a week helping others. And not only to earn a living. She cared.
He stared at the new list he’d pulled up. Looking for classmates of the ex-father-in-law of one of Bloom’s victims. He and his wife were said to be staying with an old high school classmate.
He’d crossed the abuser, the man’s son, off his list for a very obvious reason. The kid was deceased.
But in questioning the victim today—the first time she’d been questioned because her abuser couldn’t possibly be their perp since he was dead—Chantel had discovered that the young women’s in-laws, both in their late thirties, had threatened to take her to court if she didn’t move in with them.
It wasn’t her they were interested in—to the contrary, they blamed her report of abuse for their eighteen-year-old son’s suicide. But they wanted her nine-month-old son. Their grandson.
Bloom and The Lemonade Stand were helping the girl see she had other options and providing those options to her along with the emotional, physical and financial support to pursue them.
Bloom was counseling her pro bono. Because she was kind.
She was a human being who was being forced to live life like a hostage and shouldn’t be sitting alone on the eve of the day she’d just had.
She didn’t deserve his bad temperament. She didn’t deserve any of this.
She’d done as he’d asked. Even in her drug-induced haze she’d found the courage to trust him. And later, the temerity and courage to face down the man who’d brainwashed her, to testify against the man she’d once adored.
He’d promised her safety and freedom.
And while they knew as of that morning that the current happenings in Santa Raquel weren’t coming from Freelander, the man was definitely out to get her. Even if only for the money. The pending court hearing proved that.
And he couldn’t get that text message Freelander had sent out of his mind. If the man had truly been feeling goodwilled, trying to transport goodwill, why hadn’t he followed up with more of the same?
Why had he gone straight to a legal battle over their decree rather than trying to work things out with her?
And who knew what he’d do when the newness of his young coed wore off. Or what he’d do if he didn’t get the job for which he’d applied. From what Chantel had told Sam earlier that day, based on off-the-record conversations, the professor job wasn’t going to Freelander.
Bloom’s hand on Lucy’s back seemed to be moving back and forth of its own accord. Other than an occasional sip of wine, she sat on his couch, staring at nothing. She hadn’t turned on the TV or put in a movie.
Probably didn’t want to bother him.
Why she hadn’t gone to her room, he didn’t know.
But he cared.
No one should have to be that alone.
And apparently he wasn’t as much of an ass as he needed to be. Grabbing one bottle of beer from the refrigerator, Sam uncapped it, tossed the lid and joined Bloom Freelander on his couch.
* * *
“I’M SORRY ABOUT your paintings.”
Scooting over as much as a sleeping Lucy would allow to make room for Sam, Bloom acknowledged his statement with a nod. “I’m sure their destruction means that I have no further need of them,” she said. “They’ve served their purpose.”
Or could continue service without physically hanging in her space.
“Still...it’s got to be... I’m sorry...”
“It’s fine.”
It hurts.
She listened to her inner voice because she had to. She just wasn’t going to spend time on what it was saying.
There was nothing she could do about the paintings. And she was not going to waste time and energy on what she couldn’t change.
Instead, she was thinking about her caseload in the morning. About the patients on her roster who’d been affected by the recent attacks on her, Lila and The Lemonade Stand. They were vulnerable. Needed her example of how to experience violence without losing their sense of self...
And then she wasn’t thinking about them. She was listening to the swish of fabric as Sam raised the beer bottle to his lips. Feeling the heat emanating off him even with the inches between them.
He was such an enigma. That was why he was on her mind so much. His aloneness, his life choices, challenged her professional mind.
“Why do you do it?” She broke the silence between them.
Lucy sighed in her sleep. Stretched her front legs but didn’t open her eyes.
“Do what?”
“Work all time. Nonstop.”
“I give the hours the job requires.”
She sipped from her own bottle. Glanced at him. He was staring into the same nothingness she’d seen for the past several minutes. She couldn’t tell, from his brooding expression, what he was thinking.
About the case? Or something else?
“I have it on good authority that you put in twice the hours of a lot of the guys, more than just about anyone else.”
“I hadn’t heard Chantel had such a loose tongue.”
“We’re spending more off-duty time with each other than anyone else in our lives,” Bloom said. And in Chantel’s further defense added, “And she wasn’t gossiping about you. She was reassuring me. I was feeling guilty about how much extra time you were putting in on my behalf and she was simply letting me know that
you always work this much.”
He sipped. Lowered his beer between his legs.
Her gaze followed it of its own accord and rested there for a second. But she would not let those pants fade away in her mind’s eye, leaving him only in that underwear covering his bulge.
“You haven’t answered my question,” she said, to enforce her mental mandate. She was probably pushing him out of the room. Away from her. And that would be for the better, too. “Why do you work so much?”
Sam’s sigh startled her. He wasn’t one to give in to such an emotional impulse. As though he were capitulating. Or needing to relax. He wasn’t the “take a breather” type.
Holding her own bottle on her thigh, she wanted a sip, but didn’t move.
“I talked to the department shrink once.” He sipped. She waited. Intensely interested. “But I hated the feeling that everything I said was being analyzed and twisted into some big internal issue or warning.”
He was defensive. And that told her that he was holding something in that he didn’t want found.
“If you think the fact that you could have an issue or two takes you down a notch, or makes you less capable or reliable, you’re wrong.” Maybe not what he’d been after from her. “I’d be more concerned if you were as one dimensional as you try to be.”
We teach what we most need to learn.
Bloom shook her head as the phrase popped up out of nowhere. Where had she heard that before? And how could it help Sam? What did he need to learn?
He turned his head and looked straight at her. It was as if he’d shot a laser beam all the way through her. Bloom couldn’t look away.
“What if I told you that my father is dead because of me? I bet you’d have a field day with that one.” He sounded hoarse. But not weak.
“I’d want to know the circumstances.” Her words were little more than a whisper.
Time was open space between them. A cloud that had not been written on. She’d asked a question and he’d brought them here.
“From the first moment I can remember, all I’ve ever wanted to be was a cop,” he told her.
The inclination was natural, given that he was raised by a single parent who was a cop. From what she could tell—and her glimpse into his world in the pub that past week had been a huge insight—as a cop he lived an insular life. It was the only life he’d known.
The Promise He Made Her Page 18