Darkness & Shadows

by Kaufman, Andrew E.

She stopped but did not turn around, not at first—when she did, there was red-hot anger burning wildly in her eyes. Through a tense, cutting whisper, she said, “Get away from me. Now.”

  Patrick moved swiftly toward her. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to… It’s just that—”

  “Stop!” she said, aiming a palm at him. “Just. Stop.” Her mouth was trembling, tears and fury in her eyes. Message received: he’d gone too far. Damage done. Situation officially out of control. He was ashamed, and now all he wanted to do was make amends, but it was far too late for that.

  He tried anyway, taking in a deep breath, letting it out fast. “I apologize, Ms. DeFrancisco. I don’t know what got into—”

  She was already turned around, heading toward the exit.

  Patrick watched his best shot at finding out the truth storm through the door.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Patrick was squeezing the wheel so tightly that his fingertips turned red and numb. He loosened his grip, shook his head.

  He’d screwed up. Big time.

  His intensity was way off the map because he was nearing his emotional limit.

  Yeah, right, Mr. Head Up Your Ass. Who the hell are you kidding? You’re already there, have been for days.

  He’d let his anger push him over the line, the same ire that had sent him into a flying rage against Harold Freely. His actions hadn’t been as severe this time, but they came from the same place. He couldn’t even do his damned job anymore—the one part of his life that had still made sense, where he could maintain consistency and balance. He was losing everything. He was losing his mind.

  He drove toward the cottage, beating himself up the whole way. When he walked in, Bullet was fast asleep on the rug. Patrick wondered if the dog had woken up at all while he was away, wondered even more how he could sleep so much.

  He closed the door. Bullet snorted and opened his eyes.

  “Great watchdog,” Patrick remarked, heading for the kitchen. “I could have stolen half the place by now.”

  Bullet grumbled.

  “What’s the matter? Rough day?”

  The dog whimpered.

  “Yeah, well, join the club.”

  Bullet appeared inappropriately excited by the comment. He strutted toward Patrick, leaped up, threw him the Tongue Shot. Right in the face.

  The dog’s timing sucked.

  Actually, everything sucks. Just everything.

  The dog did his signature head-tilt.

  “Not your fault,” Patrick said, scratching behind the boy’s ear. “It’s mine. Bad daddy.”

  While Bullet gobbled down some food, Patrick sat on the patio watching rancorous swells curl toward the shoreline, hoping the sea air might untangle his scrambled mind. So far, it wasn’t working.

  A young couple strolled by. Patrick zeroed in on them and zeroed in on a memory.

  A lazy afternoon, their second day at the cottage.

  He and Marybeth walked along the boardwalk hand in hand, warm sunlight on their faces, hot concrete burning their bare feet. Patrick hardly noticed—he felt as if he were living in a dream. If there was in fact a thing called love, he was pretty damned sure he’d found it.

  Suddenly, she ran ahead of him and spun around. Slipping a camera from her pocket, she grinned and said, “I want to take your picture, right now! I want to remember this moment forever.”

  Patrick shielded his face with both hands. “I’m a mess.”

  “You are not!” she said. “You look hot. C’mon!”

  Patrick let his hands fall to his sides, rolling his eyes.

  “Lose the pouty face, handsome, and smile big for me.”

  She was about to take the picture—but suddenly her mouth dropped open, and the camera fell from her hands, hitting the concrete, popping into pieces.

  He rushed to her. “Baby, what’s the matter?”

  Marybeth looked like she was trying to talk, but nothing came out, her eyes rounded by fear, her gaze fixed behind him. He spun around but saw nothing.

  “Baby?”

  She turned and ran.

  “Marybeth, wait!” Patrick shouted and went after her. “What’s wrong?”

  She kept running, and Patrick chased her all the way to the cottage. Inside, he found her in a rattled frenzy, sobbing hysterically, and stuffing her belongings into her suitcase.

  “What happened?” he said, standing in the doorway. “What’s the matter?”

  “We’ve got to get out of here!” she said. “We’ve gotta leave, now!”

  “But what’s going on? What did you see back there?”

  When she didn’t answer, Patrick reached for her wrists and gently pulled her toward him. He looked directly into her eyes, and fear stared back—no, it was worse than that. It was terror.

  In the calmest, firmest voice he could find, he said, “Tell me what’s the matter.”

  She squeezed her eyes closed, shook her head.

  He tried again, a little firmer. “Baby, please. Tell me.”

  Then in an instant, her terror spun into rage. With surprising force, she shoved him hard, sending him sailing backwards. He landed with a crash onto the end table, and it collapsed beneath him. Patrick lay there for a moment, speechless and stunned, his back stinging with pain, the wind knocked from his lungs. Marybeth looked shocked as well, perspiration and hair stuck to her trembling face, breathing tortured and strained. Just minutes before, he’d been sure he was hopelessly in love with this woman. Now he wasn’t even sure who she was.

  Marybeth ran over and dropped down beside him, throwing her arms around his shoulders, sobbing. “Baby, promise you’ll never let anyone hurt me. Please, just promise me.”

  Patrick didn’t say anything—he was too stunned.

  Within minutes they were on the road and heading back toward campus. Marybeth sat frozen and dazed, eyes fixed ahead. Then, in a small, fractured voice she muttered, “Oh, Patrick… this world will break your heart.”

  He glanced at her. He wanted to know what she meant, but after seeing her reaction at the cottage, was afraid to ask.

  And just like that, their wonderful weekend was over.

  The next day, Marybeth fell into her typical pattern—as she often did after one of her frightening outbursts—becoming overly affectionate and somehow managing to erase everything that felt wrong for Patrick. It worked every time.

  Now, all these years later, he wondered if whomever she was running from that day had caught up with her again.

  More waves crashed into the shoreline, jarring Patrick from his thoughts.

  More questions without answers, he thought. More uncertainty.

  More of the same.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Patrick stared out the window in Dr. Ready’s office, his mind drifting deeper into waters of ambiguity, his expression marked by sadness.

  She watched and waited with patience.

  His voice seemed as far away as his gaze when he said, “It took me a while to come to terms with the shock. That she’d been alive all these years, and now…”

  “Now what, Patrick?”

  “Now come the feelings.”

  “What kind?”

  He let out a weighted sigh.

  “What feelings?” she said again.

  “It’s like losing her twice.”

  She settled into her chair. “Let’s go back to your feelings.”

  “I don’t know where they are anymore. I’ve lost them.”

  “They’re still there,” she said slowly and patiently. “They don’t go away—they just hide. Try to find them again.”

  He shook his head.

  “You can do this.” Her voice was quiet but uncompromising. “It’s important. Describe what you are feeling right at this moment.”

  “I’m just trying to figure out why she left me. I keep wondering whether she even loved me. If she—”

  “You’re focusing on facts,” she said, gently redirecting. “Go back to the feelings, Patrick.”<
br />
  He closed his eyes, took a quiet breath.

  She watched him in silent attention.

  He said, “I feel so lost… so abandoned.”

  “Good… anything else?”

  “Angry, but I don’t know if I have the right to be.”

  “You don’t need permission to feel something.”

  He looked toward the window again, biting his lower lip, struggling against his thoughts, and then, “I can’t do this… It’s too hard.”

  “Why is it hard?”

  “I don’t even know why she left me. Maybe it wasn’t her fault. Maybe someone took her… or made her do it.”

  “That could be, but it’s irrelevant. It doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to feel angry.”

  He considered her for a moment, looked down at jittery hands.

  She said, “You don’t have to place blame anywhere if you don’t want to right now, but it is important to focus in on how you feel. This is a difficult process for you, Patrick, something you never learned to do. Your fear takes you to the last place in the world you want to go, where you list your feelings instead of actually allowing yourself to experience them. It’s where your wires got crossed as a child. Now that you’re an adult, you can fix them.”

  “Fix them how?”

  “By taking this first step. By giving yourself permission to be angry with someone you love. This is where your emotions get tangled—it’s where you learned to disconnect. Let it flow. Allow them.”

  “But it doesn’t feel right.”

  “Nothing new ever does. You’re learning.”

  “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Emotions don’t come from logic. They just come. And you can’t deal with them if you don’t know they’re there.”

  “I’m angry,” he said, nodding, as if coming into an agreement with himself.

  “Good.”

  “And I was lied to.”

  “Back to the feelings, Patrick. How does being lied to make you feel?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I think you do.”

  “I don’t know,” he repeated, shaking his head.

  She waited.

  A tear rolled down his cheek.

  “Allow it, Patrick.”

  He swiped at the tear, but like a bold act of defiance, another followed in its path.

  “Patrick… just say it. When you were lied to, how did it make you feel?”

  And then he said it. A scarce whisper in a cracked voice, but he said it.

  “Unloved.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Punishing sunlight shot through the window, striking Patrick in the face like an angry slap. His eyes snapped open, and he threw his arm up, squinting against the rays.

  And then his vision adjusted, and he saw the notebook on the nightstand, offering him comfort—the wrong kind. Seductive and powerful, like a junkie’s fix kit.

  And he needed it so badly.

  He wanted to grab the notebook. He wanted to write futile over and over until his fingers hurt, until he couldn’t write it any longer. He wanted the pain—needed it—to shake him from this numbness, this sense of helplessness that was taking him over again.

  He snatched the pen, snatched the notebook.

  Bullet barked.

  He looked at the dog. The dog was staring at him.

  “What?”

  Bullet barked again.

  “Quit it.”

  But as soon as Patrick’s attention returned to the pad, Bullet barked once more.

  “Knock it off!” Patrick said. “Can’t you see I’m trying to get my fix?”

  Bullet collapsed onto the floor, rested his head between his paws, and made the sad face.

  “Oh, hell,” Patrick said. He could never resist the sad face. He could also hear Dr. Ready explaining that his compulsion to list was his child’s mind stuffing away the emotions. He smiled at the dog. Once again, Bullet to the rescue. The boy was reminding him of this in his subtle Zen-Dog way.

  The doctor had told him to use physical activity as a positive coping tool, that it would help fix his screwed-up wiring and decrease his compulsion to list. He threw the pen and pad onto the dresser and said to Bullet, “Want to go for a run on the beach? Chase daddy’s demons away?”

  Bullet scrambled up and barked.

  God, he loved this dog.

  It was, in native terms, what many would call a beach day in Southern California: unblemished cobalt skies and temperatures climbing into the high seventies. Patrick drove a few miles down the coast toward Dog Beach, specially zoned for canines. Humans were allowed, too. No leash required. Bullet stared out the car window with an expression that Patrick could only intuit as pure joy, mouth open, eyes wide and darting in every direction. A warm breeze shifted across Patrick’s skin, managing to bring his tension down some—he hoped the beach might take care of the rest.

  On the way there, however, an unresolved thread got a hold of him, and his mind started clacking away. Marybeth’s death might not have been real, but the fire was, and so too was the body he saw that day. Someone had died in that building, so who was it?

  He dialed the Medical Examiner’s office.

  The guy in charge of records wasn’t available, so Patrick left a message. He wondered if anyone actually picked up their phones these days.

  At the beach, as soon as they got out of the car, Bullet darted ahead to join the other dogs at play—it didn’t take him very long to pair up with a chocolate Lab friend, and the two ran along the shoreline, sometimes side by side, sometimes chasing one another, splashing it up, and having what appeared to be the time of their lives.

  Patrick took in a satiating breath. A few years ago, this abused and beaten animal could trust no one; in fact, the dog had practically tried to kill him. Now he was the most loving friend Patrick had ever known. Such an amazing transformation, he thought, and such a privilege to have been a part of it. Anyone could rise from the ashes. There was always hope.

  But what if you’re the exception? the voice inside him said. Some kind of freak? What if there’s no hope for you?

  He told the voice to shut the hell up and focus on the dogs.

  A basset hound joined the fray, but couldn’t keep up with the larger dogs on his short legs. He found an English bulldog more his size and speed, and they waddled along the shimmering shoreline, their heads moving from side to side, seemingly contented.

  There’s someone for everyone, Patrick thought, smiling.

  Then the smile began to dim. Maybe not everyone.

  Bullet came to rescue him from his sinking thinking. He licked Patrick’s leg, then rested his head in Patrick’s lap. He rubbed behind the dog’s ears with a warm feeling in his heart. His urge to list was melting away, almost gone.

  Almost.

  “Come on, boy,” he said. “Let’s run.”

  He and Bullet took off down the beach. The farther they went, the more he could feel the grip of tension loosening, dissipating like a thin mist into the beach breeze. Soon he’d found his center again. He was back to himself, ready to rock and roll.

  After they finished, he picked up a morning paper and settled on a bench. Bullet was down for the count, tummy up, passed out cold in the hot sand.

  “Even fun has a price, huh, boy?” Patrick said, reaching down to rub the dog’s belly.

  Bullet snorted.

  As he was straightening up, Patrick noticed a shell sticking out of the sand. He reached over to grab it. He studied it, and once more, without warning, the memories invaded.

  Things continued to go up and down, and being with Marybeth was starting to feel like riding an upside-down rollercoaster. On the good days, it was simply mesmerizing. On the bad ones, it was simply horrible. Her moods could turn dark without a moment’s notice, and Patrick never knew what to expect.

  On this day, everything was better than good. They’d just finished taking midterms and decided to blow off some steam at the beach. A spectacular sunset wa
s on the way, the horizon painted in purple, red, and a thousand shades between.

  Marybeth ran ahead of him. She knelt and picked up a shell. “It’s a conch,” she said, turning it over, examining it. “They’re my favorite. Supposed to be bad luck, but I never believed it. There’s no way something so beautiful could ever be bad.”

  Patrick watched her in wonder. With the fading amber sunlight playing across her face, he was sure he’d never seen anything so beautiful. At that very moment, he could no longer hold back. He pulled her close, pressed his lips to hers, and they kissed.

  Later that night Marybeth painted their initials inside the shell with nail polish. “Now it’s ours forever,” she said.

  Hopes for a lifetime of love, turned into a lifetime of pain. Patrick regarded the shell with sadness. Marybeth had been beautiful—no doubt about it—but now he wondered whether that beauty had blindsided him.

  He tossed the shell back into the sand and let the memory fade.

  He opened the paper, turning his mind to another heartache: the latest on the Clark case.

  Charlene Clark’s Body Dumped, Burned in TJ

  A source close to the Courier has confirmed that Charlene Clark’s body was found burning on a hillside in the Tijuana neighborhood of La Azucena during the early morning hours after she went missing. Authorities are still in the process of arranging to return her remains to the U.S.

  As of yet, Dr. Wesley Clark’s whereabouts are unknown, and no suspect has been officially named in the case.

  San Diego Sheriff’s Homicide Detective, Steve Pike, refused to comment on the investigation.

  The newspaper fell into his lap. He looked down at it but could only see one thing:

  Fire then, fire now.

  Patrick’s mind started spinning out, taking him into dangerous waters. He couldn’t help it. The parallel between past and present was hard to ignore. What if the first fire wasn’t an accident? What if it had been set by someone who knew about Marybeth’s fear and had tried to use it as a weapon to make her final moments on earth a living hell? What if she’d managed to survive and escape that fire, and now, after all these years on the run, she’d crossed paths with that someone again—and this time they’d covered their losses, making sure the job was done right? If that were true, then this fire wasn’t just about murder; it may very well have been an act of terror fueled by untamed rage.