Phoenix Falling

by Mary Jo Putney

  Their lives hardly touched except once or twice a day at meals. Kenzie was unfailingly polite, but they might have been strangers living in the same boardinghouse rather than husband and wife. Conversation never got beyond the superficial, if they talked at all. She did as Marcus had suggested, playing cat, quiet and undemanding, hoping her presence had a beneficial effect. And very frustrating it was, too.

  Maybe he'd like a picnic lunch, since otherwise he'd probably forget to eat. She packed a tote bag with food and drink, then hiked up the hill.

  Kenzie was on his knees setting pavers in place, watched solemnly by Hambone. Both glanced up at her approach.

  "Hi," she said cheerfully. "I thought you might like some lunch."

  "Thank you. That would be nice." Kenzie stood, stretching the kinks from his muscles. He'd lost weight, and there'd been no fat on him to begin with, but he looked healthy enough otherwise, as long as his eyes were covered with sunglasses. He'd acquired a beautiful tan and a beard several shades redder than his long dark hair. Soon he'd be able to play a convincing mountain man without benefit of makeup.

  She hadn't been up here in several days, and she was startled by the progress he'd made. The concentric circles that doubled back and forth, twining their way to the center, were almost complete. "You've worked fast. How long until you're done?'

  "Later today or tomorrow morning."

  "What will you work on when this is finished?"

  "Landscaping, I think. Shifting rocks around and planting tough native bushes will enhance the site." He wiped his sweating face with a towel. His hands were grazed and bruised from the manual labor, but still beautiful in their shape and strength.

  Accepting a tall glass of Alma's fresh, cold lemonade, he asked, "How is the editing going?"

  "Pretty well." She spread a bright embroidered tablecloth on the pallet of remaining pavers, which was down to the height of a low table. Then she set out utensils, a bowl of Southwestern bean salad, and a couple of pita sandwiches filled with tomatoes, lettuce, and chicken salad.

  "It's fascinating how easily we can try different scenes, different cuts, different optical effects, but it gives too blasted many choices," she continued. "A good thing I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted before starting, or I'd be paralyzed by all the options. Even so, it's hard to make the film match the story in my head."

  "'Story is all,' Trevor used to say."

  She scooped bean salad onto her plate. "What was Trevor like, besides being a good teacher?"

  Kenzie's face blanked. "He was a brilliant man torn between what he knew was right, and urges he couldn't suppress."

  She gave him a swift glance. "You said that he didn't have a physical relationship with you."

  "True." His expression made it clear that he wouldn't say any more.

  She changed the subject. "When you walk the labyrinth, can you feel the energy getting stronger as it comes closer to completion?"

  "I haven't walked it yet." He bit into the pita sandwich, chewing and swallowing before he continued. "I'm waiting until it's finished."

  "Why? I'd have thought that once the pattern was laid out, you'd be walking it at least once a day."

  "It's... magical thinking, I suppose," he said slowly. "The hope that the longer I delay, the more powerful the calming effect when I finally do walk it. I need to conjure all the peace I can get."

  She put down her sandwich, dismayed. "Kenzie, I don't know if a labyrinth is going to be enough to do the trick. Maybe it's time to consider stronger measures."

  His expression darkened. "Have you and Marcus been debating whether to haul me off to some discreet, expensive clinic with soothing drugs and well-paid doctors?"

  "Marcus suggested it once, but that will happen over my dead body." She sipped lemonade to lubricate the sudden dryness of her mouth. "No drugs, no committing you for your own good. But surely there's some middle ground between doing nothing and getting checked into an upscale asylum."

  He tossed the remainder of his sandwich to Hambone, then began to prowl restlessly along the curving edge of the labyrinth, his body tense as a drumhead. "God knows I've thought about it, but I'm not going to talk to some shrink, Rainey. I couldn't bear to tell anyone what it was like to be Jamie Mackenzie. The memories churn like the evils released from Pandora's box, stinging and biting like poisonous snakes. I can't sleep, can't bear the thought of touching you, can't imagine this ever ending."

  The raw emotion in his voice seared her. She'd hoped he was making headway in coming to terms with his demons, but obviously not. He wasn't even able to sweep them under the carpet again.

  It seemed particularly horrible that his ravening memories had made it impossible for him to accept touch, the most basic of human comforts. Having him so close without being sleeping partners was miserable. Quite apart from the lack of sex, she missed the skin-to-skin contact of being with her mate. In the past, that intimacy had soothed them both, but no more.

  "Time may be the only healer," she said hesitantly, "but perhaps small, careful steps can speed the process a bit."

  She rose and intercepted him, laying one hand on his right wrist. He stopped, the muscles tensing under her palm. "Just a touch, Kenzie," she said softly. "Nothing sexual about it. A touch between people who have known and trusted each other for years."

  Slowly his arm relaxed under her palm. Though she guessed that it was an act of will rather than genuine relaxation, at least he wasn't ill. Progress of sorts.

  He raised his hand and caught hers, squeezing briefly before releasing it. "It's a start. Thanks for understanding, Rainey."

  Knowing she'd pushed enough for one day, she started packing up the picnic. "I'll leave the lemonade in its cooler. See you at dinner? Alma's going to town, and she promised to pick up some of those great ribs from the barbecue shack."

  Then she left, wondering how one could close Pandora's box.

  * * *

  He laid the last paver in the row with hands that had almost stopped trembling. He had hoped that time would bring a measure of peace. Having lived with his past for over two decades, he should be able to again. Instead, every day deepened the pressure of corrosive memories. He couldn't even name the volatile mix of emotions bubbling like lava inside him.

  Worst was the way his thoughts about sex were so intertwined with pain and fear and degradation that he couldn't remember the joyful, tender lovemaking he and Rainey had shared. Childhood horrors now contaminated what had been perhaps the most satisfying part of his life. He wondered with despair if he would ever experience such intimacy again.

  Which was why he was building a labyrinth. Three tiles across, the labyrinth path was about eighteen inches wide, with another eighteen inches between one circle and the next. Enough so that a number of people could walk at the same time without crowding each other, though he doubted that this particular labyrinth would ever host more than one or two walkers at once. It was coming into existence mostly as his private attempt to maintain sanity through physical labor.

  Laboring in the scorching noonday sun gave him a vague, satisfying sense of penitence. It was absurd to feel like a sinner when he'd been the one sinned against, but the mind was not a particularly logical instrument.

  He laid pavers for the next row, thinking of how Rainey had touched his wrist. His nerves had jangled like an electrical overload, and he'd had to control the impulse to flinch. Ironic that he couldn't bear physical closeness, yet he was intensely grateful that she had stayed near him. She was his anchor in hurricane winds.

  It was good not to be alone.

  * * *

  Brooding, Rainey returned to the house. She needed a dose of her old friend Kate Corsi's sunny good nature and unconditional sympathy. Kate's remarriage to her ex-husband made her a role model of sorts. If Kate could rebuild a badly damaged relationship, maybe Rainey could, too.

  Luckily, Kate was in her office. She and her husband were co-owners of the world's top explosive demolition firm, and h
er biggest complaint in life was the time she had to spend on paper shuffling rather than working in the field, blowing up buildings.

  Just hearing her friend's familiar hello made Rainey feel better. "Hi, Kate, it's me. Is this a good time to talk?"

  "Perfect. You'll give me an excuse to delay some number crunching," Kate assured her. "Val tells me that you and Kenzie are in the high desert. Have you recovered from location shooting yet?"

  That had been the official explanation for this retreat to New Mexico, but Rainey was too frayed to maintain the facade. "We're suffering from more than movie fatigue, Kate." She hesitated, wondering how much she could say without betraying her husband's confidence. "Being in England stirred up a... a lot of childhood issues for Kenzie. He's going through a very bad time."

  "I'm so sorry, Rainey. Is there anything I can do to help?"

  "Not unless you and Donovan devised a magic formula for sorting out the past and getting on with life."

  "That wasn't magic. Just a lot of talk, and years of growth between our divorce and when we met up again," Kate said. "As hellacious as the breakdown of our first marriage was, now I'm glad for it. We know ourselves and each other so much better than we would have otherwise. We appreciate each other more now, too. On our second honeymoon, we laid out new ground rules, chief of which is that the marriage always comes first. Next to that, nothing seems important enough to fight about."

  Which did sound like magic, but not of a sort that would help Kenzie. "Since Englishmen don't talk about their feelings, that won't work here." She meant the remark to be humorous, but her voice cracked.

  "You sound seriously stressed. Why don't you visit Tom? He's probably only about an hour or so away from you, and it sounds like you could use a big brotherly hug."

  Tom Corsi, Kate's brother, had been a surrogate sibling to all of Kate's friends. He was also one of the kindest, wisest people Rainey had ever known. "I didn't realize his monastery was that close. Can he have visitors?"

  "Yes, though you'll have to wait if they're in one of the seven daily prayer services Benedictines are so fond of. Why not drive over? It's a beautiful trip."

  "Maybe I will. Where is this monastery?" Rainey wrote down Kate's directions, then hung up when her friend had to field a phone call from Saudi Arabia.

  The thought of getting away from Cibola was appealing, but Rainey hesitated. It would take all afternoon to go to Our Lady of the High Desert, talk to Tom, then come home, time she should put into The Centurion.

  To hell with the movie. She'd worked seven days a week for months. She was entitled to a half day off.

  After leaving a message on Eva's voice mail, she wrote a note to Kenzie and stuck it on the refrigerator with a magnet on the off chance that he might notice she was gone. Then she changed into an ankle-length, navy blue cotton skirt and a matching tunic with long sleeves and a hood. It seemed suitably sober for a visit to a monastery.

  To find the keys to the SUV, she had to enter Kenzie's painfully neat room. He'd left no mark of his presence here.

  The keys lay on the dresser, untouched for weeks. As she pocketed them, she noticed a framed photo of Kenzie, Charles Winfield, and Trevor Scott-Wallace. It must have come from the memorabilia Charles had left to Kenzie.

  She lifted the pictures and studied the faces. Having met Charles, she could see his irony and humor easily. Kenzie was... himself: young, handsome, contained, with haunted eyes that she understood much better than the first time she'd seen the photo.

  Reading Professor Scott-Wallace was harder. In his own way, he also looked haunted. From what she'd read about pedophilia, it was an unalterable sexual preference. How horrible to have those yearnings while knowing they were deeply wrong.

  She set the photo back on the dresser, and headed out into the mountains.

  Chapter 37

  She'd worried that Tom Corsi would have become a pious, unrecognizable stranger, but his dark hair was still untonsured and unruly and his white robe hadn't changed his smile. He'd always been so patient with his little sister and her friends. Always tall and good-looking, he was now also tanned and serene.

  "Am I allowed to hug you?" she asked uncertainly.

  "Of course. You're family." He engulfed her in a brotherly embrace. She relaxed against him, painfully grateful for the simple animal warmth.

  As they separated, he said with a smile, "Are you here to gather atmosphere for playing a nun? That outfit you're wearing looks like it's trying to be ecclesiastical."

  She pulled the hood lower over her forehead. "A priest once told me in all seriousness that the color of my hair was an invitation to sin," she said dryly. "I didn't want to cause trouble."

  "The monks here have moved beyond that medieval tendency to blame women for being female," he assured her. "Though the hood might be useful protection against the sun if you'd like to go for a walk."

  "That would be great." She fell into step as he led the way through the cluster of adobe buildings that surrounded the church. "Kate suggested I talk to you. Even if you haven't any words of wisdom, it's wonderful to see you again."

  He opened a wooden gate for her, revealing a path that wound up the mountain. "Is this a secular form of confession, allowing for the fact that I'm not a priest and you're not Catholic?"

  She smiled. "Close enough."

  They started up the well-traveled walkway. The monastery property was in the middle of a federal wilderness area, and the scenery was spectacular. When they were well above the monastery, she said, "This canyon is magnificent. Beautiful and rather savage, with a harsh, clear light unlike any I've ever seen. A good place to seek God. Are you happy here, Tom?"

  "Yes, I am."

  She glanced up at his face. "I hear a 'but' in your voice."

  "I love the land, the community, and simplicity and spirituality of the life," he said slowly. "But I'm not sure if what I feel is a true vocation."

  "I thought Kate said you'd taken vows?"

  "Simple vows only. They can be renewed annually for anywhere up to nine years." He grinned. "If I can't decide if I have a true vocation by then, I deserve to be thrown out."

  Rainey was panting when they reached the top of the path. Sage-scented wind whipped her loose garments. Tom gestured to a flat, wide stone in the shade of half a dozen tangy pines. "This is a popular site for contemplation. How about if we sit down and you tell me what's troubling you?"

  She settled on the stone and drew up one knee, wrapping her arms around it as she gazed over the rugged red stone canyon. How much could she say, should she say? "I'm very worried about my husband, Kenzie."

  When she paused, Tom asked quietly, "What is he like?"

  "Forget anything you've seen on a movie screen. In real life, he's a quiet, wonderfully talented man made up of kindness and shadows. Making a movie in England stirred up his memories of a childhood that was... about as bad as a childhood can get."

  She drew a shuddering breath. "Now the memories are eating him alive. He can't bear the idea of hashing over everything with a therapist, and he avoids drugs, even legal ones, like the plague, for reasons that are similar to mine. He's in agony, Tom, and I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do." She hid her face in her hands.

  Tom waited patiently until she collected herself before he said, "If he can't talk to anyone, suggest that he write a journal chronicling whatever is tormenting him."

  "A journal?" Her brow furrowed. "How would that help?"

  "Studies have shown that most people benefit from writing down traumatic experiences," Tom explained. "The act of writing seems to put distance between the sufferer and the original incidents."

  "Kenzie is dyslexic, so writing doesn't come easily for him."

  "This kind of writing isn't easy for anyone, but there's no need to worry about spelling and grammar and sentence structure. What matters is digging down into the pain as deeply, and as honestly, as possible." He frowned, trying to make the concept clearer. "Words are a way of gaining c
ontrol over the past. Some people later burn the pages as a way of releasing the pain. Works pretty well, too."

  "Have you done this yourself?"

  He nodded. "I had a lot of anger after my father threw me out of the house and told me I was no longer his son. In San Francisco, I took a journaling seminar and decided it was worth a try. Amazingly, it worked. I was able to feel compassion for my father, who was torn between what he'd been raised to believe and his love for his only son. Eventually, I was able to get past the anger and get on with my life."

  "In other words, confession really is good for the soul, even if it's on paper." Rainey said thoughtfully. "This is certainly worth suggesting to Kenzie. Maybe he can write what he can't say out loud."

  "How is he using his time? If he's too depressed to do anything but brood, that could send him into a dangerous downward spiral."

  "He's building a labyrinth. It looks sort of like the patterns on the surface of the brain." She tried to remember what he'd said. "It's a classic eleven-circuit labyrinth, the same as one that's set in the floor of Chartres Cathedral."

  "A labyrinth? Interesting. He has good instincts," Tom observed. "In the Middle Ages, believers who couldn't travel to the Holy Land made symbolic pilgrimages by walking on their knees around a cathedral labyrinth. There's a labyrinth in the desert garden behind our chapel, actually. It's a very powerful meditative device. A way to find God, and sometimes healing as well."

  "But first the pain has to be cleared away."

  "The labyrinth can help with that, too. Walking to the center is a journey into oneself. The center brings release, and the journey out represents integration. It's not unknown for people to have intense emotional reactions if they've been laboring under great stress."

  "Kenzie hopes his labyrinth will bring him the kind of peace a labyrinth in England did."

  "Maybe it will. But suggest the journal, too. It might be the only method private enough to help him now." Tom regarded her gravely. "Stay close to him, Rainey. Powerful tools release dangerous emotions. Some therapists carry twenty-four-hour-a-day beepers so that patients who are journaling can reach them at any time if they have a bad reaction."