Throughout the room, on the various shelves, pottery and glass sculptures erupted spontaneously from the foliage of so many plants the place seemed to have been overtaken by the mountain. He examined one elongated clay piece glazed in blues and purples, turned it over and saw Vanessa scratched into the base. Her mother’s name, wasn’t it?
“Look here.” Bair motioned him over to the three-tiered cupboard, where Genie had directed him.
Smith joined them. The project models he’d created were intricate, scaled representations and fine work in themselves, but Tessa’s model labyrinths were art, each stone, each plant as real as if a garden had been shrunken to fit the base.
“Planning and development,” Genie said. “Tessa does it over the winter unless she’s consulting. She sees the labyrinths that way in her mind, as if she’s flying over.”
Bair replaced an intricate hedge garden on the shelf. “Has she, um, built them all? I mean … in a real location?”
“Not all.”
Smith turned to see Tessa in the kitchen watching his reaction. “Very nice.”
She ducked her chin. “We’re ready to eat.”
Smith set the labyrinth back on the shelf, and they gathered around the square pine table. Tessa’s broiled chicken with rice and miniature carrots, cooked with sprigs of something she’d snipped off a plant in the window, made a disgrace of Bair’s roast.
“This is excellent.” Bair beat him to the compliment.
“Thanks.” Tessa turned. “How’s your head, Smith?”
“Never better.”
“You need to take it easy. The doctor was clear.”
“Didn’t you know?” Genie’s eyes developed a dark gleam. “All doctors are ogres.”
“Genie had her gallbladder removed.” Tessa sent her a glance. “Her recovery was a little like yours—heavy on the whine.”
“Hey,” he and Genie chorused while Bair chuckled.
Tessa laughed, and he might have believed it—except for the shadows behind her eyes.
CHAPTER
34
“I’ll clean up.” Genie sent her a meaningful glance. Balance was important to her, and when one of them cooked, the other washed up afterward. Just one of the quirks that indicated a need for order in her deceptively easygoing style.
“I’ll, um, clear.” Bair stood up and started stacking plates.
Tessa hoped they would make it to the sink, but left Bair and Genie to it when Smith tugged her to the couch. He stretched out and motioned her down beside him. The fire crackled. Her heart rushed. He’d said life could end abruptly; why waste the time they had? Because she needed answers. She could not dream until she had finished the nightmare once and for all. When she had, he might realize he didn’t want her at all.
Bair’s phone rang. It took him moments to wrestle it off his belt, then he brought it to Smith and mouthed, Rumer Gaston.
Smith took it. “Yes, hello.” A pause, then, “Sorry, I can’t get to my phone. It’s on the property and I’m in Colorado recuperating. Doctor’s orders.” He winked.
Her fears of Rumer Gaston seemed like another life. He was not her nightmare monster, only an odious man with an overinflated ego.
“That’s generous,” Smith said, “but I’m not sure I’m up to the stress of the tables.”
“Gambling tables?” she whispered and Smith mouthed, Black Hawk.
Please don’t let him demand it. She had to finish this.
“I’m sorry. It’s just not possible.” He rolled his eyes. “Yes, as soon as I get word that we’re clear to proceed.” He nodded. “The moment I know something. Good-bye.” He handed the phone back to Bair, then rested his head back in the crook of his arm. “I could get used to this.”
Tessa startled.
“What?”
“My dad used to say that. I just remembered him standing outside with his arms spread wide, snow falling in his face, hollering, ‘I could get used to this!’ ” The image was heartbreakingly clear.
“Other memories are coming as well?”
“Maybe they’ve been trapped behind the other and as it corrodes they slip past.”
Firelight danced on his lenses as his gray eyes settled on her. “The good memories might cushion the difficult one.”
“Or make it that much harder.” She swallowed the dread. “Maybe I blocked the happy memories so the guilt wouldn’t crush me.”
“You can’t believe you’re guilty. Nothing you could have done at that age makes you culpable.”
She drew a ragged breath. “It feels like it, Smith.”
“Apply logic.”
“That from the man who just proposed marriage?”
He sighed. “That wasn’t any decent sort of proposal.”
“And now that you’ve applied logic?”
“I’d say it again.” He looked surprisingly sincere. “More elegantly.”
She shook her head. “How did we get into this mess?”
He threaded her fingers with his. “Think of it as a complicated path leading to a predetermined point at which something of value will be gained and brought back.”
Her jaw fell slack. “You get it.”
“Your explanation made perfect sense. If it’s a labyrinth, no matter how difficult, the way in also leads out.”
“So entering the memory will also provide a release.”
“I hope so. I pray it will.” Shifting more to his side, he settled her against his stomach, turning her so she could see his face. “I want this to work. I want you free to move forward, to let go of the fear and guilt. I meant what I said before about the Father’s love. I see your yearning.”
His words touched the ache. Maybe if she recovered tender memories of her dad, she might be able to accept a Father God. But for now—
A memory hit so hard it knocked her breath out. Her dad in his workshop.
“Back to bed, kitten. Does Mommy know you’re up?”
Rubbing the silky blanket between her fingers, she reaches for his hug. He hears a noise outside. His face gets long and stern.
“Go inside, Tessie. Find Mommy and stay there.”
“Tess?” Smith’s fingers tightened on hers.
The whimper had escaped her throat. She pressed up from the couch. She had to see it, the workshop. She had come home to remember and the memory started there.
“Tess, where are you going?”
“Dad’s workshop.” She went to the closet and grabbed her fleece-lined woolen coat.
Smith snagged her dad’s bomber jacket and hurried out behind her. The clouds had opened up on a clear, brittle sky. Pine needles crunched beneath her boots as she approached the small cabin behind the house. She felt for and found the key over one of the pine slats. Holding her breath, she opened the door and flipped on the light.
A low bed covered with a flannel quilt pressed against one wall. The workbench and cabinets filled the other half of the space. It smelled of wood and dust and motor oil. An airplane propeller hung on the far wall along with topographical maps and wind patterns.
Smith said, “Was your father a pilot?”
She moved to the center of the room and stared at the white propeller, chipped and wind blasted. When Smith cupped her shoulders, she was only slightly aware of him. “We made a delivery. The day we flew over the labyrinth. When we got back, Mom was upset.”
“Angry?”
“Afraid. They argued, and I got upset. That’s why I had my worry blanket.” She turned and walked toward the door.
“Tess?”
She went out and stood for a moment staring at the house. Their voices came as hollow echoes.
“They left me no choice.”
“And now they’ve left you no protection.”
She turned toward the slope behind the workshop.
Smith spoke low. “Not now, Tess. Not in the dark.”
“I have to see it at night.”
“We don’t even have a torch.”
“We have a moon
.” She passed between the first two pines, climbing the slope.
The moon shone like a spotlight through the thin atmosphere, but clouds lurked higher up, and it was never a good idea to take off unprepared into the night. “Tessa.” He considered running in and alerting the others, but Tessa had set off, and it would be all he could do to keep up.
The fingers of her right hand rubbed against her thumb. Her other hand curled up against her throat. If he wasn’t close enough to gauge her height, he’d say it was a child creeping through the woods. Had she slipped into the memory so completely?
He didn’t talk or try to stop her. He conserved his breath and followed as she moved like a waif through the woods. What kind of imprint dominated a child’s mind so entirely, that this many years later, she was back in that moment? He thought he heard a whimper, though she didn’t pause. She knew he was there if she needed him.
The only other sounds were crispy pine needles crunching beneath his shoes and the breath wheezing in his lungs. Longneedled branches redolent with pine sap pressed in and swung back like hinged doors. Tessa veered to the right when the slope flattened. A huge rocky outcropping loomed up against the starry sky.
She stared up and shuddered. If she tried to climb it, he’d stop her. No way they were scaling that in the dark. But she put a hand to the stone and moved around its base. Bending to see a small hollow at the base. With a cry, she pressed both hands to her head but kept walking, searching side to side until she stopped abruptly. The moment she sank to her knees, he was there.
“Was it here?” he breathed, tightening his arms around her. “Can you tell me what you saw?”
“Four men with bats. And my dad.”
He winced.
“Another man over there.” She barely stretched her finger to point. “He sees me!” Panic seized her.
“It’s over, Tess. It happened a long time ago.”
It wasn’t over for her. She broke into deep, wracking sobs. He didn’t try to comfort her with useless words, but as he held her he prayed hard that this would not break her.
The barrier collapsed. Into her mind with horror and debilitating grief came every blow, every kick. The blood, the cries, the brutality knotted her stomach. She jerked back, screaming. “No!”
The word tore through her throat. “No!” With everything in her she wanted to stop what was happening, but it was too late. She had sat there frozen with horror, and every scream in every nightmare and the screams that now broke through the years of restraint and ripped her throat raw were all too late.
Pain and fury coursed her nerves, her veins, muscle tissue, bones. Terror and grief took her body like an invading army leaving carnage in its wake. Her screams punished the voice that had kept silent, ripping through her larynx until no vibration could wrench sound from any cord. She collapsed, aching in every place her daddy’s bones had cracked and his flesh had been torn and crushed. She’d followed the path into her dad’s suffering, but she’d been wrong. There was no way out.
Smith held Tessa, unresponsive, in his arms as the night deepened around them. Her screams had rent his composure until he shook almost as hard as she. Now, if not for her shallow breaths against his chest, he wouldn’t know she was alive. Several times he tried to rouse her from her faint, if faint it was, thinking any moment she would awaken, but she seemed deaf to him.
He’d been so focused on her going up that he had not paid close attention to the way, and even if he had, could he retrace it? He did not want to get them lost by trying to navigate a strange mountain at night. But the time passing grew untenable, and the thought nagged that he should have let the professional handle it.
Would Dr. Brenner have made her remember it all somewhere safe, where he had control of the process? Smith frowned. He didn’t know the first thing about psychiatry, but even if Dr. Brenner knew his business, the control he wielded over her seemed excessive. Wasn’t a therapist’s job to help a patient toward independence? Why, as she said, did she live with her psychiatrist on speed dial? Unless …
Smith faced the uncomfortable truth. She must be more fragile than he had wanted to believe. Fear assaulted him, fear that he had caused irreparable damage, pridefully believing he could do for her what no one else had. Lord.
He had honestly believed he had a part in this, that Tessa trusted him because God had entrusted her to him. His promise to protect her was not false bravado, but a divine conviction, he’d thought. Had he been wrong?
Before Danae’s rejection, he’d believed himself capable, sufficient. He’d been astonished by his actual inadequacy. God had strengthened him through that rejection, prepared him, he’d thought, for this moment.
Tessa’s faith looked nothing like his, but he recalled now how badly she had wanted to find that cross in the labyrinth. Maybe her insistence had not been to recover an artifact but to satisfy a spiritual hunger. She had pursued God assiduously, yet she’d seemed unable to receive the Father’s love and forgive herself for the betrayal she’d remembered tonight. Maybe instead of the Father’s love, he should have given her the cross, the blood of Jesus covering her guilt.
Lord, help and console and heal her.
Clouds closed in, diffusing the moonlight into a surreal white glow. Foamy pellets of snow dropped through the trees, and the gusty wind stuck rude fingers into his collar. He couldn’t wait any longer. Gathering her up, he pressed up from his knees and started down. The slope was as good a compass as he would get, though it was growing slippery.
He sighed with relief when he reached the stone outcropping where she’d paused. Though he’d worked up a thin sweat inside his shirt, the cold sank into his bones as he assessed his direction. Unsure of the angle at which Tessa had approached the boulders, he tried again to rouse her. No response.
How long before the others noticed? They must have seen them getting coats and going out. Or had they been immersed at the sink that faced away from the door? He kicked himself for not retrieving his cell phone in Maryland. Tessa had been willing to go back for it, but he hadn’t wanted her to. Now he wished he’d climbed back into that hole himself.
But wait. Tessa might have hers. He braced against a boulder and felt her pockets. Disappointed, he gathered himself and went on, straining to see through the darkened tree spires, trying not to slip. His chest throbbed with each draw of frigid, pine-and-snowscented air. From somewhere to his right a chorus of yipping barks suggested coyotes on a kill. What else lurked in the dark woods with eyes nocturnally attuned and a taste for blood?
Wind gusted the dry pellets into his face, and in minutes larger flakes swirled around them. “God, help me,” he whispered. What was it doing snowing in October?
A shout came from below. Bair. Too winded to holler back, Smith headed the direction from which it came. A second shout. Genie’s voice. They were out together. With the continuous calls drawing him down, Smith drew near enough to answer.
Some distance farther, he saw the beams of their torches looking insipid. “Bair,” he called again. One light swung up to meet him, then the other, effectively blinding him.
Bair hurried up. “What happened?”
“She remembered.”
Genie came in closer. “Remembered what?”
“What happened to her father.”
“The guy who ran off?”
Bair had been briefed, but Genie seemingly not. Smith considered the options, then said, “She witnessed his murder.”
Genie gaped in the moonlight. “When?”
“She was almost six. But the memory was so real. This is some emotional shock, I imagine.” As the adrenaline passed, he staggered.
“Let me.” Bair handed Genie his torch.
When Smith transferred Tessa, his knees almost buckled. Genie steadied him with a hand, but his main concern was Bair’s conveying Tessa the rest of the way down. Let strength trump clumsiness, he thought in the continuous silent dialogue he’d been holding with God.
Genie led the way bac
k to the house. He had only been a little off course, might’ve landed at one of the houses farther down or to the right. Fatigue caught him from behind and sank its fangs, but they’d reached the back door swamped by golden light. Bair maneuvered Tessa inside. Genie followed. Smith gripped the jamb a moment, then closed the door behind them.
CHAPTER
35
Bair laid Tessa on the couch. Genie draped her with a soft green throw. Smith crouched beside her. “Tessa, can you hear me?”
Genie leaned in. “Wake up, Tessa. Wake up.”
Bair pressed his fingers to her throat and consulted his watch. “Pulse is elevated. Maybe we should call that bloke with the goatee.”
“No.”
“Aren’t you afraid—”
“Yes, Bair. I am. But I’m not sure her shrink is the best and only choice.”
Genie rested her hands on her hips. “Tessa trusts Dr. Brenner. He’s like a father to her.”
Smith eyed her. “That doesn’t strike you as strange?”
“He’s her therapist.”
Yes, but to what degree did a therapist insert himself into his client’s life? “Just give her a while. Let her realize she’s safe.” Was she? Or was she trapped somewhere by the monster in her mind? “I don’t know how long it’s been since she’s slept.”
“If she were sleeping, we could wake her.”
“There’s no point going out in the storm.” He slipped onto the couch and nestled her head in his lap. “Give her until morning. Then we’ll decide.”
Genie frowned. “Are you sure?”
He wasn’t sure of anything but did not want to give her up to anyone else when he’d promised they’d get through this together. “It’s only a few more hours.”
Bair nodded. “All right. Till morning.”
When Bair and Genie had gone upstairs to their respective rooms, Smith stretched out alongside Tessa and held her tightly against his chest. He wanted her to know without doubt that he was there. “Hang on, Tess. Hang on.” With his face immersed in her hair, he succumbed to sleep, opening his eyes only when the light of dawn came through the uncovered windows.
The Edge of Recall Page 28