After a late dinner, he poured wine for them, thinking how Jane had done the same a week ago and how he hadn’t been ready. She knew he’d gone to see his therapist. She might not have been as patient otherwise. But she needs to know. He set the glasses on Will’s kitchen table and joined her. He wasn’t sure how to begin.
“I know you’ve been worried,” he said in a rush, and Jane, bless her, just waited. “It’s been a little rough lately, and I’m not sure why.” He clasped his hands together on the table, his fingers flexing and releasing as he spoke. “I was out of the field for nearly two years at the embassy, and I was good. But then . . . ” He faltered and glanced at her. Her expression was calm but thoughtful.
“De Roos,” she provided for him.
Richard nodded. “It didn’t feel great that I was still walking at the end of it, but Elizabeth wasn’t. It made me want to play the whole thing over and over in my mind, analyze what I could’ve done differently.” He looked down at his hands, “And it brought other things back.”
Jane glanced at him askance. “Are you still holding on to that?”
He considered it. “Maybe.”
She moved to the chair beside Richard and laid her hands over his. “And?”
“Jane,” he said, and stopped. “Jane,” he began again, resolutely, “it’s hard to say this.”
“Just say it,” Jane told him, sitting back and pulling her hands back. Her expression flattened.
Richard wasn’t watching her, instead caught up in his own struggles. “This mood, the sleeplessness, the jumpiness, you know, everything—it doesn’t happen very often anymore,” he said, staring at the wine in his glass. “But it does happen from time to time. When it does, I call my therapist, and we work through it.” He reached out carefully to recapture her hands. He noticed she was breathing quickly and frowned.
“I’m completely able to function,” he assured her solemnly, “but I’m not—I don’t know—whole?” His eyebrows pinched together. “I just want to be sure you know what you’re getting into. I’d hate to lose you over this, but it’s only fair to . . . ”
“Oh, thank God,” Jane said in a rush, interrupting him.
Richard’s lips quirked up involuntarily. “And why are you thanking God?” he asked, bemused.
“I thought you were going to suggest we break up,” Jane admitted, propping her elbow on the table and leaning her forehead against her hand.
Richard was stunned for a moment, and then began to laugh softly. “I may be a bit of a mental case at times,” he told her, feeling relief radiating from him in waves, “but I’m not stupid.”
Jane kept her head down for a bit while she recovered. “Richard,” she said at last, “I knew what I was getting into with a Marine. I’ve had some experience with this, you know. Uncle Ed, Elizabeth, and it doesn’t just happen in the military.”
He nodded. “Sure.”
“There’s my work, of course,” she continued. “And I survived the Bennet household,” she added, grimacing. She rubbed her forehead and let out a long breath. “Honestly, I couldn’t face my parents anymore, and I made up all sorts of reasons not to go home. I thought it would force my father to deal with my mother. I didn’t know it then, but all I did was dump my problems in Elizabeth’s lap. I still feel guilty about that.”
Richard was silent. He had of course observed Jane’s driving ambition, how hard she worked, how serious she was about the smallest details. Her dedication was one of the things he loved about her. But what he had seen before now was what she had made of a terrible situation, how she had turned it into something good—not what it had cost her.
“We were so conditioned to keep things quiet,” she said, her eyes faraway. “It didn’t take much for Mom to ensure Elizabeth never said a thing. But being out of the house for almost two years taught me that our family wasn’t normal. If I’d gone home, I would have called Uncle Ed and Aunt Maddy right away. That whole awful year wouldn’t have happened.” She turned her head to look at him, and he was startled by the pain he saw in her eyes. “I saved myself, but Elizabeth saved everyone else. I’m the oldest. That’s supposed to be my job.”
Richard tried to pull himself out of the story to see what it was Jane was trying to tell him. He thought he understood, and it was confirmed when she added, in a voice as gentle as a dream, “We’re all damaged in one way or another, Richard. But we’re stronger together than we are on our own.”
The winter sunlight had awakened her early, and now Elizabeth was battling a serious case of anxiety. She couldn’t eat, and her hands shook slightly as she brushed her hair. Her reflection in the mirror was pale and tired. She hadn’t slept well, wondering what she’d be facing today.
She knew she didn’t want to ever again experience anything like she had at the resort. Still, her secrets were so deep that they anchored her. It was almost painful to consider giving them up. To even think about giving them up. She missed Will dreadfully, but in a way, it was easier not to have him here. She’d have forced herself to put on a happy face for him, she knew, and that would have taken a great deal of energy she didn’t seem to have.
She checked her phone for the time, tossing on her clothes and finishing a cup of coffee. Finally, she fished a small box from her carry-on bag. She opened the lid, removed the silver necklace, and fastened it around her neck, glancing at herself in the mirror. She rubbed the spiral pendant between her thumb and forefinger and closed her eyes. Remember Maine, she told herself, willing herself to calm. Remember Will and how much he loves you.
She stared at herself in the mirror. All right, Bennet, she told herself staunchly. Time to go.
Thirty minutes later, she was sitting with a therapist named Doctor Mun-Hee Kwon and discussing options for their work together. The doctor was tinier even than Abby, but she was elegant in her dress and movements. Elizabeth felt a little at a loss and a lot like an ungainly giant, but she was grateful that the process would include her. They could work their way up to the big issues, apparently, rather than tackle them all the first day and work through them all week.
“After all,” Kwon told her calmly, her eyes kind and steady, “we have plenty of time.”
“Do I have to draw?” Elizabeth asked her, skeptical. “I don’t draw well, and De Roos is on video. I have it on my phone.”
“You keep it on your phone?” the doctor asked quietly. Elizabeth had already noted that the therapist did everything quietly, intentionally. She was going to turn out to be one of those unflappable personalities.
Elizabeth nodded. “I haven’t watched since before I came home, but I do. Have them. There were a few.” She frowned. “Is it weird to be proud of the thing that dogs you?”
“From what you’ve told me so far, it’s not the only thing that’s bothering you,” Kwang replied gently. “And no, it’s not weird.” She handed Elizabeth a pad of drawing paper and showed her to a desk. “Shall we begin?”
Will tossed his laptop bag on his desk at home and plopped, tired, into his office chair. He checked the time and put in a call to Elizabeth.
“Mmmph,” he heard her say, and then there was some static.
“Are you sleeping?” he asked, surprised. “It’s only ten.”
She moaned. “I’m exhausted, Will. I did the equivalent of six one-hour sessions today and it’s only Monday. It’s like I’ve been to boot camp for the brain.”
He chuckled a little, but he didn’t envy her. All-day therapy would rank high on his list of nightmares. “It’s going well?”
She made some sort of huffing grunt. “It’s just the first day. I’m drawing a graphic narrative, and I can’t really draw. I dunno. It was okay.”
Will frowned. “Are you getting anything out of it?”
She cleared her throat. “The doctor’s good, but I’ll be glad when it’s done. You know, happy I did it. Just not particularly enjoying the journey.” Her voice was still heavy with sleep, but getting clearer.
Oh. Good. “So
how are you, then? Besides exhausted.” He stood to walk to the kitchen.
Her voice cleared, and she asked, “Hey, are you just getting in?”
Yeah, she’s waking up. “Yes. I had to take a call from Honolulu, and it went later than I thought. We finished about an hour ago.”
“You have to learn to delegate some of these calls, Will,” she said. “What’s the point of having Richard there if you’re still working all these late hours?”
“If you were here, I wouldn’t be working late.”
“So it’s my fault?”
He hastened to clarify. “No,” he said, “I just meant the work’s a distraction.”
“Don’t try to clean it up, Will.” He heard her sigh. “I get that sometimes you’ll have to work late. It happens to me too when I get hit with something unexpected. But if you’re in the office by seven and it’s a normal day, you shouldn’t leave later than five.”
He rolled his eyes. He was tired and didn’t need a lecture. “My schedule’s fine, mother.”
There was a silence on the other end of the line. “Maybe we should try this again tomorrow,” she said coolly. “Goodnight, Will.”
The line cut off.
“Shit,” Will said to the walls.
Elizabeth turned her phone off and tossed it on the bedside table. She curled on her side and burrowed back under the covers. Despite Will’s tendency to overbearing behavior with those around him, he couldn’t take a well-intentioned, constructive comment about his work hours.
Elizabeth punched her pillow, trying to work some of her aggravation out. It didn’t work, and she flopped onto her back with a grimace. She could call Richard and enlist his help, but that seemed underhanded, somehow. She’d much rather Will just have a conversation with her and see that it wasn’t necessary to work himself into the ground.
It wasn’t unreasonable, she told herself, for Will to worry about sharing the leadership of his company when he was the one who’d built it. She knew he’d taken more time off in the fall than he ever had before. But he was at work so many hours at a time now—she didn’t want him to become a victim of his own success. When companies grew, they couldn’t be managed in the same way—even she knew that. And FORGE was growing, had been growing at a steady but rapid pace since the thwarted database attack.
“Stubborn donkey,” she muttered. “If he gives himself a heart attack at thirty, I’ll kill him myself.” She closed her eyes, her fist closed around her pendant. He promised he’d take me to Venice someday.
It took several hours for her to finally fall asleep.
On Tuesday night, Jane and Richard walked into the Pleiades Gallery with purpose. Charlotte had been angling to join the Pleiades as a member since she was seventeen, and she’d finally made it into the last gallery in the city that didn’t charge commissions from the artists. It was a huge accomplishment. Even Uncle Ed had brought Aunt Maddy to view the paintings, though he claimed to know nothing about art. They’d purchased one of her smaller landscapes for Maddy’s office off the kitchen.
Richard wandered the gallery, checking out the installations, but Jane noted he was drawn back to Charlotte’s work each time. He was particularly interested in a large multimedia painting of a woman and child floating on the bay in a small boat. The woman and child, faintly Madonna-like, were painted in oils, but the sea itself was represented with thousands of tiny strips of blue and green plastic. The effect was spectacular, the light shining off the plastic and throwing pinpoints of light that mimicked the water’s surface. Jane liked it as well. She recalled Charlotte driving out to the beach every week for over a year collecting bits of trash to use in her work. This was one of the results.
“What do you think of this one, Jane?” Richard asked, standing before it again. “I can’t explain why, but I think I love it.” He gave her that wild, lopsided grin she adored, and she smiled back at him.
“You’ll need a pretty substantial wall to hang it,” she warned him. “And you’ll need to put it somewhere it’ll get good light, either mounted or natural.”
The corners of his eyes crinkled. “Well, it’s a good thing I’m looking for an apartment, then.”
Jane raised her eyebrows at him. “When did you decide that?”
He shrugged. “About six hours ago. I really can’t stay with Will when your sister is out of town, Jane. He’s completely unbearable.”
Jane pursed her lips. “She told me they had a bit of a spat and she hung up on him.”
“Really?” Richard grinned. “Well, let me take you to dinner and you can tell me all about it. In the meantime,” he said, looking around, “where’s Charlotte?”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“You hung up on me last night,” Will complained, selecting his video call function and propping up his tablet. Elizabeth’s face appeared, but the video was shaky. She was moving around her hotel room. Eventually, she sat at the desk and set her laptop up so he could see her clearly.
“I did,” Elizabeth replied, unapologetic, her arms folded across her chest. “And I’ll point out that tonight, you called at a reasonable hour. From home.”
Will frowned. “Regardless. If we’re having a disagreement, I’d prefer to resolve it before you just end the call.” Elizabeth rolled her eyes. “Hey,” he protested, “I can see you, you know.”
“You were meant to,” she shot back. “You, of all people, have no right to call me a nag. Who’s forced me to see Garcia twice, only to have him agree that I’m fine?” Her eyes narrowed. “And you really don’t want to call me mother. There’s no mouth big enough to fit those size 13s.”
Oh crap, he thought, as understanding broke over him. No wonder she’d been so angry. Comparing any Bennet woman to her mother was a faux pas of serious dimensions. That’s not what he’d been doing. But it’s what you said. He lifted his head and rubbed the back of his neck, grimacing. “All right, spill,” he said, capitulating. “What’s that bit of idiocy going to cost me?”
He felt both better and concerned when Elizabeth’s expression relaxed into a devilish grin.
“I’ll let you know, Darcy,” she said with satisfaction, “but it won’t come cheap.”
He chuckled nervously. “I’m sure it won’t. Can I at least request that I not wind up naked on the Internet?”
The grin stretched into a smile, and she arched one eyebrow. “No promises.”
He cleared his throat and changed the subject. “So how are the sessions going? You’ve got a dozen hours under your belt now, right?”
Will watched her as closely as he could and tried to read her expression.
Elizabeth rolled her shoulders and let out a sigh. “It’s like one of those endless handkerchiefs the clowns use,” she told him. “Only I feel like I’m pulling it out of my brain. No matter how much I pull out, there’s still more.” She stared straight at him through the camera. “According to the therapist, we’re getting it all out in the open so I can figure out what it all means, or if it should mean anything at all.”
“Sounds like a lot of work,” Will said gently.
She snorted. “Better out than in, right?” Then she closed her eyes briefly and confirmed, “It is a lot of work. I’ve spent years trying to only remember the good things and forget the bad. I considered it a survival skill, but now I think it’s just caused more problems. And it’s not possible to do that here, anyway.”
“You have to face all of it,” he replied sympathetically. He’d done that with his parents’ accident, eventually. Not for some time, of course. Once everyone had been informed, the mourners had stopped calling, G was back in school, and the most pressing company business was completed. One weekend about six months into their new normal, he’d packed his sister off to the Fitzwilliams’ house for the weekend and driven to the family mausoleum to say his goodbyes in private. Then he’d returned home, locked the door, and had a few drinks. Not enough to get drunk. He would have liked to, but he couldn’t. He had too many responsibilities
to let go like that. Elizabeth’s voice broke into his musings.
She was nodding. “You have to face it before you can let it go.”
“Are they making you relive everything?” he asked. “I know you didn’t want to . . .”
“No, it’s not like that,” she replied thoughtfully. “I will say, just devoting all this time to it, I’m remembering a lot of things I packed away and haven’t thought of in a long time.” A melancholy expression appeared and then was gone just as quickly. “It’s like the drawing they had me do. You know, you just work with it, add the shading, refine the lines. You’re the artist, so you’re in control of the final product, what it looks like.” She rubbed her eyes with the thumb and forefinger of one hand. “Anyway, that’s how it feels. Like when it’s outside my head, I can see it better. It makes more sense.”
Will stared at her intensely, willing her to look up and smile at him. After a minute, she did. “Good,” he said, relieved. “That’s good.”
“So now,” she said, leaning forward into the camera eagerly. “What’s going on there? I need some gossip. Is Richard around, or is he still attached to my sister’s hip?”
“You know,” Oscar told Richard, “if I were in any way a straight man, you might have some competition for the lovely Jane Bennet.” The brothers were stretched out on Oscar’s small balcony despite the cold weather. Richard waved off the offer of a cigar. “Are you sure?” Oscar asked, surprised.
Richard grinned. “Jane says I can smoke all I want, as long as I don’t expect her to kiss me afterward.”
Oscar laughed. “I never thought I’d see you give up cigars, Richie.” He tossed the extra on the table between them. He had traveled from the Capitol offices earlier in the evening, and hadn’t changed from his expensive suit, just hung the jacket in his closet and rolled up his shirtsleeves. Richard found it amusing that he was wearing suspenders. Still, he thought, it looks good on him. He laughed at himself silently. Everything looks good on Oscar.
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