Day Three

by Patricia Spencer

  “Shh,” Margaret was saying. “Shh.”

  Brenna wanted to stay there, forever cradled. But she pulled away, ashamed that her breakdown had been witnessed.

  Margaret rested her hand on Brenna’s back. “Who taught you not to cry?” she asked.

  “I’m not crying.”

  Margaret blinked.

  Brenna realized the disjuncture of what she’d said, and shrugged. “Six brothers. Father.”

  “Oh, dear Brenna. Who cries the tears of the world, if not the women? It has always fallen to us.”

  She sat silently, wiped her face on her sleeve. “I can’t stand it.”

  “The flashbacks?”

  She shook her head. “The reality.”

  “Mm.”

  Brenna pulled her hands out of Margaret’s. “You shouldn’t be so nice to me. You don’t know who I am or what I’ve done.” She felt like a war criminal, mistaken after the fact as a victim and offered mercy she didn’t deserve.

  Margaret studied her. “If you had no conscience, Brenna, you would feel no conflict. No torment. Your deeds would be done and you would not look back.”

  “Your son loves me,” Brenna said defiantly. “What if you’re wrong?”

  Margaret’s brows furrowed. “I’m not wrong about you. I’ve made no mistake. I am an old woman, and I live in Portland, that’s true. But I’ve been in practice for many years, and the world has come to me in all its vivid horror through the people I care for. I’ll never hate you, Brenna, for what has befallen you. Never.”

  “But Daniel will.” The words fled her lips before she could censor them. Her throat constricted. “He’ll stop loving me.” Her heart twisted as if a large-bore drill had pierced it and kept on turning.

  “I can’t speak for him,” Margaret said, her eyes lighting on Brenna’s face. “But, do you know how long it took his son, our grandson, to die?”

  She shook her head warily.

  “Aya was crushed in the car accident, but kept alive long enough for the doctors to perform a cesarean and deliver Joseph Alden. For three days, they worked on him. Tubes, surgeries, drugs, respirators. Seventy-two hours of trying everything—and Daniel right there beside him, stroking any little patch of unbruised skin he could find, approving more and more extreme interventions, watching his son fade to nothing.”

  Margaret met Brenna’s eyes. “Do you think, Brenna, that Daniel has no concept of what it is to be powerless? To have to choose between bad and worse? To want something with every fiber of your being and not be able to make it turn around?”

  After Daniel and his father returned from church, Brenna sat through the afternoon with the family, listening to their relaxed interactions. Through dinner, she remembered to nod, to smile from time to time. She tried to look normal enough to relax the apprehension on Daniel’s face.

  “I’m fine,” she kept saying each time he checked with her, which was often.

  She begged off early and retired to her room. She closed the door. Lay on top of the bedcovers, fully clothed. Her hands tucked beneath her head, she watched the room grow dark, just as she had that last night in Kavsak when she stood by the window, watching, waiting.

  Like then, the shadows grew long. Night fell. She did not turn on the light. Did not fall asleep. Outside her room, she heard Daniel’s parents bid him goodnight and head upstairs. In the family room, the music faded and she felt him, sitting there, the house silent around him. Time slipped past. She remained suspended in an unending present moment.

  Eventually, she heard a tap at the door. Lying on her side now, she turned her head to the rectangle of light as the door swung open. Daniel, silhouetted. Barefoot, wearing pajama pants, he came in and sat on the edge of her bed.

  “Curious thing,” he said, picking up her hand and rubbing it between his own, “I’m so used to sleeping crowded together on the couch with you, that now my bed seems too roomy.”

  She curled her fingers around his and brought them to her lips. I love your tenderness, she wanted to say, but she felt mute, stuck inside herself.

  He raked his free hand through her hair, lightly, sweetly. “Tomorrow’s a new day, Bren. They won’t all be difficult.”

  She shrugged, wondering if Margaret had told him about her earlier breakdown in the garden. Probably not. She had a feeling Margaret kept private things private. Daniel had just read her himself.

  He leaned over and kissed her temple. “I’m on the couch tonight, if you want to come crowd me.”

  “You don’t have to sleep on the couch. I won’t kill myself in your home and ruin your safe place.”

  He grunted, relieved. “Good,” he said, pressing her hand to his heart. “But I’ll be on the couch anyway, okay? Just in case your bed seems too roomy?”

  He stood up, positioned the walking stick closer to her. At the door, he said: “I’ll leave this open a little.”

  Daniel stretched out on the couch, stuffed his pillow under his head, and pulled the cool sheet over himself. He was worried about Brenna. She had promised not to harm herself in his home, which hugely relieved him. But something was amiss. Some psychological shift had occurred. Her spirit was muted. He’d sensed it the moment she stepped out of her room that morning.

  Not that anything about her behavior had been objectionable. She’d been a model of propriety. Interacted politely with his parents, helped to set the table, sat pleasantly through meals for which she had no appetite. He snorted at the irony. Brenna, temperate, mannerly, unnerved the hell out of him.

  He heard a shuffle and raised his head to look over the back of the couch.

  Brenna was coming over. Leaning heavily on the walking stick, she rounded the staircase and came to the head of the couch. He looked up at her, his heart skipping beats. As long as she kept returning to him there was hope.

  “You’re the one with the broad shoulders,” she said. “That’s what makes the couch crowded.”

  He smiled. “True. But you’re the one with the curvy hips.” He held the sheet up so she could get in beside him.

  She sat down on the edge of the couch instead. “I want to know something.”

  He let the sheet drop and sat up. “What’s that.”

  She traced the pattern in the handle of the cane. “Why you’ve never asked me.”

  “Asked?” he said carefully.

  “About that night.”

  His blood ran cold. He hadn’t expected this. But the moment was upon him. There was the obvious reply, of course, that he didn’t want to push her over the edge. But until she’d laid her bald question before him, he hadn’t realized there was also a second, equally compelling reason for his silence.

  He didn’t want to know.

  Not really.

  He swallowed hard. “Cowardice, I suppose.”

  Her head came up in surprise.

  “You’re the gatherer,” he explained.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Everyone has their share of tragedy, Brenna. Life doles it out among us all, mostly in survivable portions. But you collect it. You’re there for everyone else’s misery. You watch it unfold. Record it. Feel it and carry it with you.” He met her eyes. “I don’t want to know what you know. It’s too much. One person can’t carry all of humanity, Bren. It’s overwhelming.”

  She nodded.

  He put his hand on her back. “Which isn’t to say I won’t carry the piece that’s rightly mine—the piece you’ve been carrying for me since that night you paid for my life.” He brushed fine strands of silky hair off her forehead. “When the time is right for you, I want you to tell me what that was, and let me help you bear it, okay?”

  She covered her mouth, stifled a sob.

  “Did you want to tell me now?” His mom was in the house. If Brenna melted down, he had an expert on hand.

  Brenna started shaking, her body nearly convulsing, the tremors were so profound.

  All Daniel could think of were James’ words to him that day at the hospital: What the
fuck did she do for you? Because she’s dying from it.

  He wrapped his sheet around her, eased her onto the couch beside him, and spooned her with his body to warm her. “Maybe tonight, we’d do better if we were a little crowded together, don’t you think?”

  She nodded, barely holding herself together.

  Cast away, treading midnight, Brenna sensed a monstrous membrane floating up beside her. Gelatinous sac, mostly submerged, it trailed ropes of coiled tentacles—a swaying forest of trigger hairs, barbed coils, and venom sacs attracted by her naked skin.

  A tiny, paralyzed gasp escaped her. She became rigid.

  One hard brush—one kick of panic—and it would be alerted. Ribbony fronds would entangle her. She would be immobilized, injected with venom, dragged beneath the surface, and, sucked through hollow tubes, digested.

  Whips caressed her legs. She scarcely breathed.

  Translucent jelly drifted nearer, touched her, skin-to-skin. And there it floated, nudging her, nestled right beside her.

  Margaret’s keynote speech at the D.C. Convention Center was met by a standing ovation. Her balance of research, passion, and humor riveted the crowded conference hall. Afterward, as the throng of well-wishers thinned, a 67-year old matron, her hair caught in a neat grey knot, her belly sculpted by long-ago motherhood, touched her arm.

  “Charlotte!” Margaret beamed, lacing her arm around her friend’s shoulders and embracing her.

  “Hello, Margaret.”

  She excused herself from the remaining well-wishers and led her longtime friend and former college classmate down the central staircase and out the glass doors across the street to Mount Vernon Square, where they could speak more privately.

  “Thank you for coming,” she said.

  “You called, I came,” Charlotte said. “My retirement notwithstanding.”

  “Well, now,” she said. “How is that going? I can’t imagine you, settled back, not keeping a hand in.”

  Charlotte’s eyes narrowed. “You’re up to something.”

  “There’s someone I can trust only to you.”

  “Repeat after me, Margaret: ‘Charlotte Hamilton is retired. She’s carried other people’s woes for more than forty years. She deserves some respite.’ ”

  “Of course you deserve respite. But I have a tough case here. PTSD. A high-profile patient who’s living in hell and has no one to guide her out of it. Multiple traumas, none of them resolved. History of having her trust betrayed. History of alcohol abuse, though not currently an issue.”

  “Just your sort of challenge. Why aren’t you taking it on?”

  She glanced away. “She lives in D.C.”

  Charlotte grunted dismissively. “You’ve holed up more than one patient in that seaside-Maine cottage of yours. What’s the real reason?”

  She smiled. Busted. “See? You’re the perfect see-through-nonsense psychologist.”

  “Mm-hm. Give.”

  “She’s too close. She’s Daniel’s lover.”

  “All right. And what else?”

  She hesitated.

  “Margaret.”

  “She saved Daniel’s life in Kavsak, Charlotte, and I don’t care what horrible thing she did to achieve that, so long as she did.” Tears welled in her eyes. “I was so scared that he wouldn’t come back.”

  Charlotte’s gaze softened. She rested her hand affectionately on Margaret’s arm. “All mothers are selfish when it comes to their children’s survival, Margaret. It’s primal. Goes with the territory.”

  She wiped her tears with her fingertips. “Can I give her your telephone number?”

  “Do you have someone you talk to, back home?”

  She nodded.

  “Promise me you’ll see him or her when you return, and you can give your son’s lover my telephone number.”

  “Her name’s Brenna. Brenna Rease.”

  Charlotte’s eyebrows rose. “The Envoy’s Brenna Rease?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good heavens.”

  “She needs someone, desperately.”

  “And you think she’ll call me?”

  “Honestly, Charlotte? I doubt it.”

  Back home after taking Brenna to the Navy Medical Center for physiotherapy, Daniel sat in his armchair, laptop on his knees, phone at his side, keeping a watchful distance while she lay on the couch. Passive and withdrawn, she had declined much in the way of breakfast. Now, she was fatigued, irritable as she always was after the painful workout, her sandwich and glass of milk untouched on the table beside her.

  Her eyes were closed but she wasn’t asleep.

  He clicked his e-mail. The deadline for the rough cut was rapidly approaching and, working from home, spending time with his parents, he wasn’t as productive as he needed to be. The window popped open on his screen. He scrolled down the list of unread mail, deciding what to tackle.

  He saw Luc Morriseau’s return address, with the subject line: Jasha.

  He moved the cursor over the entry, double-clicked, and read.

  Brenna’s eyes flew open. She turned on her side. “What.”

  He looked up, shocked.

  “You said ‘Dear God’.”

  He hadn’t realized. He felt his pulse throbbing at his neck. He studied her, wondering if he should tell her. Now, of all times, when she was so fragile.

  She sat up, wincing, her eyes fixed on him. “What?”

  He felt a muscle twitching in his jaw. She’d seen. Knew something was wrong. He had to tell her. “Bad news.”

  “Work?”

  He set aside the laptop and went to sit beside her.

  “No,” he said. “E-mail from Luc.”

  “Is he alright?”

  He took her hand. “Luc is fine, honey, but…Jasha was killed.”

  Her face turned dead-white. “How?”

  “He was sniped while he was driving. Rammed a concrete barrier.” It was foregone he’d been driving at breakneck speed.

  She folded her arms across her belly and doubled forward.

  He put his arm across her back, wishing she would just weep.

  “Dr. J’s last surviving child,” she whispered.

  “Luc said Jasha had made some sort of immigration deal for her. She’s coming to the States.”

  Chapter 26

  Margaret knocked on Brenna’s closed bedroom door. Brenna had retreated, scarcely leaving her room since receiving the news of her friend’s death.

  “Brenna, dear. It’s Margaret. Alden and I are about to start home again.”

  “Come in.”

  She turned the knob and entered. Brenna was dressed, sitting at the desk chair staring out the window, the picture of despondency. Her dark mood had deepened. She hated to leave Brenna like this, but she was too close, too involved, to offer her professional skills.

  She sat on the bed, facing Brenna’s profile, turning a piece of paper over in her hands. “The pain inside you has to come out, Brenna. You can’t undo what’s happened in your past—can’t control the present. But you can learn to live with it, to feel whole again. I…I took the liberty of asking a dear friend of mine, Charlotte Hamilton, if she can help you with this. She’s…well, she’s a woman I’d trust with my life—a woman I trust with yours.”

  Brenna listened without moving.

  “There are ways to get you to a place of greater peace.” She held out the piece of paper. “This is her number. She works out of her home, so it’s discreet. She’s very protective of her patients. Never a whisper to anyone about who she sees, or what is said in confidence.”

  Brenna looked at the little slip of paper, not a scintilla of interest in her expression. Her eyes rose to Margaret’s. Fractionally, she lifted a shoulder, took the number. Civility, Margaret thought. Because she was Daniel’s mother and Brenna would not slight her—not because she planned to follow up.

  Offering the opportunity was all Margaret could do. She hesitated. “A person can walk down a long, hard road alone and make it out, but there�
�s comfort in making a difficult journey with a loved one.”

  “My whole life, I’ve toughed out my roads alone.”

  “I was thinking about Daniel,” Margaret said softly.

  Brenna looked up sharply.

  “He needs you.”

  Brenna paused, nodded acknowledgement.

  Margaret rubbed her knees with the palms of her hands. “Alden and I are in the phone book. Portland, Maine. We’d love it if you called.” She stood up. Patting Brenna’s shoulder, she said: “Will you come out with Daniel now and see us off?”

  Standing on the brick path beside the driveway, Brenna close by his side, Daniel watched his parents pull away and disappear from view. Over 40,000 deaths on American highways every year, and his parents were joining that high-speed stream, just as Aya had that morning two years ago.

  Brenna slid her arm around his waist. He slid his around her shoulder, pleased by the warmth of her soft body leaning against his, by her desire to comfort him even though she had no more control over their fate than he did. “That last night in Kavsak, I thought about them being alone as they aged. Now, even with me back in D.C., the distance still seems too great.”

  “You’d get there pretty fast if they needed you.”

  “Yeah,” he said, turning to her. “But it’s not just about being around in times of crisis, it’s about sharing the every-day, too.”

  She turned into him, lifted her face, and kissed him.

  He closed his eyes, easing his hands down the smooth curve of her lower back, delighted both by the intimacy and the fact that she had initiated it. A car, he thought vaguely, was pulling into his driveway—just as Brenna was melting into him. He groaned, not wanting to break his connection to her. Maybe it was just someone turning around.

  The engine turned off. A door opened, then closed, and a man cleared his throat.

  Daniel reluctantly released Brenna and looked up to see who it was.

  Sam Chisolm, with a large manila envelope in his hands and a scowl beneath his Stetson. Sam disapproved of office romances. They disrupted the workplace, turned a man’s eyes homeward, derailed him from corporate goals.