Day Three

by Patricia Spencer

  Anger flared through Daniel. This whole time, Sam had been manipulating him. “You know what, Sam? You can be a real son of a bitch.”

  The old man rose, plucked his Stetson off the console, tapped it onto his head, and tipped the rim with a nod of acknowledgement. “I reckon so.” He paused, his hand on the doorknob. “Tell Mrs. Velazquez the pendejo expects her usual fine editing on the rest of this project.”

  After the door closed, Daniel slumped forward in his seat, intensely relieved. He was still employed.

  Elbows on his knees, eyeglasses in one hand, he raked his hair. He had to wonder: Had Brenna done this? Urged him to shape the piece in such a personal way that, once started down this road, no one else could finish it?

  Jesus, he missed her.

  Intellectually, he could enumerate the reasons why their relationship was impossible. He just couldn’t convince his heart.

  Standing at the kitchen sink, Margaret immersed her hands in sudsy dishwater, finishing the breakfast cleanup. Brenna stood silently beside her, drying dishes, her eyes drifting past the pine interior of the cottage to the ocean beyond the picture windows.

  Margaret was easing into a therapeutic relationship with her. She had used the past days to let the booze clear Brenna’s system, to get her back on anti-depressants by having Alden write the prescriptions in her own name, and to get her fed and physically rested—as much as possible, given how often Margaret heard her crying out in her sleep.

  To steer Brenna into the habit of personal disclosure, Margaret took her on long walks through the meadows down to the cool shore, conversationally asking personal questions, following them until she sensed that her prodding was making Brenna uncomfortable, then dropping them. Gradually, she was assessing Brenna’s sore spots—her mother’s death, her relationship with her father, Ari’s death, the events in Kavsak, and of course, her relationship with Daniel—notable because it was unmentioned. The closer the topic, the less said.

  Before anything could be achieved, Margaret had to build trust.

  Daily, Margaret also guided Brenna through relaxation exercises, helping her to become aware of where her body held stress, teaching her how to clear her mind and remain in the here and now. She was teaching Brenna how to apply the brakes before she set her on the potentially runaway path of recollection.

  The objective was to help Brenna reassess and reframe the traumas that had brought her to her current nadir without forcing her to relive them.

  “So what gentle torture do you have in mind today?” Brenna asked.

  She handed Brenna the last breakfast plate to dry and put away. “Sunshine,” she said. “A walk to the sea to pay obeisance to grandeur.”

  “You’re sidling up to this, aren’t you, Margaret? Coming at me obliquely. Lulling me.”

  She pulled the drain stopper, turned, and used the free end of Brenna’s dishcloth to dry her hands. Brenna was an observer, not one to be manipulated, however benignly. “And how does that make you feel?” She chuckled, mocking the cliché of her profession.

  To her surprise, Brenna answered.

  “Uneasy.”

  Well, bingo. An honest reply, not one of her usual parries or silences.

  “I feel like my life is waiting to jump out at me.”

  Margaret squeezed Brenna’s wrist. “Before we poke at the underbrush, I want you to create in your mind a place where you feel safe. You must be able to identify its qualities so comprehensively that you can evoke the way it looks and sounds and smells and feels. When you’re able to put yourself in that unassailable place, we can begin.”

  “Mind games, Margaret?”

  She nodded. “The same brain that can torment you can be trained to afford you peace.”

  Brenna pursed her lips, wrestling with skepticism.

  Come on, Margaret thought. Put yourself in my hands.

  “What kind of place?”

  “A castle surrounded by a moat. Wide-open prairies with clear horizons in all directions. A cloud. Any place, Brenna, that makes you feel safe. You have to find that image. I can’t provide it for you.”

  “And then?”

  Then we let life jump out at you.

  “Margaret.”

  “One step at a time.” She took Brenna’s elbow. “Come,” she said, and took her out the front door to the quiet spectacle of the natural world.

  The first time she saw Brenna’s gait stutter when she stepped off the concrete stoop, Margaret dismissed it as a misstep, a momentary imbalance. Today, understanding it was a recurring pattern, she filed it in her mind for follow-up.

  They ambled down the footpath worn between the grasses to the edge of the sea cliff. Brenna pulled a stem of grass and played with it in her hands, watching the sun sparkle the waves. “I wish…”

  “Wish…” Margaret prompted.

  “I wish my mom hadn’t died, you know? Because I really needed her.”

  “Yes. I do know. No matter how old you are when your mother dies, it’s a grievous loss.”

  “I’ve felt like an orphan for so long.”

  Not blurting, Margaret noted. Personal feelings, offered non-impulsively. Progress.

  Brenna cast a glance at her. “Daniel’s lucky to have you.”

  Her first mention of him since she arrived. The topic lay between them, undiscussed. Margaret was in the middle, with muddied loyalties. Brenna wasn’t oblivious. She was testing the boundaries.

  “You and I both have a careful path to tread. My son’s salvation came at a great cost to you. That cost has to be examined. But I’m his mother. I’m biased. I wanted my child saved—not some other woman’s. Brenna, this is why I gave you Charlotte Hamilton’s phone number before I left Washington. In this respect, and in the fact that I also want you to be well enough to cherish Daniel as his mate, I have a personal investment in a given outcome that may not be the best one for you. There’s a risk I may misguide you. You’d do well to consider putting yourself into Charlotte’s care rather than mine.”

  Brenna ignored the suggestion. “Daniel hates what I did. He knows intellectually that I had no choice. But in his heart—?” Brenna broke off, her voice engorged with sudden rage and self-hatred. “What a monstrous woman I am.” She dashed at her tears as if they had no right to stream down her cheeks.

  “I didn’t save him, Margaret. I saved myself—made it so I didn’t have to see him be killed.” She shut down abruptly, an overloaded circuit with too much current crackling through it. She spun away, recklessly scrambled down the rocky slope to the water, opening distance between them.

  Margaret stood on the cliff, watched conflict play itself out in Brenna’s restless body, prayed that she wouldn’t simply walk into the frigid ocean and swim out to a point of no return. Brenna was experiencing classic PTSD symptoms. Turbulent emotions lay just beneath a thin veneer of self-control. The individual struggled constantly to keep them under control, then felt ashamed and humiliated when they boiled over. Lord help me, she prayed. Give me insight. Help me keep her safe.

  Down at the shore, Brenna gradually settled. At last, she chose a boulder, hitched herself up on it, and drew her knees to her chest. Resting her forearms on them, she lowered her chin and stared out at the horizon.

  Now. Margaret picked her way down the slope to her. Over and again this had to be proven, that when Brenna was adrift, she was valued enough to be retrieved. Margaret came alongside the boulder. “Give me a little edge, dear.”

  Brenna scooted over, leaving her the lowest, most level spot. She turned her face away, her remarkable green eyes refusing direct engagement.

  Margaret listened to the tiny waves creeping up and pouncing on the shore. You’re not monstrous, she wanted to tell Brenna. You didn’t save yourself. You saved Daniel because you loved him.

  But right now, those weren’t words she could believe. She had to reach those conclusions herself.

  Late that afternoon, after learning how to make grilled cheese sandwiches and soup from Margaret
and sharing the meal with her, Brenna tiptoed past her, snoozing on the couch.

  As if she were being beckoned, she opened the front door and went outside. Bare feet on the warm front stoop, eyes beguiled by the gently swaying lupines, serenaded by white-throated sparrows, she stepped onto the sun-baked earth. It was warm on her soles. She entered the garden, felt the prickle of the straw mulch, smelled its pungent aroma.

  Amid the rows, trees surrounding her like sentinels, she crouched down, caressed the fuzzy sage, brushed the mint so its clean, crisp scent would rise and fill the air. Cocking her head, she heard a buzz. She scanned the vines. A big bumble bee poked its head into a cucumber blossom. Finished, it departed, pollen-covered, to the next yellow bloom.

  She pushed the straw aside, scratched the earth, curled loose dark soil in her palm. Examining it carefully, she saw it wasn’t just dirt, but life itself, complexity embodied, abundance beyond imagining, the heady concoction from which everything issued. She sat down, surrounded by lushness, and turned her face to the sun.

  Evanescent presence whispered through her. This was mother, silent sure companion, murmuring among the plants, shining down from high above, caressing her with her soft breeze.

  She lay back, arms stretched out across the ground. Against her spine, she felt the rise, felt the fall. The Earth was breathing. Silently. Unnoticed. In, she thought, tuning her own lungs to the same pulse. Out. Slow and easy. Endlessly enduring.

  She was cradled.

  Safe.

  James, sitting at his cluttered clinic desk after hours, nearly fell off his seat. An e-mail from Brenna!

  To: James Rease, MD

  From: Brenna Rease

  Subject: I’m okay

  Hey, Bro

  It’s me. Figured I’d get you off the worry hook and let you know I’m all right. I have found a safe place and am working with someone I trust. As soon as I’m no longer certifiable, I’ll risk proximity with you again ;)

  Meanwhile, feel free to e-mail me back on this untraceable server. (And good luck with that, since I borrowed a phone to write this, and I rarely check the account.)

  BTW, I DO love you, and I AM sorry I drank all your bourbon.

  Your (moderately) penitent,

  BEAR

  Simultaneously relieved and annoyed, James clicked the ‘Reply’ icon and typed.

  You little shit.

  He hovered the cursor over the ‘Send’ button, reconsidered, and added another line.

  I love you anyway. (But it’s a near thing.)

  He clicked ‘Send’.

  He sat back, rubbed his raspy face, and calculated the time difference to Vienna. Late night there. Good. The Magnificent would be in his rococo, pampered-poodle hotel bed.

  He dialed his father’s direct line.

  “What in blazes—?”

  James didn’t bother with pleasantries. What went ’round, came ’round. “Good news, Dad.”

  The phone rustled at the other end, the old man sitting up, turning on a bedside lamp, switching the phone to his good ear. “What?”

  “Brenna. She’s okay.”

  His dad grunted. No ‘Hooray’. No ‘Oh, thank God’, James noted. Fifty-some years in a profession that considered emotion a fatal flaw had warped his father, disabled him as a participant in his daughter’s life. “Where is she?”

  “Don’t know. She e-mailed me.”

  “Are you sure it was her?”

  “Oh, yeah, totally. High-handed. Aggravating. Untraceable. It’s her, all right.”

  “I want to know where she is.”

  “Well, don’t we all, Dad.”

  “Yes. General Cavic in particular.”

  Damn, the phone was annoying.

  Daniel sat up on the couch to get it, the auto-pilot version of dead-asleep in wrinkled work clothes. The house lights, shining in his eyes, made them water. He glanced at his watch. Seven-bloody-thirty in the evening—that was it? His sense of time had been thrown out of whack by his marathon work weeks.

  Thick-fingered, he pawed at the handset on the coffee table, pressed the ‘Talk’ button, and lifted the receiver to his ear. “Hullo?”

  “Daniel.”

  Adrenaline shot through him. James. Brenna had disappeared. FBI agents had come to his door, asking questions, fearing for her safety. “James? Jesus. Tell me she isn’t—”

  “She’s okay, Daniel. I called to tell you she’s okay.”

  He lowered his forehead into the palm of his hand. “Oh, man,” he muttered.

  “I didn’t mean to scare you,” James said. “But, yeah. Me too. ‘Oh man’.”

  Daniel took a shaky breath, grateful that James had called, eager to know everything but feeling he had no right to ask. If Brenna wanted to share this information, she would have called him herself.

  “She didn’t say where she is, just that she’s found a safe place and is working with someone she trusts.”

  His eyes stung. He was so exhausted, his emotions so raw he could scarcely keep them in check.

  “It’s a good sign,” James said. “Working on stuff.”

  “Yeah, I’m glad, James. I want—” he swallowed “—I want her to be well, you know, even if…”

  Even if. Even after. Despite.

  “You sound pretty whipped, Ellsworth.”

  Daniel smiled. Ellsworth. “I’m…Well, I’m doing what she asked, way back when.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Not turning in crap just so I can sleep at night.”

  James chuckled. “Sounds like her. Direct quote, I bet.”

  “Pretty much.” He knew he should hang up, but James was a link to her, however indirect. Moreover, he liked the man.

  “She can be kind of fierce, sometimes,” James said.

  “I liked her fierce. It kills me that…” He broke off, his throat too constricted to finish.

  “That what?”

  “That she broke. That I wasn’t able to fix it.” That love didn’t conquer all. It was his one tool, his one hope, and it had failed.

  James was silent on the other end of the line. Daniel had said too much, made him uncomfortable by revealing too much emotion. “Well, anyway—”

  “She’s a fighter, Daniel.”

  “I know, I know,” he forced himself to banter. “She’s a Rease.”

  “It’s not all persona. There’s substance, too.”

  “Let me guess, Big Bro. You just squared your shoulders and raised a haughty eyebrow.”

  “See?” James said. “That’s why you’re so perfect for Bear. You love her, and you take no shit.”

  Convinced that Brenna had found a solid vision of safety—the garden—and that she could evoke the detail of it with sufficient conviction, Margaret, sitting on the couch across from her in that armchair she’d adopted as her preferred seat, considered the idea of starting the next phase of work.

  This would be the most demanding part, where Brenna’s ability to trust her would come into full play, and where she would have to draw on her already-depleted reservoir of personal courage in order to prevail. In this phase, Brenna’s injuries would be probed and laid open. She would have to set aside her defenses, bare her soul. If she quit before Margaret could help her reassemble herself, she would be worse off than when she began.

  It would be like going to a surgeon, allowing him to cut you open, then getting off the table with your entrails hanging out before he had a chance to close the incision. Unlike surgical patients, who were immobilized and anesthetized before a procedure, a patient with psychological wounds could get off the table at any time.

  Brenna’s eyes narrowed. “You’re scheming something, Margaret.”

  Margaret chuckled. Brenna read faces like a grade-school primer. She wasn’t naïve. She would recognize the interfaces of the therapeutic process. Working with her would be akin to a magician playing for an audience of prestidigitators. Could she, being so closely-watched, conjure relief? A return to functionality?

 
She took a calming breath and met Brenna’s eyes. “It’s time to start,” she said. Now or never.

  Brenna chortled. “Start? No. You’ve been working me all along. Getting me used to your hypnotic voice through your guided relaxation exercises, probing my injuries and backing off once you know the sore points. You have a list, don’t you? A mental list as exhaustive as any Beck Depression Inventory.”

  “There are tools, in my profession, developed for good reason—”

  “—Metrics. Quantification.”

  “Yes, for clarification. I haven’t written anything down, Brenna, and I won’t. There will not be anything anyone can use against you.” Margaret felt Brenna’s resistance, the fear lurking behind it, her determination not to be processed like some subject, but to be met on fully human ground as an equal. “We have to talk about what you want to achieve, and you have to decide if you want it badly enough to relinquish yourself into my care. You cannot keep your guard up if you want this to succeed.”

  Brenna’s life, as Margaret interpreted it, revolved around the central theme of abandonment. Her mother. Her father. Ari. And if there was one thing an abandoned person learned to do, it was to leave first, before what she wanted could be taken away from her.

  Perverse, reverse, control.

  A temporary counter to powerlessness, it was ultimately self-defeating. Most recent case in point: Daniel. His heart was nowhere finished with her. He hadn’t gotten the chance to debrief with her about the events in Kavsak. She had left. In doing so, she had not only let go of her own last thread of hope, but his, too.

  Until Brenna made the commitment to see therapy through—to not abandon—Margaret would not risk dismantling her. Desperately in need as she was, Brenna was having difficulty breaking her lifetime habit of emotional seclusion.

  Brenna lowered her feet to the floor. “I’m going to bed.”

  “Sleep well, my dear. See you in the morning.” I’ll be here. In your corner.