Cast a Pale Shadow

by Scott, Barbara

  "Splashes?"

  The steam had turned the hair that fringed his neck and brow to dark, damp ringlets, making the lighter curls on top seem to shine like gold. She tweaked a curl and let it spring back. "Yeah. Scoot forward, I'll rub your back."

  "I don't think--"

  She stuck her lower lip out in an exaggerated pout. "I bet you let that big, blond nurse who was always hanging around your room give you a back rub."

  "Which big, blond nurse?"

  "Ah hah! Just as I thought, there was more than one!" She feigned a snatch for the washcloth he was using as a breechcloth, and he was forced to draw his knees up to avoid her maneuver. The action moved him forward in the tub just as she wanted.

  "I thought the idea was to allow me a long, relaxing soak."

  "Oh? Am I disturbing you?" A just audible moan escaped him as he covered his face with his hands and shook his head. Swiftly, while his eyes were still covered, she discarded her own clothes and stepped into the tub behind him, one foot along each side of his hips.

  "Trissa! What the...!"

  "Shhh," she hissed as she settled herself in the hot water. "This is a Japanese style back rub. We saw it in that movie, remember? Oh, no, I guess that was Nicholas. It's an extremely ancient, quite reputable tradition. Very therapeutic. Just relax."

  "I'm getting to be very wary of that word," he said. But even he could not remain aloof to her very gentle strokes from his neck, down his spine, and feathering out to his ribs. His bruises were dark and ugly around his lower back, and she was extra careful there. She hummed under her breath as she felt his tension drain out through her fingertips.

  "What are you singing?"

  "'Pretend you're happy when you're blue, it isn't very hard to do,'" she sang. "Our song, remember?"

  "No."

  She did not let his terse answer discourage her. He would remember, eventually. She continued singing and massaging. And when the bar of soap slipped by, she caught it and sudsed up Cole's back, edging herself ever closer, so that only a whisper separated them.

  Finally, when it seemed that his muscles had turned to butter with her touch, she grasped his shoulders and leaned back taking him with her. His skin was so slippery with the soap and the bath oil, and he offered so little resistance that when she tilted him and jostled him left, he tipped and they slithered together like playful seals.

  Giggling and giddy with her easy triumph, she let her hands slide off his shoulders and she dipped beneath the water under him. He grabbed for her and she came up sputtering and gasping, savoring the silken slide of his skin against hers.

  "Now what?" he grumbled, his voice tight and rasping.

  She struggled to catch her breath before she answered, a project complicated by her determination to place a string of kisses around his neck and end at his heart. "Well, I don't want you to drown me, so what else do you suppose we could do in this position?"

  "What you don't understand is that I can't," he said gruffly. "There have been other opportunities. With other women, some bought, some offered freely. But it is impossible."

  "I know different."

  "That was Nicholas. Not me."

  "You are Nicholas. The same face, the same body, the same heart. And if I was promised to be loved with all of this heart, then it's still mine, and I will have it." Her confidence grew with every pulse of his heart, for he did not move away. He held himself so close and so still against her that it seemed the world had ceased turning and waited, waited. And she held her breath and waited too.

  His eyes burned into hers, glinting bronze ingots. "I don't want to love you, Trissa," he groaned.

  "Oh yes, you do. You're lying." She traced the clenched line of his jaw and the deep furrow of his brow with her fingertip, then she pressed it to his chin. "Let me see your tongue."

  "My tongue..." Cole began, but as soon as he opened his mouth, he was lost. She invaded him with a kiss that sent them both plummeting. He braced their bodies against the side of the huge, old tub, and the water, like a warm caress, sloshed around them. Her legs lightly twined with his, and her body moved against his as gently as tropical waves lap the shore.

  "Don't, Trissa. I won't," he protested as she ended the kiss, as if he did not know that his fingertips ardently grazed her aroused nipple, as if he did not notice the evidence of his own arousal.

  "Don't lie to me. I can taste your lies. I can feel them. Here." She brushed the tip of her tongue against his lips, as her fingers massaged tender, lazy circles down his chest and stomach. "And here." His denial and resolve shattered with her intimate touch and they both sighed with sudden, wild contentment as she guided him home within her. She wrapped her arms around his neck and whispered in his ear. "Don't worry about the splashes. That's what the towels were for."

  But Cole had no space in his mind for worry. It was caught up in the web of pure pleasure that she spun from the core of her to gather him in. If this was a dream and the water that enveloped them but the mist of sleep.... If this were Nicholas reaching out from his soul to take her, if this was madness to relinquish his will to the sweet power of Trissa's love, he did not want to know. The water cascaded between them as he lifted from her then sluiced away as they surged together again.

  "Cole," she whispered against his neck and he loved her all the more for saying that name and not the other. "I love you, Cole."

  Trissa felt a ravenous joy rising within her, devouring all her fear and worry, bobbing and dipping toward the brink like a barrel on the Niagara. "Trissa!" he cried out as they plunged together, and she could not care that it was Cole and not Nicholas. They were one.

  All three, one.

  It was a long while before they trusted their jellied bones and melted muscles enough to chance standing. It was only when he heard Trissa's teeth chattering though he held her as close as it was possible to hold her. The sound of them startled her as well and she giggled shakily. "Maybe your big, blond nurse would have stayed warm longer."

  "Maybe, but I doubt that the tub would have held her and me both."

  "Oh, you thug, you do remember her," she scolded, and she cuffed his shoulder as he sat up and strained to reach a dry towel to wrap her in.

  "With fleeting fondness," he admitted. They depended on each other's support and their tenacious grip on the rim of the tub to get over the edge. Trissa squealed as her toes squished into a soggy towel on the floor. "We will have a lot to explain if it starts to rain on the dinner crowd," Cole said, grabbing the terry robe she'd brought him from its hook on the wall. "My guess is this tub is situated directly above Hattie's place at the table."

  "Oh, God, what if they heard us?" Trissa's eyes sparkled blue as a starlit sky against the flush on her face from her chagrin and the heat of their bath. She huddled in her large, plush towel like a blanket.

  "We'll just tell them that it's an extremely ancient, quite reputable tradition. Very therapeutic." To Cole's astonishment, he could not resist gathering her in his arms and kissing her again with a fervent passion. She had burned through the frigid soul of him he had guarded so well for so long. The thought alarmed him. He broke the kiss and gently but firmly put her at arm's length. "You'd better get dressed. I'll clean up here."

  "But your sore back..."

  "We seem to have worked the kinks out," he said dryly, and gave her a little nudge out the door.

  Later when the floor and tub were dry and shining, he emerged to find the bedroom silent and deserted. He went to the closet and searched for some clothes he recognized. In the eight or so months Nicholas had been in charge, he had apparently discarded some of Cole's old favorites. Eventually he found a comfortable pair of khaki pants and a hunter green pullover, not his, but they'd do. He collected a few more articles to move to his room downstairs. If his time with Fitapaldi went badly tomorrow, he wanted the things he'd need handy to be packed. He did not know whether he would be around to do the packing or even be coherent enough to give instruction.

  A shiver of
the old, cold loneliness attacked as he put the clothes over his arm, and he stood still bracing for the worst of it. How curious that it should feel so foreign so quickly. But he guessed he had better get reacquainted. It had been foolish for him and cruel to the girl to pretend it could go away for long. Pretend you're happy when you're blue. He heard the whispered melody flutter through his mind. It was just a song, worse than a wish for breaking the heart.

  A muffled thud thumped against the door. "Cole, open up." Trissa called, sounding a bit frantic and breathless. He yanked the door open to find her loaded down with a tray full of food and with the newspaper and her folktale book tucked under her arm.

  "Augusta sent sandwiches. She said she thought we might need fortifying." As he took the tray from her, her face wrinkled in a bemused frown. "I hope she meant from the strain of the funeral."

  "I'm sure she did."

  She puttered around arranging the sandwiches and fruit salad cups on the coffee table. "Roger's heart tests went well, though he is disappointed that they refused to let him go back to limited duty. It looks like his retirement will be made final. Otherwise, they said if he takes it easy there is nothing -- Cole, where are you going with those clothes?"

  "I thought I'd move them downstairs."

  "But I brought the paper. Don't you want to hear the baseball scores? And I promised to read Finn MacCoul and the Fenians of Erin, remember?"

  "Trissa, I can't stay here tonight."

  "Oh."

  "You do understand, don't you?"

  "No."

  "I can't let myself get too attached."

  "Oh."

  Her clipped, hurt words were like pricks to the heart with a tiny dagger. His will seeped away through the wounds. "But, I guess, there's no harm in reading. This room's the same as any other for reading."

  She put one hand over the folktale book and the other at shoulder height, palm forward. "I solemnly swear to read and only read."

  She did not keep her pledge. She never had any intention to keep it. And in the end, he had to admit, even to himself, he was very glad of that.

  Chapter Nineteen

  There had been no difficulty engaging the treatment room. As a staff psychiatrist with an affiliated hospital in Michigan, Fitapaldi had been accorded all courtesies and facilities to treat his patient here in St. Louis. Every step had been smoothly and efficiently handled, and he had let the ease and convenience of the arrangements lull him into burying his initial doubts.

  It had only been when he drove around the circle drive to the front of this St. Vincent's, an almost identical twin to his hospital up north, that the misgivings overwhelmed him. The same black and white tiles paved the floor, the same green walls and over-waxed wood trim lined their path, the same marble statues with the same insipid smiles served as markers along the way. If Cole had not been so adamant and unyielding in his decision, he might have sensed Fitapaldi's foreboding or felt the same himself. How Fitapaldi regretted he hadn't followed his instincts and canceled the session.

  It should have been so simple. He had used narcotherapy with dozens of patients, victims of traumatic neuroses, whose anxieties were lifted and who had experienced an almost immediate abatement of their symptoms. A slow injection of two to five tenths gram of sodium pentathol in a five to ten percent solution should have induced in Cole, as it had in those others he'd treated, the state of relaxation and serenity needed to bring to the surface his repressed memories and conflicts.

  In this session, he had planned only to question Cole about his meeting with Bob Kirk, and he was so sure that Cole was not at fault in Kirk's subsequent death that he knew the facts uncovered would ease his anxieties about the matter. With that out of the way, there would be nothing to stop Trissa's effective, loving therapy from proceeding. He believed Trissa alone had the power to lead Cole out of the darkness and back into life. Fitapaldi had only to clear the path.

  "I want to love her, Doctor. For the first time in my life, I want someone to love," Cole had said when he came to him with his plea for help. "When I'm with her, it is like I'm someone else. Not Cole. Not Nicholas either. But someone who's only whole when she's there to complete me. Is that love, do you think? I know so little about it."

  "Yes. I think that is love."

  "But you know how hopeless it is. I'm more than a little insane, and I remember only half a life, and I probably killed her father. A promising start for a young couple in love."

  "You are no murderer, Cole. I am sure of that," he'd promised him.

  And Fitapaldi had believed that so deeply that when the first jolt of the session struck him, he panicked and pulled back from his questions instead of pursuing them to resolution. As a doctor, he had broken the primary tenet of therapy and become too involved with his patient to be able to accept the revelation neutrally as he should have. Thus, he had failed Cole as dismally as all the others of his profession had ever failed him. How could he have been so wrong?

  The tape spun to its end and Fitapaldi rewound and played it again, hoping he had somehow missed a key phrase that would make the nightmare stop. Cole's voice in flat, slowing cadence recited the numbers once more.

  "Ninety-four, ninety-three, ninety, nine..."

  "Are you feeling all right, Cole? Do you hear me?"

  "I'm cold. See the goose bumps? I hear you."

  "Will you answer my questions?"

  "Fire away, Doc."

  "What is your name?"

  "Nicholas. Andrew. Brewer."

  "Good. And when were you born?"

  "July 28, 1937. A Depression baby. Another mouth to feed. Save a place in the soup line."

  "Do you know where you were born?"

  "Dayton, Ohio. Ohh-hii-ooo. It's very cold. My teeth are chattering. Is there a window open?"

  "We'll get you a jacket." A pause, then, "There. Is that better?"

  "A l-little."

  "I want you to think back to just a short while ago, Nicholas, just two weeks ago. Can you remember back that far?"

  "Far, far ago."

  "Just two weeks. It was evening. Do you remember Bob Kirk?"

  "The grave. Yes, the grave. Far, far ago. Once upon a time. The c-cold and l-lonely grave. So dark, forever dark."

  "No, Nicholas, I want you to remember before that, before the cemetery. The night you--"

  "The night there was no morning. And Cynthia is in the dark. As c-c-cold as I am. I'm sh-shivering. Is it right to b-be so c-cold?"

  "Do you want to stop the session, Nicholas? Nurse, get me some blankets."

  "No g-good. N-no good. I wrapped her in the quilt. B-but it was no good. Cynthia, my sleeping princess. Awake. Aw-wake t-to me. D-down, down in the d-deep, cold grave. Take me. G-god, Cy-cynthia, take me with you!"

  "You can leave this memory now. Come back to just two weeks ago. There is no Cynthia in this memory of two weeks ago."

  "No, there is no Cynthia an-anymore. 'Til death do us p-part, Cynthia. But it was not s-supposed to part us. Why couldn't you t-take me with you?"

  "It's all right, Nicholas. We are stopping now. You don't have to remember anymore. Look, here are the blankets. We will let you sleep, now."

  Fitapaldi snapped off the tape recorder and buried his face in his hands. Cynthia. He remembered Cynthia from the stack of pictures Cole had brought with him to the session, hoping they would stir a memory. Cynthia with the large, dark eyes, alert and luminous as a sparrow's in her thin, triangular face. Cynthia, smiling, with wisps of hair sticking out of the kerchief she had tied behind her head like a Russian peasant. "If we only had forever, Nicholas. Love, Cynthia," she had scrawled on the back of one of the photos.

  When, with tortured effort, Fitapaldi succeeded in clearing his mind of Cynthia, the memory of Cole took her place, shivering violently in the jacket, under the blanket, mumbling about the grave, the dark and lonely grave until the second injection he had given him had finally taken effect and he had sunk into deep sleep. He slept still, on the bed in the treatmen
t room next door, while Fitapaldi sat and pondered his mistakes and wondered what to do. He had been so sure Cole was not a murderer, that Nicholas could not do what Cole would not have done. How could he have been so wrong?

  Several hours later, when he had yet to think of any solutions and Cole faced him expectantly across the desk, Fitapaldi fell back on his training to carry him through the second part of the therapy. Perhaps there was an explanation buried as deeply as the memory. Perhaps if he slashed deep enough he would find it.

  "Do you remember these photographs, Cole?'

  "Yes, Trissa showed them to me several times."

  "But do you remember this girl?" he held out the doe-eyed girl with the scarf. "Do you know where she is now?"

  "No. She is one of Nicholas's girls. He collected them."

  "And you never met her yourself?"

  "No."

  "Did you ever meet any of Nicholas's girls?"

  "Other than Trissa? Yes, one."

  "Can you show me that one?"

  Cole spread the photos in a fan on the desk. "This one."

  "Jane Simmons?"

  "That's what the back says."

  "What happened to her? Do you know?"

  Cole's face clouded. "Yes."

  "Can you tell me?"

  "What does this have to do with me now? What does it have to do with our session?"

  "You don't want to tell me?"

  "I'm not proud of it."

  "Not proud?"

  Cole shoved his hands in his pocket and stretched his legs out in front of him, pretending a casualness that was denied by the rigid lock on his knees and the grim line of his jaw. "I got rid of her."

  "How do you mean?"

  He shrugged, as if it meant nothing. "I was cruel to her."

  "You hurt her?"

  "Yes."

  "How?"

  "I screamed at her. I called her names. I called her a fat, stupid cow. I threw her clothes out into the street."

  "I see."

  Yanking his legs back, Cole sat upright, his hands out in the open again, gripping the arms of the chair. "Wait a minute. How did you think? Did you think I hit her? God, it was bad enough what I did. She cried. She pounded on the door, crying. She sat on the front steps, crying. I couldn't stand it. I went out to her and apologized. But I wouldn't let her back in. I gave her some money and took her to a motel. I told her she could have the apartment in the morning, that she was better off without me. I would be gone by then. And I was."