by Nora Roberts
“I don’t want any brandy.”
“I didn’t ask you what you wanted.” He began opening cupboards himself until he found a small bottle.
Under other circumstances, he’d have offended her sense of aesthetics by pouring brandy into a juice glass.
“Knock it back, Slim.”
She might have been angry, might have been in the grip of despair, but Reece knew when it was pointless to argue. She took the glass, swallowed the two fingers of brandy in one gulp. And shuddered.
“The sketch. It could be me.”
“How do you figure?”
“If I imagined it…I’ve been through violence.”
“Ever been strangled?”
“So it took another form.” She set the glass down with a snap. “Someone tried to kill me once, and I’ve spent the last two years waiting for someone to try again. There’s a resemblance between me and the sketch.”
“In that you’re both female and you both have long, dark hair. Or you did.” Frowning a little, he reached out to touch the tips of her hair that fell several inches above her shoulders now. “It’s not your face.”
“But I didn’t see her very well.”
“But you did see her.”
“I don’tknow .”
“I do.” Since he knew she wouldn’t have coffee, he opened her refrigerator and was pleasantly surprised to see she’d stocked his brand of beer. He took one out, popped the top. “You saw those two people by the river.”
“How can you be sure? You didn’t see them.”
“I saw you,” he said simply. “But let’s get back to that. What other things don’t you remember?”
“I don’t remember marking up my trail map, or unlocking my door and dragging it open in the middle of the night, putting the damn mixing bowls in the closet and my hiking boots and pack in the kitchen cupboard. Or packing my clothes in my duffel. And there are other things, little things. I need to go back.”
“Back where?”
She scrubbed her hands over her face, left them there. “I’m not getting better. I need to go back in the hospital.”
“Bullshit. What’s this about packing your clothes?”
“I came home one night—the night I went out to Clancy’s with Linda-gail, and all my things were packed up. Everything packed in my duffel. I must’ve done it that morning, or on one of my breaks. I don’t remember. And once the flashlight I keep by the bed was in the refrigerator.”
“I found my wallet there once. Weird.”
She let out a sigh. “It’s not the same. I don’t put things in the wrong place. Ever. At least…not when I’m aware, not when I’m healthy. It’s certainly not normal for me to take bowls out of the kitchen and move them to the shelf in the clothes closet. I don’t misplace things because I can’t function if I don’t know exactly where everything is. And, the point is, I’m not functioning.”
“More bullshit.” Idly, he poked in the grocery bag. “What’re all these leaves and grasses?”
“They’re field greens.” She rubbed at the headache drilling into her temple. “I need to go. It’s what I was telling myself when I packed. I must have been telling myself that all along, back on the trail, pretending everything was on its way back to normal.”
“You saw a woman murdered while you were on the trail. Not so normal. I had doubts about that at the time, but now—”
“You did?”
“Not that you saw her—them. But that she was dead. It was possible she got up, walked out of there. Marginally possible. But she’s dead as Elvis.”
“Are you listening to me? Did you see what I did in there?” She flung a hand toward the bathroom.
“What if you didn’t?”
“Who the hell else?” she exploded. “I’m unstable, Brody, for Christ’s sake. I’m hallucinating murders and writing on walls.”
“What if you’re not?” he repeated in the same implacable tone. “Listen, I make a pretty decent living on what-ifs. What if you saw exactly what you said you saw?”
“And what if I did? It doesn’t change the rest of it.”
“Changes everything. Ever seeGaslight ?”
She stared at him. “Maybe that’s why I’m attracted to you. You’re as crazy as I am. What the hell doesGaslight have to do with me regressing to fugue states and writing all over my bathroom?”
“What if you’re not the one who wrote all over the bathroom?”
Her head hurt; her stomach was raw from churning. Since she was too tired to walk to a chair, she just sat on the floor and leaned back against the refrigerator. “If you think someone is doing a Charles Boyer on me, youare as crazy as I am.”
“Which scares you more, Reece?” He crouched down so their faces were level. “Believing you’re having another breakdown, or that someone wants you to believe it?”
Everything inside her trembled. “I don’t know.”
“Since it’s a toss-up, play along with me. What if you saw a woman murdered, an act no one else witnessed. You reported it, and word got around. What if the killer got that word—or, as we considered before, he saw you. He didn’t get away clean, after all. Covered his tracks, sure, but he didn’t get away clean.”
“Because there was a witness,” she whispered.
“Yeah. But the only witness has a history of psychological problems with their roots in violence. He can use that. Not everyone believes her anyway—new in town, a little shaky on her pins. But since she’s persistent, why not give her a little push on those shaky pins.”
“Well, God. Why not just shoot me in the head and get it over with?”
“Another murder, people are going to start taking you seriously.”
“Posthumously.”
“Sure.” Still got some of that steel in there, he thought. Maybe it had a couple of dents in it, but it would hold. “But give her some of those subtle little nudges and chances are she does one of two things. She breaks down, runs naked in the street singing show tunes, or she runs and has her breakdown somewhere else. Either way, her claims as a murder witness are likely to be dismissed.”
“But that’s…”
“Crazy? No, it’s not. It’s very smart, and very coolheaded.”
“So, instead of believing I’m a complete emotional and mental disaster area, you want me to believe a killer is stalking me, breaking into my apartment and trying to gaslight me.”
He took another pull of beer again. “It’s a theory.”
Sometime in the last minute, as what he was saying sank in, her throat had gone desert dry. “The first option is easier. Been there, after all, done that.”
“I bet it is. But you don’t take the easy way.”
“That’s a strange thing to say to someone who’s been running away from everything, including herself, for the better part of a year.”
“If that’s how you see it, maybe you are a little whacked.”
He rose and, almost as an afterthought, held out a hand to help her to her feet. After a moment’s hesitation, she took it. And she faced him.
“How do you see it?”
“I’m looking at a woman who survived. Her friends, who were next thing to family, all killed—one of them right in front of her, while she’s shot and left for dead. Trapped in the dark, bleeding. Everything she knew and cherished was taken, for no rhyme, no reason, so she was left with a shattered sense of security and an endangered sense of what some would call sanity. She’s standing here two years later because she’s been fighting her way back, step by step, at her own time, her own pace.
“I think she’s one of the strongest people I’ve ever met.”
Her breath hitched in and out. “I guess you don’t get out much.”
“There you are.” He smiled a little, tapped his finger on her forehead. “Right in there. Get some things together; you better stay at my place tonight.”
“I can’t take this in.”
“You will.” He poked into the grocery bag. “Would this
be dinner?”
“Ohshit ! The scallops!”
He knew she was all the way back when she leaped toward the bag and dug down. “Thank God I had them bagged with an ice pack. They’re still cold. Something to be said for keeping the thermostat low.”
“I like scallops.”
“You haven’t seen food you don’t like.” Then she braced her hands on the counter and just closed her eyes. “You won’t let me fall apart. You just won’t let me.”
“I told you once before, hysterical women annoy me.”
“You told me once before you were hot for neurotics.”
“Yeah, I did. Not only is there a difference between hysteria and neurosis, I’ve decided you’re not neurotic enough for me. So I’m just going to use you until something better comes along.”
She rubbed her gritty eyes. “That’s fair.”
“When it does? You can still cook for me.”
“Thanks.” She dropped her hands and looked at him. “You held me while I cried. Annoying for you.”
“You weren’t hysterical. You were hurting. Just don’t make a habit of it.”
“I love you. I’m in love with you.”
She heard absolutely nothing for ten full seconds. And when he did speak, she caught the faintest trace of fear mixed in with the annoyance.
“Hell. No good deed goes unpunished.”
She laughed, rich and full and long. And the warmth of it soothed her raw throat, her raw nerves. “And that’s why. I must be out of my mind. Don’t worry about it, Brody.”
She turned now, noted he was staring at her with the cautious respect a man shows a ticking bomb. “Underneath all the neuroses, I’m a sensible, contemporary woman. You’re not responsible for my feelings or under obligation to reciprocate. But when you’ve gone through what I’ve been through, you learn not to take things for granted. Time, people, feelings. My therapist is the one who started me keeping a journal,” she continued as she packed what she’d need. “To get my feelings, my emotions—ones I just couldn’t articulate—out on paper. It’s helped me do just that, and made it easier to articulate them. Like now, for instance.”
“You’re mixing up trust, and a misplaced sense of gratitude, and the fact we’ve got heat.”
“My head may be screwed up, but my heart’s fine. But if it scares you, I can call Linda-gail and stay with her until I figure out what to do next.”
“Just get what you need,” he said abruptly. “Including whatever it takes to cook this stuff.”
SHE WASN’T in love with him. But having herthink she was worried him. Here he was, trying to help her out—which was probably his first mistake—and now she was complicating everything. Just like a woman, he thought, wrapping ribbons around everything.
They were choking him.
At least she wasn’t talking about it now. Or making herself sick over what had happened in her apartment.
As he’d known it would, the act of preparing a meal settled her down. Writing could do that for him, so he understood how it worked. You got sucked into the work, and sucked out of what was bothering you.
But she was going to have to go back onto the boggy ground of what was happening. If his theory held any weight, she was in trouble.
“You want some wine?” he asked her.
“No. No, thanks. I’ll stick with water.” She arranged the dressed field greens, tossed with raw carrot curls, on small plates. “The rest will take a few more minutes, so we can start with this.”
He figured he’d eaten more salad in a couple of weeks with her than he normally did in six months on his own.
“Joanie’s going to have a fit when she sees that bathroom.”
“So paint it.”
Reece stabbed at her salad. “I can’t paint the tiles, the floor.”
“Mac’s probably got some solvent or something that’ll deal with it. The place isn’t a frigging penthouse, Slim. Needed work anyway.”
“There’s a silver lining. Brody, I had lost time before. And memory lapses. Not in more than a year—or, ha ha, not that I can remember—but I experienced both.”
“Doesn’t mean you are now, does it? I’ve been around you a lot the last couple weeks. I haven’t seen you go into a fugue state or sleepwalk, or redecorate the cabin walls with messages from your subconscious. I haven’t seen you do anything stranger than reorganize my kitchen drawers.”
“Organize,” she corrected. “In order to be reorganized, they’d have had to have something at least resembling organization in the first place.”
“I could find stuff. Sooner or later.” Since it was there, and hell, it was pretty damn good, he ate more salad. “Has anyone at Joanie’s mentioned you did anything weird?”
“Joanie thought it was weird I insisted I needed okra to make minestrone.”
“Okra is the weird boy of vegetables, after all. When you had this sort of thing happen before, in Boston, were you always alone?”
She rose to put the finishing touches on the rest of the meal. “No. I always felt worse about it because it might happen anywhere, anytime. After I got out of the hospital—the first time—I stayed at my grandmother’s. She took me shopping. Later, I found this hideous brown sweater in my drawer, and I asked her where it came from. I could see something was wrong by the way she looked at me, and when I pressed, she told me I’d bought it. That we’d had a conversation about it because she knew it wasn’t my style. I told her, and the salesclerk, I had to have it because it was bulletproof.”
She flipped the scallops with a deft flick of the wrist. “Another time, she came into my room in the middle of the night because she heard all this racket. I was nailing my windows shut. I don’t remember getting the hammer or the nails. I came out of it with her holding me and crying.”
“Both incidents sound like defensive measures to me. You were scared.”
“Scared doesn’t cover it. And there were other incidents. I had night terrors where I could hear the crashing, and the gunshots, the screaming. I’d try to break down doors. I climbed out of the window—the same one I tried to nail shut—one night during one of them. A neighbor found me standing out on the sidewalk in a nightshirt. I didn’t know where I was, how I got there.”
She laid a plate in front of Brody. “That’s when I checked myself into the hospital. This could be a relapse.”
“Which handily happens only when you’re alone? I’m not buying. You work at Joanie’s a good eight hours, five to six days a week. You spend time with me, with Linda-gail, around town. But you haven’t had—what would you call it?—an episode except in your own apartment when no one’s around.Gaslight .”
“Are you Joseph Cotten?”
“I like a woman who knows her classic movies.” He touched her hand, just a brush of fingers. “There’s another in here.Rear Window .”
“Jimmy Stewart sees a murder across the courtyard in another apartment while he’s laid up with a broken leg.” Thoughtfully now, she sat down with her own plate. “No one else sees, no one believes him. Not even Grace Kelly. Not his pal the cop, shoot, shoot, give me a minute—”
“Wendell Corey.”
“Damn it. Or the always delightful Thelma Ritter. Nobody believes that Raymond Burr’s killed his wife.”
“There’s no evidence to support our hero’s claim. No body, no sign of struggle, no blood. And Jimmy’s been acting a little strange.”
“So, in your world, I’m caught up in a mix ofGaslight andRear Window .”
“Watch out for guys who look like Perry Mason and/or have a French accent.”
“You’re making me feel better. A couple hours ago…” She had to stop, press her fingers to her eyes. “I was curled up on the floor whimpering. I was all but sucking my thumb. I was back at the bottom.”
“No, just slipped a few rungs. And you got up again. That’s courage.”
She dropped her hands. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Right now you should eat your scallops. The
y’re pretty fucking terrific.”
“Okay.” She took a deliberate bite, and of course he was right. They were pretty fucking terrific. “I’ve gained three pounds.”
“Three whole pounds. Where’d I put that confetti?”
“It’s because I’m doing more cooking. Not just at Joanie’s, but here. Like this.”
“Whatever I can do.”
“I’m having sex on a regular basis.”
“I repeat, whatever I can do.”
“I had my hair cut and styled.”
“So noted.”
She cocked her head. If she had to pull teeth, she’d get out the pliers. “Well, do you like it or not?”
“It’s okay.”
“Oh, please stop.” She waved a hand. “Must you be so effusive with your compliments?”
“I’m an effusive kind of guy.”
She flipped her fingers through it. “I like it. If you don’t, you should just say so.”
“If I didn’t like it, I’d say I didn’t. Or I’d say it was your business if you want to have crappy-looking hair all over your head.”
“That’s exactly what you’d say,” she replied. “Being with you has been really good for me. I like being with you, talking to you. I like cooking for you and sleeping with you. I’ve felt more like…I won’t saywho I was , because you can never go back.”
“Maybe you’re not supposed to.”
“No, you’re not. I’ve felt more like who I hoped I could be since I’ve been with you. But we both know it would be smarter, saner, all around, for you and I to take a step back from each other.”
He frowned across the table, cutting into a scallop. “Look, if this is about you thinking you’re in love with me, and that’s getting everything sticky—”
“It’s not.” She took another, very deliberate bite of scallop. “You should consider yourself lucky I’m in love with you, even if my mental health is questionable. A lot of women may find you sexually attractive, but they’d be put off by your cranky nature.”
“Three-year-olds are cranky.”
“Exactly. It’s not about my feelings for you, it’s about the situation. If I’m backsliding, I’m not a good bet for even the most casual of relationships. If you’re right and it’s, well, outside forces, I’m a lousier bet.”
