He flickered again, stared at her while his fists flexed at his sides.
“But you still loved each other,” Jesse insisted. She stood and walked toward him, driven by a compelling need to hear his agreement. “You didn’t lose that.”
“I must go,” David said. He held out his hand “Jesse—”
But whatever he’d meant to say was lost. He winked out like a light switched off. A trace of his scent lingered in the air, the ghost of a ghost.
Jesse moved through the space where he’d been, trying to recapture what they’d shared and berating herself for wasting their precious time together. Instead of savoring his presence, she’d grilled him about things that had nothing to do with now. She’d worried about a life they’d both left behind.
When David had first come to her, he’d said that his answers were in the memories he’d lost. Yet helping him revive those memories had been for herself as much as for him. At the resort, she’d watched him recall his childhood with sadness and regret. He’d relived the loss of a beloved child, and separation from his wife.
She had yet to see evidence in David’s words, his behavior, his very nature, of a single crime that would have condemned him as he said he was condemned. Somewhere a big mistake had been made, because David Ventris didn’t deserve to be damned.
He was a good man. A man she could trust as she’d never trusted before.
And in understanding that, she recognized what was happening to her. What had happened. Fight it though she might, it wasn’t going to disappear with a mere act of will. Jesse hugged herself, lost in a war between elation and fear.
Ever since her mother’s death she’d worked to give her life structure. She’d learned to make her own certainties, and even when she’d taken on the most challenging jobs in the Corps or search and rescue, she’d always protected her innermost self from the far more dangerous hazards.
The kind that went straight for the heart.
She hadn’t armored that organ quite well enough. Was it possible to fall in love with a ghost? She knew the answer to that question. Was she willing to take the ultimate risk of loving, and losing, a being who was fighting to escape the tragic fate decreed for him? A man who couldn’t promise her even the simplest future two ordinary people could expect?
When had David Ventris promised her anything but to go when she asked him to go—and to be her friend? All she and David had was now. There were no certainties, no guarantees, no last-minute miracles.
Could she live with that? Could she take the final and irrevocable step?
The sound of a knock on her front door pulled her from her dilemma. She quickly tugged on her clothes and went to answer.
Al was there, holding a handful of envelopes and looking out of place on her doorstep. Jesse felt a blush heat her cheeks, knowing how tousled she must look and what Al might think.…
Except he’d never guess. Not in a million years.
“I … happened to go by the post office and picked up your mail,” Al said. He looked at her intently. “Are you all right?”
She wanted to pour out the story to Al, confide in the one person who might not think she was crazy. But even Al couldn’t be required to stretch belief that far. She wouldn’t put a dear friend in that position.
“I’m fine,” she said, patting at her hair. She tried to remember if she’d closed the bedroom door. “Want to come in for some coffee?”
He shook his head and handed her the envelopes. “I haven’t seen much of you lately. Just wanted to check in.” He turned to go. Jesse felt a rush of affection for him and touched his arm.
“I’m sorry I haven’t come by the library. I’ve been a little preoccupied.”
“I understand. I’m grateful for what you’ve done for Megan.”
They stood and looked at each other, and Jesse wondered when things had become so awkward between them. Was it because she had to hide the truth from him? Because he wasn’t the one she turned to as she’d done in the past?
Or was it that she no longer considered Al’s detachment from the world an ideal to aspire to? Was it she who’d changed so much?
“I was about to go see Megan,” she said. “If you’ll wait a couple of minutes, I’ll walk over with you.”
She stepped back to let him through the door, and he went in after a moment’s hesitation. She steered him to the kitchen.
“If you don’t want coffee, there’s juice in the fridge,” she said.
He leaned on the kitchen table. “I heard about what happened with you and Gary at Kim’s party.”
She shouldn’t have been surprised at his straightforwardness, or that the town gossip had circulated through the library just like one of Al’s books. But she’d already made the decision not to let him get more involved in her problems.
“I guess that kind of thing would get around,” she said lightly.
“It sounded like a serious confrontation,” he said. “And now Gary’s left town. What happened, Jesse?”
“I’m sorry I didn’t have a chance to tell you about it at the time, but it really … didn’t amount to much. Gary made a fool of himself and left. There’s nothing more to worry about.”
She was lying.
Al knew her too well. She’d never let Gary off scot-free if she believed he was responsible for her mother’s death. She’d said as much to him at their second and last hypnotherapy session.
He’d heard enough of the gossip to know that Gary had virtually attacked Jesse at the party. That wasn’t an incident to disregard, and for Jesse to act this way now was sure evidence that something significant had changed.
Jesse … had changed.
If it had been this one instance, Al might have shrugged and let it pass. But he knew there was more here than Jesse pretending to dismiss the situation with Gary after she’d been so obsessed with him. More than the hypnotic visions for which he hadn’t found an adequate explanation. More even than her uncanny bonding with Megan after an equally uncanny rescue.
He had only to look at her now, and he was reminded. He’d been shocked when he saw her at the door: lips swollen, skin flushed, hair tangled, eyes heavy-lidded in the telltale signs of satisfied desire.
He recognized the indications. There’d been a time when he’d known what it was to love a woman and see that look on her face. Jesse’s uneasiness when she’d opened the door, her nervous glances over her shoulder, her misbuttoned blouse … all those little clues gave her away.
Al had made a life’s work of observing people—observing only, never experiencing except vicariously and with the safety of analytical distance.
Jesse made that distance impossible. He’d been acutely aware of how seldom he’d spoken to her over the past several days, and how much he’d missed those conversations. Except where Megan was concerned, she hadn’t come to him since their second session. Not to confess her fears, or admit her anger, or share her dreams and visions.
He’d known with that first session that an untapped part of Jesse was slowly awakening. He’d worried about it, though he seldom worried—speculated and wondered about things that had never concerned him before.
Now he understood how much had escaped him.
Jesse had been with a man. She’d been held and kissed and made love to, and it had been good for her. If Al had ever made an accurate assessment of another human being, he knew what Jesse had become.
A woman in love.
He realized that Jesse was still expecting a response to her evasion about Gary. “Go ahead and do whatever you have to do,” he said. “I’ll wait.”
She hesitated, nodded and left the kitchen. Al sank onto a chair and stretched his feet under the table. This was one of those times when the damaged leg ached like hell, echoing the turmoil of his thoughts.
Who was it? He searched his memory for any man in town Jesse had shown interest in, and came up blank. She was too wary, too reserved to flirt or seek casual relationships, and the men she worked with at the L
odge or search and rescue were partners, not lovers.
It was incredible to Al that Jesse could have taken a lover in secret. No one in town knew about it. Al lived across the yard, and he hadn’t guessed. No one had left Jesse’s cabin in the past few minutes.
Who? He laid his good arm on the table and rested his forehead against his knuckles. Jesse would tell him if he asked. They were friends. He’d felt good when she’d come to him for help. Better than he’d been able to acknowledge.
Knowing she didn’t need him anymore felt as if someone had mangled his other leg. And he couldn’t tell her what it was like. He could barely accept the truth he’d hidden from himself since Jesse had returned to Manzanita.
A truth that made no difference. He’d created a life of ignoring emotion, devoting himself to intellect and detachment. It had seemed the sanest course in a demented world.
But there was something vital missing inside him. Jesse sensed that. Megan did as well. He’d left a part of himself buried in the jungles of ’Nam, and he hadn’t even suspected it was gone.
He didn’t know how to get it back.
“You look tired,” Jesse said as she returned to the kitchen. She touched his shoulder with casual affection that sent icy shivers racing to the end of his raw nerves. “You need to get another assistant at the library.”
He sat up and looked at her. Gone was the evidence of her recent tryst; her hair was neatly pinned back, her face scrubbed, her clothes in place. She was once again the Jesse he knew.
Except for her eyes. They were brilliant with warmth, and the faint lines between her brows had been smoothed away as if by a gentle touch.
He couldn’t bring it up. He couldn’t ask. But there was another issue he could pursue.
“Jesse,” he said, “I know you haven’t dropped this business with Emerson. You told me you were going to keep searching your memories for answers.”
She sighed and walked to the kitchen window. “Okay. Gary did confront me at the party, and some of the things he said convinced me I was on the right track. This morning I went to the old resort.”
That would have taken a great deal of courage. Al knew how assiduously she’d avoided the resort since she’d come back to town.
“And did it help?” he asked.
“I … don’t know. But I’m closer all the time.” She turned around, arms across her chest. “I get little snatches of memories, pieces that just need to come together. Like the first fragment, remembering the funeral and accusing Gary—” She closed her eyes. “Screaming that he killed my mother.”
“Is that how you remember it?”
She shuddered. “ ‘You killed her.’ That’s what I said when I attacked him.”
Al positioned his cane and pushed to his feet. “But that wasn’t what you said, Jesse. I was there. Your exact words were ‘You killed me.’ ”
Her eyes snapped open. “What?”
“I’ve told you that memories can play tricks with the mind. They have ways of—”
But she wasn’t listening. She pressed her fingers to her temples. “That makes no sense,” she said. “No sense.”
“Jesse?”
The strange light in her gaze died. “Did I say anything else I don’t remember?”
“Only that. Jesse, if you want to talk—”
“No.” She shook off her fey mood and smiled. “I promised to see Megan today, and here it is already afternoon. Walk with me?”
Forcing the issue was beyond Al’s capacity. He kept his silence while they crossed the yard and Jesse spoke of inconsequential things. Her arm was linked through his, but she was miles away. Hiding from him. Lost.
He watched Megan run to her and left the two of them with some excuse about work at the library, though it was his day off. He walked into town, passing over the same familiar ground without seeing any of it. He wasn’t surprised when he ended up in front of the bar.
His hesitation was brief. The bar was dark, the ambience oddly soothing at midday. A few tables had occupants, but the overall emptiness suited Al’s mood. He looked for a table in the corner of the room, far from the jukebox and the loudest table of drinkers.
A beer, maybe something more potent—that would numb the futile emotions he couldn’t seem to discard. To hell with sobriety and self-discipline. They were highly overrated.
He was halfway to the bar when he overheard a snatch of conversation.
“Damned if he didn’t just pick up and leave without a word to me. I can’t believe he did it. I’m his buddy, fercrissake. He needs me in this town.”
Al glanced down at the speaker. Wayne Albright sat with several other men at a pockmarked table, nursing a drink. Al recognized a number of Gary Emerson’s cronies—men who’d been working to set up his “campaign office” in Manzanita and fawned all over him when he’d been in town.
“Well, shit,” another man said in obvious disgruntlement. “He promised a lot of big things, but I heard what happened at the party. The way he attacked that girl—”
“He didn’t attack nobody. That’s some damned gossip.” Wayne jerked his mug to his mouth and took a long swallow.
Al was aware of a knotting in his stomach, the way he remembered feeling in the hours before a mission in ’Nam. Wayne had been Gary’s drinking buddy back when Joan had died. His loyalty to a “friend” who hadn’t bothered to keep in touch for seventeen years was nothing short of miraculous, the mark of a small man who looked for bigger coattails to ride on.
But even Wayne sounded angry now.
“Do you mind if I join you?” Al asked.
Wayne tipped back in his chair. “Well, if it ain’t Al the librarian. Don’t think I’ve seen you in here for about a century. Given up on teetotaling?”
Al shrugged and pulled out a vacant seat. No one protested. “I heard you talking about Gary leaving town,” he said. “I heard about the party, too—that Gary threatened Jesse Copeland.”
Wayne scowled but didn’t answer. Al ordered a beer from the barmaid and glanced around the table.
“You know, I remember Gary from way back. Everyone liked him, but I always got the feeling that he was hiding something. Strange for him to make such a splash the past few days and then skip town so suddenly. No one saw him after that party.”
The expressions of the drinkers ranged from mild curiosity to disgust. Someone shuffled his feet under the table. Wayne took another long drink and banged his mug down.
“He musta had his reasons,” Wayne said. “He’s an important man now. I know he’ll call and let me know what’s up.”
Poor Wayne, with his delusions of indispensability. “Well, you knew him better than anyone else, Wayne—except Joan Copeland. He left pretty quickly after Joan’s accident, come to think of it. He does have a habit of disappearing.”
Men glanced at each other. The barmaid returned with Al’s beer. He folded his hands around the frosted glass.
“I’ve always wondered about that relationship,” he went on. “Joan never drank so much as when Gary went to live with her.”
“She was a lush,” someone said. “No good.”
Al stared into his mug. “Who decides these things, I wonder? Who figures that Gary Emerson is the best thing that ever happened to our town and Joan Copeland was no good?”
“Everyone knew,” Wayne muttered.
“The way everyone knew that Gary abused Joan?”
Wayne nearly dropped his mug. “What are you talking about?”
Al met his stare. “I’m trying to find some reason that Gary dislikes Jesse so much. Enough to threaten her in a public place. She was only a child when he knew her. Why should he be afraid of her?”
“Afraid?”
“He ran away, didn’t he?”
“That’s bullshit.”
“Is it?”
Wayne’s leathery skin had lost a little of its color. “I remember that funeral. I remember how crazy she was.”
“So do I. But she was a little girl then. Se
venteen years have passed. I know Jesse Copeland, and she’s as sane as anyone in this town.” He heard his voice rise, take on a harsh tone that startled even him. “She saved my niece and risked her life for the Moran boy. She may save one of you someday. That’s the kind of person she is.”
An old man in the corner—Fred, Al thought his name was—raised a timid hand. “She … seemed like a nice enough girl to me,” he offered. “Didn’t look crazy.”
Wayne only shook his head. “What is this, Aguilar? You sweet on her or something?”
As if he’d become a different man, Al pushed back his chair and slammed his fist on the table. Wayne jumped.
“Jesse is my friend. She’d be yours if you’d let her, but she isn’t full of flattery and oily ass-kissing like Gary Emerson.” He snorted in disgust. “Why should you owe more loyalty to a drifter who didn’t give a shit about any of you for seventeen years than to a woman who had the guts to return to the town that turned its back on her and her mother? Because Gary makes you feel big even when he uses you?”
“He’ll make something of this town—”
“He’ll take your votes and forget you ever existed. You don’t matter to him. Jesse does. She scares the hell out of him. What is it about Jesse that you’re afraid of?”
They stared at him, eyes wide and mouths gaping. Quiet, mild, uninvolved Al had changed before their eyes. And he felt liberated. Angry.
Alive.
“Maybe you all ought to give some thought about who you’d rather have holding your hand when you’re about to fall off a cliff,” he said. For once, as he got to his feet, his balance was perfect. He hardly needed the cane.
His anger carried him to the door of the bar without a single misstep. No one called after him. It wasn’t until he was outside in the clean sunlight that he realized he hadn’t taken a single sip of his beer.
He paused at the end of the block, breathing deeply. He’d given Jesse all the credit for changing, but something was happening to him as well. He didn’t know where it had begun, and he was more than a little afraid that he wouldn’t be able to control the process now that it had begun.
Body and Soul Page 22
