Eventually, she'd stopped asking. The periods of light had increased until they'd outweighed the dark. Beverly had taken her back to New York via charter flight.
There'd been no real question of Kathryn going back to her own apartment. She'd been too ill. Once she'd started to get better, she'd known she could never walk into those dreary rooms where she'd first dreamed of Matthew. And it took no great genius to figure out that one gurgle from the ancient hot water pipes in the Greenwich Village walk-up would have sent her screaming into the street.
It was the hot water heater that had caused the explosion that had destroyed Charon's Crossing. Not the heater, exactly; the propane tank. The safety valve had failed, somehow; the gas had ignited...
"A terrible, terrible accident," she'd heard Beverly whisper over the phone to a friend.
But it hadn't been an accident! Kathryn knew what had happened, that Matthew had caused the explosion, that he'd planned it and found a way to get her out of the house, that he'd sacrificed his own existence for hers.
What had become of him? Was he gone forever? Was he trapped in that awful darkness he'd described? Was he wandering some worse hell, with Waring breathing his foul stink upon him?
"Kathryn?"
Matthew. Oh Matthew, why did you do it? I loved you. I'll always love you. I would have stayed with you forever...
"Kathryn? Darling, what are you doing out here all by yourself?"
Kathryn swung around. Her mother was standing in the doorway. She was smiling but it was a tense, worried smile.
"It's chilly out here, Kathryn. You ought to be wearing a shawl."
Kathryn swallowed hard.
"Hi," she said brightly. "Did you just get in?"
Beverly nodded. "My meeting ran a bit long. Darling, are you all right?"
"I'm fine."
"You don't look fine." She frowned, came closer, and put her hand to Kathryn's forehead.
Kathryn jerked back. "Really, I'm fine."
"I just wanted to see if you have a fever. Your eyes are so bright..."
"So," Kathryn said briskly, "how did your meeting go?"
Beverly smiled. "The way I'd expected. They want me to try working in platinum. I said I'd give it a try."
Kathryn laughed. "No sacrifice too great, huh?"
"Of course, I told them we'd need a new contract, one for lots more money." She leaned her arms on the balcony railing and gazed out over the park. "I wish you'd let me send you on a little vacation, Kathryn. It would do you good."
Kathryn sighed. "We've been all through this, Mother. What I need is to get back to work, find a place of my own... get my life started. Which reminds me, I've got a terrific interview lined up for tomorrow morning, did I tell you?"
Beverly turned and leaned back against the railing. A breeze ruffled her hair, still as dark and lustrous as Kathryn's.
"You're quite sure you don't want to go back to your old job, darling? Jason keeps pleading for you to return."
"I know. It's kind of him, considering how I treated him, but it wouldn't work out. He's a dear, sweet man and I hope we'll always be friends..."
"But you don't love him."
"No. Not the way I loved... not the way a woman should love a man."
Something in her daughter's voice alerted Beverly. She reached out and took her hand.
"Are you having a bad day?" she asked gently.
Kathryn hesitated. "Yes," she said. "I keep thinking about... about..."
"Did you call the doctor?"
"Not yet."
"Well, I think you should. Perhaps you need to go on some other kind of medication."
Kathryn shook her head. "I'm sick of taking pills, Mother. I feel like a walking pharmacy as it is."
"When's your next appointment with Dr. Whalen?"
"Monday."
"Don't wait that long, please. Call her, tell her you need to see her. Talking with her might make you feel better."
"I'll call her, tomorrow, if I don't stop... if I don't feel better."
"Promise?"
Kathryn smiled and squeezed her mother's hand. "Promise."
"That's my girl."
The women were silent for a couple of minutes and then Kathryn cleared her throat.
"I know I'm not supposed to talk about-—about him."
"There was no 'him,' " Beverly said sharply. "You know that, Kathryn."
"Oh, sure. I know that. It's just a figure of speech, Mother." Kathryn licked her lips. "It's just that—that... The thing is, what happened all seemed so—so real."
"Of course it did." Beverly smiled. "What's the point in having a hallucinatory experience if you don't give it everything you've got?"
Kathryn laughed. She felt her tension easing away.
"Your father would say the same thing. I remember one time, he went off to an ashram in the Himalayas. He was determined to experience what some much-lauded swami was calling a 'mystery journey of inner discovery.' " Beverly chuckled. "Trevor came back and said no journey of discovery was worth giving up red meat, alcohol and sex, especially if you had to chant RamiDamiDoo or something like that while you worked yourself into a trance."
"You didn't go with him?"
"I was four months pregnant with you, darling. The only mystery that interested me was what was going to happen in the labor room!"
"But Father left you anyway."
"Of course. That's just the way he was, Kathryn. He didn't mean to be selfish or unkind."
"And you took him back."
Beverly sighed. "I always did, until I finally decided I just couldn't live that way anymore. No real home, no money in the bank, no future..."
Kathryn's mouth thinned. "What a relief it must have been, to have it over with."
"Not really," her mother said softly. "I still loved him. I suppose I never quite stopped loving him."
"It's too bad he didn't feel the same way."
Beverly's brows arched. "But he did, Kathryn. He loved the both of us until the day he died."
"Yeah. He loved me so much that he forgot I existed."
"He never forgot you."
"Come on, Mother. What else do you call it when a man never sends his daughter a letter or even a birthday card?"
"Actually..." Beverly cleared her throat. "Actually, he did."
"All right, maybe I'm overstating it. He sent a couple of postcards, I remember, but—"
"He sent you many letters. And gifts."
Kathryn's eyes grew wide. "What?"
"I kept them from you," her mother said in a hushed voice. "I still have them all, if you want to see them."
For a moment, Kathryn was too stunned to speak. "But—but why would you do such a thing?" she finally asked.
"I told myself it was because I wanted to keep him from being a bad influence on you." Beverly gave a deep sigh. "I've thought about it a lot lately, ever since you were ill and I—I almost lost you, and I've decided that the truth was far less noble. I think I hid Trevor's letters to punish him for having left us."
"But you said it was your decision, that you wouldn't take him back when he wanted to come back—"
"I know. But that's how I thought of it, you see, that he'd left us by choosing to search for something that was missing inside him, to live a life he knew I despised." She looked at Kathryn and smiled faintly. "I know it's crazy, but that's how I loved your father, so deeply that for a long time, my emotions ruled me instead of my head. Does that make any sense?"
It made all kinds of sense to Kathryn, though it wouldn't have just a few months ago. But her time at Charon's Crossing had taught her a great deal about love so intense and deep that it could change the way you viewed life... even if that love hadn't been real.
"Kathryn?" Beverly's voice trembled. "Please, don't hate me. If you only knew how often I've regretted the lie..."
Kathryn clasped her mother's hands. "I don't hate you." Tears stung behind her eyelids. "I just wish I'd known... I mean, he must have died, th
inking I'd never answered his letters because I didn't love him."
"No. No, I told him the truth, just before he had the accident. He called me, God only knows why, and he asked how you were and before I knew it, I told him you were fine, no thanks to him or to his letters and all the presents he'd sent over the years because I'd never let you know about them." She gave a strangled laugh. "Lord, he was so angry! We screamed at each other over that phone, just the way we had in the old days, and then he stopped yelling and said he missed me something awful and he was going to come and see us both."
"But he never had the chance."
"No, he never did." Beverly sighed. "So you see, darling, it wasn't so strange that Trevor left you Charon's Crossing. He probably thought that old house was wonderfully romantic, the perfect final gift to leave the daughter he loved."
Kathryn nodded. She knew better than to try and speak. Her throat was so tightly constricted that it hurt.
"Of course," Beverly said with a little smile, "he was as wrong about that as he'd been about most other things in his life. The house wasn't romantic at all, it was a miserable ruin."
"Maybe," Kathryn said in a choked whisper, "but I was happy there."
"Nonsense," Beverly said quickly. "You thought you were happy there."
"That's what I meant. Mother, stop worrying. I'm just a little edgy today, that's all. I guess it's the prospect of that interview tomorrow morning."
"I know the perfect stress-reducer." Beverly grinned and looped her arm around her daughter's waist. "How's about we go someplace down and dirty for supper? That diner, down near the river, maybe. How's that sound?"
"It sounds terrific," Kathryn said, hoping she sounded more eager than she felt.
"And first thing tomorrow, you'll phone Dr. Whalen, yes? Just to touch bases, darling, that's all."
Kathryn nodded. "Of course."
* * *
But she didn't call the psychiatrist, not the next day or any of the days that followed.
How could she, without admitting that she was obviously slipping backwards after so many weeks of progress?
Matthew was constantly in her thoughts. She had begun dreaming of him again, too. She'd hear him whispering her name, feel the sweet brush of his lips against hers, and then she'd wake up, weeping quietly in the night, reaching out for him even though she knew it was impossible for him to be there.
Tell stuff like that to Dr. Whalen and she was liable to find herself in a genteel rubber room.
On her own, she raised the level of her medication to what it had been when she'd first entered therapy. The pills made her groggy but they helped. She stopped dreaming, started sleeping through the night.
"I am fine," she told herself.
And she was. She started her new job—the interview she'd told Beverly about had gone well—and, a month later, she moved into a wonderful apartment in Soho. It wasn't the glass-walled, ultramodern sort of place that had once seemed so desirable. She'd looked at half a dozen of those, found them chillingly impersonal, and opted instead for an old, handsome duplex with a working fireplace, a brick-walled kitchen and wide-planked floors.
"A gem of the early 1800s," the realtor called it.
It wasn't a gem, not quite. The windows leaked, the floors sagged... but it reminded her of Charon's Crossing, and that was all that mattered.
The new job, the new apartment—both were great. Things went really well for a couple of weeks. And then, one afternoon, during a presentation meeting for a new client, she heard someone speak her name.
Kathryn?
She came sharply upright in her chair.
Kathryn, sweetheart. Where are you?
Kathryn's pen fell from her hand and clattered on the floor. The man next to her looked at her. Then he picked up the pen and nudged her in the ribs. She blinked and looked at him.
"You okay?" he whispered.
She nodded, took the pen and forced her attention back to the meeting.
I can't find you, love. I search and search, but I can't find you.
Kathryn's chair squealed as she shoved it back and shot to her feet. Eight pairs of eyes fixed on her wild-eyed, pale face.
"Miss Russell?"
She looked around the room. The CEO of the company they were trying to impress looked irritated. Her own boss was smiling but it was the sort of smile you saw on the face of a shark.
"I—I'm sorry," she said, "I thought I heard—"
Kathryn, my love. Where are you?
She flew from the room like a rocket, her assistant on her heels as she made for the elevator.
"Kathryn? Are you sick? Kathryn, what am I going to tell them?"
"Tell them anything you want," Kathryn said, as the elevator doors closed.
* * *
Dr. Whalen agreed to see her at once.
She listened. And listened. Then, finally, she spoke.
"What you're describing isn't uncommon, Kathryn," she said in her most soothing tone of voice. "We might describe these episodes as 'flashbacks.' "
"Flashbacks? I thought those had to do with real experiences."
Dr. Whalen looked momentarily flustered. "Not necessarily. I suspect this is your subconscious mind's attempt to come to grips with what happened to you."
"I don't understand, Doctor. Wasn't it my subconscious that created my hallucinations to begin with?"
The doctor cleared her throat. "It's complicated, Kathryn, too complicated for a layman." She scribbled something on a prescription pad, tore off the sheet and handed it over. "Have that filled and take one tablet three times a day."
"I don't want to take any more pills. They make me dopey. Isn't there something else I can do to stop these hallucinations?"
"Well," Dr. Whalen said thoughtfully, "I suspect you need to find closure for what happened."
"Yes, all right, but how?"
"You still own that property on Elizabeth Island, do you not?"
"The land, yes. The house..." Kathryn swallowed hard trying not to remember the flames. "The house is nothing but a pile of rubble."
"I would advise you to sell the property."
"Sell Charon's Crossing?"
"Yes. Get it out of your life, once and for all. Sign it away, physically, and there's an excellent chance you'll sign it away emotionally, too."
"But—"
The psychiatrist looked at her watch. "I'm sorry, Kathryn, I do have another patient scheduled." She stood up, smiled pleasantly, and held out her hand. "Sever your ties with that house, and you'll have both feet firmly planted on the road to complete recovery."
* * *
Amos was delighted to hear from her.
Everyone missed her, he said, and hoped she was feeling well.
Kathryn smiled at his delicacy, lied and said she was fine, and then got down to business.
"Amos," she said, "I very much want to sell Charon's Crossing."
"Really," he said, and chuckled. "That is wonderful news, Kathryn, truly wonderful. Olive's had an offer, you see, but we didn't know whether or not to contact you about it."
Kathryn sank down on the sofa in her old-fashioned living room. What had only been an idea had suddenly turned into a reality. She tried to feel happy about it but she could feel a knot of tension forming in her stomach.
"An offer?"
"From a hotel chain. They want to raze the ruins and put up a luxury retreat. I must say, they've made a most generous offer."
It was more than generous. It was extraordinary.
"Kathryn? Shall I fax you the necessary papers?"
Kathryn took a deep breath.
"No."
"No?"
She could hear the confusion in Amos's voice and she almost told him he was no more puzzled by her sudden change of heart than she was, but she didn't.
"I—I'll have to think about it," she said, and hung up the phone before the attorney could say anything more.
An hour later, she called him back.
"Sell it,"
she said quietly.
Amos hesitated. "Are you sure it's what you want, Kathryn?"
She nodded. "Yes. Send me whatever documents need to be signed and let's get it over with."
* * *
Amos kept her informed, every step of the way. She signed endless documents, faxed paper after paper to his Elizabeth Island office. It was almost anticlimactic when ownership of Charon's Crossing finally passed from her to the hotel chain that had bought it.
Beverly insisted on their having dinner together. "The past is over," she said, clinking her glass of white wine against Kathryn's.
Kathryn smiled. It wasn't. Not yet, though she didn't tell that to Beverly. The door to the past would not be firmly shut until the end of the next day, for that was when the equipment would be rolling in to tear down what remained of the mansion.
Beverly suggested they have coffee and dessert at her place but Kathryn begged off. She was tired, she said, and she had a long day ahead of her at the office. She didn't add that people had been looking at her as if she'd lost her marbles after the day she'd bolted from the meeting. She'd explained her actions by saying she'd had a terrifying migraine and even though everybody had said, oh, of course, they understood, the truth was that people still gave her odd looks.
"They should only see me now," Kathryn muttered as she paced her living room.
What in hell was the matter with her? Charon's Crossing was sold. It was out of her life forever.
She went to bed early, with the latest best seller and a cup of cocoa. She drank half the cocoa, read the same paragraph three times, gave up, and turned off the light.
A long time later, she fell asleep.
* * *
"Kathryn."
She knows exactly where she is, when she hears his voice. She is right here, in her own bed, and she can hear him as clearly as if he were right beside her. But he isn't.
"Kathryn, my love."
"Matthew? "
A hand brushes lightly over her cheek.
"Never forget me, sweetheart."
"Matthew!" Tears stream down her cheeks. "Matthew, where are you? Please, please, come to me. I love you. I need you..."
"Good-bye, my love. Good-bye."
* * *
Kathryn's eyes flew open. She sat up. It was a dream. It was nothing but a dream. Matthew had never been teal...
Charon's Crossing (A Paranormal Romantic Suspense Novel) Page 35
