Tessa startled when her phone rang. She had tucked it into her coat pocket but hadn’t really expected anyone to call. She looked at the number, heart sinking. “It’s Dr. Brenner.”
Smith tensed. “Tell him nothing about this.” He indicated the photos and the envelope that held the threat. Before, she wouldn’t have thought twice about telling him everything, and that loss only added to the others. Had his fatherly affection been nothing but a ruse?
She raised the phone. “Hello?” Then, “Donny?”
“I knew I’d find you. I only had to get the phone and it was easy, so easy to take it off his desk when he wasn’t looking.”
Tessa pressed her hand to her forehead. “What are you talking about?”
“I miss the stars. I need the stars. And it’s snowing, snowing and they wouldn’t let me out, and they wouldn’t let me see you, or the stars or the snow.”
She knew how it was to be locked in there with no freedom and no control. “Did you tell Dr. Brenner what you want?”
“You. I’m telling you. I want to come where you are. I can’t stay here.”
“But, Donny—”
“They stare and scream. You said he would help, but he isn’t helping. Only you can. Only you.”
She looked at Smith, whose countenance told her his position. But it was her fault Donny was there, and if Dr. Brenner couldn’t be trusted …
“You need to come. It’s cold out here.”
“What? Where are you?”
Donny breathed rapidly. “You can’t tell.”
“No, I won’t tell.”
Smith frowned.
“Outside the fence. A drain tunnel in the little valley.”
She pictured him huddled somewhere, freezing. Oh, good grief. “Okay. Hang up, but keep the phone on in case I can’t find you.” She disconnected. “I need to get him.”
“You can’t be serious.” Smith looked dumbfounded.
“I know how you feel.”
“No, you don’t. It wasn’t your chest he plunged the knife in, but it could have been. It still could. Think, Tessa.”
“He’s already out and he’s freezing and it’s my fault he was taken there. I have to go.”
“You can’t just spring a lunatic from custody.”
“He’s no more lunatic than I was.”
“You haven’t aimed a knife for anyone’s heart.”
She looked into his face. “He could have killed you, Smith.
But he let us go, knowing he’d lose everything. This is too much for him.” She knew the feeling. “All he wants are the stars and the snow.”
“Oh, is that all he wants? I’ve heard him speak your name, seen the gleam in his yellow eyes.”
Her jaw dropped. “You’re jealous of Donny?”
“I am not jealous. I’m trying to warn you. You could be in danger already. Do you really need more?”
Could she be? “Then someone who stabs first and talks later might come in handy.”
Smith didn’t appreciate the joke.
She took his hand. “Are you coming?”
“How do you expect to get through the snow?”
“Down is all right. Might be harder getting back, but Mom’s old Wagoneer is practically a tank.” Turning to Bair and Genie, she said, “Can you carry the boxes into the house? We won’t be long.” Their faces matched Smith’s, an incredulous trio. They didn’t understand how good it felt to do something for someone else and forget for just a little while what had been done to her.
He had made himself so small, smaller than ever before. Once he had the phone he had not turned back, not cared how the drain hurt, not allowed himself to hurt, only to get out. He shivered in his thin clothes and blinked through his dark glasses at the white, white, white.
The snow kept coming and it was cold. What if she didn’t come? If she told them and they took him back. He shivered and shivered. He would run. He would run but he didn’t have shoes only slippers and they were wet and his feet were so cold as he waited and waited. But then she was there!
He unfolded from the ball he had become and slipped out of the culvert as she came close enough to see him. Smith came right behind her, and for a minute he was afraid, but it was only Smith and no others, and he had to believe she hadn’t told.
She looked worried. “Are you sure about this? It’s not good that you left without Dr. Brenner’s permission.”
“He won’t give permission. He wants me to stay with the people who stare, who stare and look away. He wants me to talk and talk to him, but he won’t let me go outside. I had to go outside, but I’m cold, too cold.”
“You’re not dressed to be out here.”
“They took my clothes. The attendants took them and I don’t like them except the one with pink hair but she wouldn’t let me see you and I tried to but they pulled me away. I got mad and Dr. Brenner put me in my room, but I can’t stay there.”
Smith scowled. “Did you hurt someone when you got mad?”
“No, no, no.” He looked at Smith and wished he hadn’t stabbed him, but Smith looked better now, all better.
“Come on.” Tessa turned and started walking.
Smith motioned him to go next and closed in behind like a fox ready to pounce, but Donny followed Tessa—glad to see her, glad she hadn’t told, glad to have even the cold air in his face. He sneezed. Maybe not the cold.
Smith didn’t like the situation, but there it was. They reached the Jeep Wagoneer and got in, Tessa driving, and he keeping watch over Donny in the back. He’d been caught once unawares. It wouldn’t happen again.
Tessa cranked up the heat until it blew like a furnace. She actually seemed cheerful, as though helping Donny had lifted her spirits. He looked at her sidelong, and his wound throbbed. She understood people’s motivations, limitations, and needs. But really, what was she thinking taking charge of this miscreant?
A phone rang, and Smith looked at Tessa, then Donny. He held out his hand, and Donny gave him Dr. Brenner’s phone. “Does he know you took this?”
Donny shook his head. “I was clever, very clever.”
“Then he might be trying to locate it. The call is from Cedar Grove.”
Tessa glanced back. “That was stealing, Donny. You’ll get in trouble for it.”
Smith pocketed the phone. “Do you understand now that you can’t take things that aren’t yours?”
Donny hugged himself. “I had to call.”
“Well, you’ve made a habit of nicking things you shouldn’t.”
“Have to eat. And read. I have to read too.”
A smile touched Tessa’s lips. “We’ll feed you. And you can read all the books I have. But you can’t take them.”
Donny turned aside and stared out the window. “I don’t want them. I want my books.”
Smith arched his eyebrows. “Those were actually someone else’s.”
Donny muttered under his breath. “My books. My place. Mine.”
Tessa sighed. “We’ll get it figured out. And forget what I said about the books. If you want some, you can have them.”
Donny’s face lit, and no wonder. Tessa’s kindness might be the first he had known, at least for a long time. He was, after all, a malformed young man who had lived rather tragically to this point. Smith glanced back and wondered if he might find something for Donny to do when this was all over.
Though the snowfall now was hardly more than fine confetti, so much had previously fallen that they could not even reach the spot Genie had managed before. Smith frowned. “Does it ever stop?”
“Eventually.”
“No one thinks to plow?”
“We’re low priority. Some of the neighbors have scoops on their trucks, but they’ll wait until it’s stopped.”
Smith looked at Donny with his thin cotton scrub-style pants, T-shirt, and slippers. He pulled off the bomber jacket. “Put this on.”
Swallowed up in the coat, Donny beamed. Smith climbed out and opened the back door. “W
alk in the track I make.” He stamped up the road in the boots he’d borrowed as Tessa made her way beside him, a light in her eyes he hadn’t seen for some time. “What?”
She sent him a sidelong smile. “Thank you.”
“For?”
She cast a glance over her shoulder at Donny walking delicately in the plowed path. Oh, well, if that was all it took to please her …
He was breathing hard by the time they reached the door, his chest throbbing once again. Bair let them in, absorbing with somewhat less than a grimace Donny’s toothy mandible, malformed spine, sloping shoulders, and spindly limbs—though his pale, eerie eyes were hidden behind dark glasses.
At first, Smith thought they’d turned off the lights and lit the candles because of Donny’s sensitive eyes, but Bair said, “The power’s out.”
“That happens when it storms.” Tessa seemed unconcerned. “The stoves will keep us warm.”
He hadn’t imagined her in such rustic circumstances but should have. Donny shed the coat and began to reconnoiter, walking around the room, sniffing the plants and touching everything. Working hard to soften her revulsion, Genie watched him from the floor, where she sat cross-legged with the boxes from the shop around her. Donny was an odd and untimely complication, and yet he’d relieved Tessa’s gloom and reminded them that—to greater or lesser degrees—everyone struggled.
When Donny reached the shelf with the tiny labyrinths, he went completely still. Tessa walked over there and Smith followed, unable to trust the bloke’s harmlessness to the degree Tessa seemed to.
“It’s your drawings,” Donny whispered. “The lines in the circle.”
Tessa nodded. “They’re labyrinths.”
He ran his finger tenderly over the models.
“It’s how I plan what to do on real properties with real plants.”
“There’s one over my place in the grass,” he whispered.
“A very old one. Some people built it for God.”
Would Donny have a clue what she was saying? Depended on what books he’d read, Smith supposed.
“My cistern is right in the middle, but I never saw it until your picture showed me.” Donny reached into his shirt and pulled out papers that turned out to be Tessa’s drawings. Probably the ones that had disappeared from her desk when Donny broke in. He held them out to her, but she gently pressed them back.
“You can keep them.”
Again that beatific glow. He slid them back against his skin, which Smith realized no longer smelled like the grave. Grooming must have occurred at Cedar Grove. They’d need to clothe him in something more than he had, though he was more Tessa’s size than Bair’s or his own. Maybe she had some warm-ups or something. At some point, they would have to let people know where he was.
Donny didn’t want to leave the labyrinths, so they left him there while Tessa went to feed the fire in her room and keep that side of the house warm. Genie must have gone upstairs, and Smith joined Bair, who stood watching Donny silently.
“You suppose God looked away on his begetting?” Bair murmured.
“Only so many times you can limit genetics before someone suffers.”
Bair nodded. “Poor bloke.”
“He’s smitten with Tess.”
Bair repeated with irony, “Poor bloke.”
“You’ve recovered, from what I’ve seen around here.” Smith cast him a knowing stare.
“Can’t blame me for looking.”
“Not just looking. I’ve actually heard dialogue.”
“There’ve been serious matters to discuss. Tessa’s, of course, but that’s triggered some revelations from Genie, and …” He shrugged.
“What sort of revelations?”
“Things that one wouldn’t learn on a first date, typically. We’ve shown our scars, and she’s quite wonderful, actually.”
“Well, good. Did you find anything more in the boxes?”
“Nothing blatant, but you know we wouldn’t have known the photos mattered. Tessa’s going to have to look for herself. We’ve made sure there are no more gruesome surprises, though.”
“Thanks, Bair.”
“Thank Genie. That threat infuriated her. She has no tolerance for cruelty and a rather creative penchant for retaliation.” Bair beamed.
It obviously stoked Bair’s natural attraction to rough sports and fiery women, though he sobered when Genie came down the stairs and walked past them to the pot heating on the great-room stove. With a raise of his brows, Bair went to join her.
Genie grabbed the spoon and potholder. “I thought for a while Tessa’s little friend would start grazing on the plants. But I guess he’s waiting for dinner after all.”
Bair leaned in to sniff when she lifted the pot lid. “Smells good. What is it?”
“Eugenia’s gypsy stew.”
“Eugenia?”
“I was named for my grandmother.” She turned her dusky eyes on him. “When she died I had it legally changed to Genie.”
“Well.” He flushed. “I’m honored to be in the know.”
With the temperature rising on that side of the room, Smith went to sit with Tessa.
Surrounded by the boxes, Tessa went through her dad’s things. Not constant, the grief rose and subsided as pictures or other items brought silent tears streaming, or a pang of loss, or a moment of keen remembrance. Emotions and memories held back by her silence found voice as she described them to Smith.
Last night, the pain of recall had driven her deeper into herself than any prayer walk, so deep she’d almost been lost. In that vacuum, she’d been found. Recognized. Cherished. It didn’t matter who she was; it mattered who God was.
“Tessa.”
She looked up.
Smith tucked a finger under her chin. “Acorn squash baked with butter and caramelized brown sugar.”
Her breath got ragged. How could he make vegetables so sensuous? She brought her fingers to his beard-roughened cheek, keenly conscious of his manliness. “I’ve never seen you with whiskers.”
“I was a bit hurried this morning.”
“That can’t have been this morning.”
“Mind-boggling, isn’t it. Come here.”
Her drew her up onto the couch, caught her face between his hands and kissed her softly, deeply, drawing a response she’d never experienced. Had more than her memory been released? What she’d felt before had been a fledgling, idolizing love compared to this potent, mature exchange. She had been relationally stunted, but now …
She rested her forehead against his. “Was it last century Rumer Gaston had me so annoyed?”
“At least. The dark ages when I thought nothing mattered more than impressing him.”
“It feels like time bent when I couldn’t move forward anymore, bringing me back to the place I had to start over.”
Smith nodded. “Time is a human construct. God works outside of it.”
“Smith, I don’t remember how I got down the mountain.”
“Last night? I carried you.”
“Against doctor’s orders?”
“Quite against.”
She put her hand to his chest. “Are you hurting?”
“Not from that. Just everything you’ve gone through.”
“I’ll be all right.” She looked into his face. “I got to the center and found the Father, like you said.”
His eyes lit. “That’s brilliant.”
“Now my spirit feels strong, though the rest is still shaky.”
“Your spirit is God’s province. I’ll work on the rest.”
“You already have. More than you know.” She nestled close and sighed. “Do you really think Dr. Brenner is involved?”
Donny turned from the window where he’d been watching the storm. “Dr. Brenner talked about you.”
She looked up. “What?”
“On his phone. He said you remembered, and he wants two million dollars to make it go away.”
CHAPTER
39
Smith stared at Donny. “Are you sure?”
“I was at the vent. I heard him, but he didn’t know it. He didn’t know I was there.”
“Donny.” Smith got to his feet. “Could you tell who he was talking to? Did you hear a name?”
“He said, ‘I know your name.’ But he didn’t say the name. I’m hungry.” Donny walked over to the table. “It smells better here than there. I’ll eat now.”
Smith pulled Tessa up. “We need to get out of here.”
“Look outside.” She pointed to the blizzard-whitened window. They’d been shaken up like a snow globe, and the flakes flew wildly past. “It’s almost dark. The wind is drifting the snow, and we won’t get the car out.”
“We can’t stay here.”
“If we can’t get out, he can’t get in.”
Maybe. Probably. As the wind howled around the cabin, he nodded reluctantly. “As soon as it’s clear, we’ll go.”
“What difference does it make? He’ll find me. Wherever I go, he’ll—”
“Don’t. Fear is not productive.”
“You sound like Dr.—” Her voice broke. “I can’t believe he—” Tears sprang to her eyes.
“I’m sorry. I wanted to be wrong.” Anger burned inside with a cold, steady flame. He felt equal parts avenger and protector, but was he truly either? “We’ll stop them.” Somehow, God willing, they would end this.
While Tessa helped Genie serve the meal, Smith took Bair aside and told him what Donny had heard.
“Sure he’s not making it up?”
“How would he know about blackmail?”
“Depends what books he’s read.”
“I don’t think so.”
Bair frowned. “We can keep watch in shifts.”
Smith nodded. “Tessa doesn’t think anyone can get through until the storm stops, but I’ll bunk Donny on the couch. He’s pretty aware, I’d guess. I’m staying in Tessa’s room, and I need you and Genie to know—”
“You don’t have to say it.”
“Thanks, Bair. I’m glad you’re here.”
Bair fitted his shoulder with a hammy grip. “I’ve got you covered, mate.”
The Edge of Recall Page 31
