Those keys were the last thing she'd need. Just as surely, she knew it would do no good to push the Judge's house and all the rest of it out of her mind until she had done as she'd said she would. She didn't begin to relax until she parked the Volvo in front of her small cottage.
Beds of huge chrysanthemums flamed around the low dark little cottage in the early dusk. She had surrounded the tiny porch with mums, filled in the corner between the kitchen and breezeway with them.
Going up the narrow walk was like walking through fire, their brilliant energy glowing around her and she stepped into the shadows. The light switch was inside the end set of shelves. Fumbling for the light switch, she knocked a book sideways and told herself again that she should get one of those timer things that would have the place lit when she came in, knowing that part of her preferred coming into darkness, the space before light sprang out. Just more reason she was working on the wrong side of the desk, proscribing for others what she didn't do for herself.
The living room off the tiny porch was walled on either side with books. Mixed in with small jade figures were odd collectibles and ivy with tiny, embossed leather looking leaves that crept along the shelves. The stereo was the only remnant of furniture from the apartment she and Jed had shared for four years.
She touched the controls and soft music curled into the corners as she searched her journal for the number of the lawyer in Boston.
Five minutes later, with that chore done, she pushed the incident and the day back outside of her protective walls. She'd learned to turn her face from worse things than that old house or an angry strangers.
She locked the door, unplugged the phone - even in her hurry, aware of how an addict also hurried for their needle or drink. Stretching out on her double bed with its cotton batik cover, she eased her shoulders and hips into more comfortable positions, finally opening both hands and laying them palm up at her sides.
Already, her breathing was slower, her mind less frantic. She had relaxed in this way once a day for three years. Her mind slid into a well-worn routine. Inhaling deeply, she held her breath to the count of six and then exhaled. The second time she held her breath, the slipping away began. Sometime during the third breath, she felt herself sink bonelessly into the mattress.
That was one of the most alluring parts for her, the sensation of melting away, softening, sinking into the bed, all of her - bone and muscle and heart - turned fluid. The only time she could safely ease off on her control.
The day had long since gone from her mind. She inhaled slowly again and held the breath until she floated somewhere deep within the mattress, within herself, while her slow heartbeat rocked her gently.
The routine she used was so familiar, so well-worn, she no longer needed a recording to guide her. An orange liquid filled her body, cleansing, absorbing anything harmful to her. Then, as she envisioned the orange liquid draining from her fingers and toes, a beam of light from the sun entered the top of her head and she felt it glow along her spine until it radiated out through her entire body, bathing her in a shower of gold and blue and violet.
In the colors lay complete and utter relaxation - to yield to, to bathe herself in, but only for a moment, no more.
She found herself on a shaded, sandy road with delicate, tall grass tufting along the sides. Fine, wild grass formed a soft green ridge down the center that was soft against the tender soles of her feet and warm. It was always late afternoon, not quite evening. She was on her way to learn something important at the end of this road and along the road as well, if she needed. If she asked, any stranger would tell her what she wished to know, but Fay's eyes were fixed on the invisible end of the path, where she would understand for herself why Jed had had to die and where she would learn to accept that and live with it.
For the first time in months, she questioned a man hurrying through the shadows. "How much farther is it? Can you tell me?" Her words halted him instantly.
"For you?" He pushed his cap back and frowned. "Not far now, I think. Quite close, actually."
"Close? But nobody said-"
"You didn't ask. We cannot tell you what you're afraid to know." He waited a moment in case she ventured another question.
When none came, he glanced around him again. "It grows late."
And dark. "Thank you." Already she retreated, a wisp of smoke torn away by the wind.
And then she lay floating again, slowly settling into the bed, her heartbeat rocking her gently, until she opened her eyes to stare at the dark ceiling. Less than an hour had passed but during that hour time had stopped. She returned from measureless distances.
It had become real - this routine Steve had created for her - and she had no way of asking if it was TOO real. Unless she asked the dream to declare its own reality. That would really be 'Looking Glass' logic.
Closing her eyes against her own thoughts, she saw Steve instead, her informal partner, her anchor to reality and Boston. Charming Steve, who'd had enough pain and suffering for a dozen people yet looked unscathed and unmarked, practically unworn, except for his eyes.
His eyes, gentle and blue, fringed with gold-tipped lashes that matched the coin gold of his hair. Eyes that had understood and empathized with any pain, even while he persisted in advice noone ever wanted.
That was one of the first and most insane things she'd had to make herself accept. That most people clung to their illnesses. And that only a few were willing to yield them up. If the medicine didn't taste too bad. If they didn't have to contribute too much. If they didn't have to let go of something that seemed safe...
Changing into a loose robe, she got a glass of milk and sat down at the table by the windows. She forced herself to plug away at the books and notes and papers for her thesis for maybe two hours before the darkness outside drew her eyes away from her work.
Being a counselor - that was truly insane. She'd only gone back and gotten her psychology degree for something to do, an alternative to teaching and young faces whose cheer she had cringed from. She was crazier than anyone she treated, still burning for someone gone, imagining herself in a past of which she knew nothing - afraid of a pile of stone. She'd fought Steve's idea of a cure as hard as anyone had ever fought her suggestions.
She'd fought being wrenched free of the city and things known. She remembered having been furious at the suggestion and thinking that at least, she knew enough to try and disguise her anger. For all the good it had done.
"The whole wheat and bean sprout group?" Fay had tapped her long fingers on the chair arm. "Give me a break, Steve. I wouldn't fit there any better than I do here."
"I only HEARD about it through the Holistic Center. It's in Rhode Island, out in the woods in a high unemployment, rural area. An experimental, half state, half federally funded project." His gold- fringed eyes assessed her with medical accuracy. "The point is, I can get the job for you. You'd be working as a hypnosis-visualization counselor. Its only for a year. And you'll fit as well as you want to."
Pushing back from the table, Fay moved restlessly around the room before giving up and retreating to the bedroom to get ready for bed. Turning back the covers, she traded her robe for a slippery silk gown and then dropped to sit on the bed and turn her ring around and around, mesmerizing herself with the purple, green and blue sparks, before remembering she'd done that on that other day, nine months ago.
Switching off the light, she stretched out in the darkness, her mind worrying terrier-like at the past.
She'd toyed with her ring and since removing it was one of the few things he'd given up trying to persuade her to, he'd ignored it as he generally did.
"It would give you what you need to finish your doctorate. You've put that off long enough."
No, she hadn't put it off nearly long enough. He knew her too well. "Its arranged, isn't it?" She drew solace from the pine-walled, plant-filled room. "The ivy needs water."
"Its arranged - if you want. Its only a year. A decent pay, not that you need it, a quiet place. Just a change, Fay."
"A change. Time for a change already," she murmured.
"At last," Steve corrected sharply.
Whatever Steve had taught her, it helped with time. It had grown elastic around her, kinder for the most part. Maybe it was because so little happened to mark one moment apart from another, and the few things that did were to frightening to admit to seeing. Or maybe she'd sidelined herself in some way and time just flowed past, affecting other people and leaving her be.
Internal conversations with herself straggled out over days and weeks. Questions about that odd question and answer persisted in clinging to her in the shadows, when things were quiet. And when Mac decided to wander into her office on a Monday morning and pester her, it surprised her to think he was already back.
"How are you doing on your paper? Run into a problem?" The sandy-haired doctor collapsed into the green canvas chair beside her desk.
She marked her place in the stacked files with her pen and rubbed her eyes with the palms of her hands. "What are you talking about?"
Mac leafed through the magazines next to him.
"Just that when your thesis is going well, I can usually drag you out to supper at least. You've been wandering around in one of your fogs for weeks now."
"Its relaxing to just work." His shrewd blue eyes rested on her face intently. "And anyway, we just went out. To that Italian place."
"True." He tossed the fishing magazine back on top of the unsteady pile. "We did." Mac said agreeably. "Sometime in August. How do you make appointments without seeing the date?"
Her eyes slid involuntarily to the desk calendar. November second.
"Your friend, Mrs. Mowry, was in the other day and you even scared her off."
"Joanna?" Fay forgot the question of dates. "I don't scare anyone. Why was she here? What's the matter with her?"
"The question - official staff witchdoctor - is why is she coming to me at all? I mean, it was you who got Jonathan's asthma under control." He gave in to her impatient grimace. "She's having a bad first bout with arthritis and even I know that everyone blames rheumatoid arthritis on stress, held back anger, stuff like that. At least all of you card-carrying, whole-wheat, nature types."
Fay looked down at the blotter. She knew quite well why Jo avoided her. "Maybe she's more conventional than you think."
"Well, you'd damn well better shoot down a few conventions for her, Fay." Under his restless movements, his chair hit the table and toppled the stack of magazines to the floor. "She still seems to believe in some lovely old New England traditions. Like a husband's inalienable right to beat his wife."
"She admitted that?"
His quizzical blue eyes narrowed on her. "So you did know. I'm a doctor, remember? I have SOME claim to the rarefied air of knowledge around here. Some things I can see for myself."
"Shit!" Fay pulled her stocking legs up under her in the office chair to sit cross-legged, frowning at the desk.
"How the hell can you sit like that? I'd dislocate something."
"Cut it out, Mac," she said absently. "Is she coming back?"
"She didn't make an appointment. I can't do much at this stage except tell her how to take aspirin without wrecking her stomach. Are you going to go out to supper with me tonight?"
"No. I'm better the way I'm going."
"Tomorrow night?"
She shook her head, her mind on Joanna, until she realized that Mac listened intently to a conversation outside her office. He tipped his chair back another precarious few inches to see the speakers.
"Are you looking for me, Ronnie?"
Silence mushroomed in the hallway. Someone walked away quietly
"Why should I look for you?" a silken voice retorted. "You're becoming paranoid, Dr. Macklin. Maybe you should make an official appointment with Dr. Saunders, when you're through with your social call." The sharp sound of her slender heeled shoes receded,
"All of a sudden, I'm Dr. Saunders. Thanks."
"She was listening to us," he said shortly.
"And you made sure everyone knew it. You can be a bastard, Mac."
"If she wants to talk to me, she knows how. She doesn't need to hang around your door."
"Well, maybe you might not be all that easy to talk to."
He stopped halfway out of the chair and resettled back on the edge. "You don't seem to have any trouble."
"I'm not the one you were drawn to first and we're friends."
"The first part isn't true. The second isn't my choice," he said shortly.
Fay raked both hands through the tangle of black hair, holding it away from her face and neck. "Why did you pick on me today? We've been through this. You know I'm not about to get close to anyone. And you know why. Go away and let me get back to work."
"Want to go out to supper Thursday night?"
"And pick up my magazines before you close the door," she said, looking for her place in the reports. That drove him out, the magazines still fanned across the floor behind him.
Two nights after Mac's persuasive efforta had failed, she pushed herself off the bed, calmer but still puzzled. It had been - weeks - since that unexpected question had gotten an unforseen answer and still she didn't understand why she'd spoken after so long. Much less why she'd gotten an answer. Why she'd gotten that answer.
She slid her fingers along the sill of the wide back window and studied the surrounding oak grove, sensing small creatures darting through the shadows. From the lamp behind her, light spilled gently across the room. Material organized for her damned doctoral thesis covered the table.
Changing into an embroidered caftan that brushed the floor around her toes, Fay got a glass of milk and went to work.
Three hours later, she laid down her pen and rubbed her aching eyes. The markerless time that had been an ally had turned on her, stranding her. Night was always the bad time and somehow it had gotten worse. She felt like she was trapped in amber, in some slow motion visible only to others.
It was too quiet. For the millionth time, she told herself she should never have come there. It had been easy enough for Steve to goad her into taking that job, but Steve embraced a certain degree of pain, as another aspect of life. He could free himself of most, but what remained, if it remained, did not frighten or endanger him. He'd accepted it inside himself and made it an ally - a partner in sensing the needs of whoever came into his office.
She did not have Steve's strength. Whatever she felt - if she let herself feel - good or bad, was too intense to accept willingly.
Jed was three years gone and still she ached for him each night and feared absorbing any tinge of pain from people around her. If Steve's only secret was acceptance of pain, she had chosen the wrong path. In that, Steve had not seen truly. Maybe he had also been mistaken in his choice of a path for her if it could so easily catch the voice and tone of that man, Griffin.
Turning on the stereo, memories and music competed, the music winning to gently to fill the room as memories could not, but it was only a breeze or the rustle of trees or the sound of surf. Nothing alive.
Mac would have filled the emptiness, If she had allowed him.
And she knew it was a bad time when she let herself think of him that way. Mac was a friend. Even with Steve's long distance support, she didn't know how she'd have managed in a hostile environment without Mac's irreverent, unflagging company. For hostile it was. Everything about Fay annoyed the clinic administrator, from the soft, textured materials and jewel-tones of her clothes that just sidestepped fashion, to her casual attitude about possessions that were clearly expensive, to the mass of black, rebellious hair tumbling around her shoulders.
The look on Veronica's face the day a toddler had come in and thrown up on one of her expensive wool suits - despite her stubborn avoidance of children, Fay'd scooped up the messy child, buffering him from the potential storm. An expensive and exotic scarf she'd had draped around her shoulders had been sacrificed in the interest of peace and Veronica had been more shocked at Fay's casually tossing the thing into the trash than about the original problem.
They'd all begun at the clinic together, Mac and Veronica and herself. Fay had had a week to settle into the cottage she had found.
Mac, he had said after, had found an apartment in an old mill village the day before, moved that afternoon and managed to dig out clean clothes for the clinic opening the next day. And Veronica -Fay would not even guess about the administrator. She had appeared at the clinic door in black wool slacks and ruby silk blouse, her smooth sable hair just curling upon delicate shoulders, emerald studs in her earlobes that echoed her wide, green, cat-angled eyes.
From the first day, there was no doubt that the stones were real emeralds or that even to another woman, her exotic face with its chiseled perfection was incredibly beautiful.
Mac had checked Veronica out in awe, turned to Fay and under his breath, asked if she supposed the woman was some new government issue. At Fay's laugh, the sandy-haired, stocky physician had grinned and an unblinking, wordless refusal to be overawed or dominated had come into being.
Of course, Mac had more practice objecting to things. He was only there to work off having avoided the Vietnam draft, having traded threats of the stockade for ten years of public service, like working in that small clinic. Fay thought he had to have nearly completed that ten years by any combination of dates she tried, but she didn't ask. Just as, after the one time she described her marriage and Jed and later Steve's help in maintaining some grasp on her sanity, Mac hadn't pursued it. Except to make it clear he would have been willing to fill in the gaping holes in her life after Jed.
Fay sat on the edge of her bed and took the photograph from the nightstand. It was one of the few times she'd caught Jed in a quiet moment. The man in the photo regarded her unblinkingly. The quick, volatile mind and mood were stilled for a second and his mouth - Fay traced over the glass with her finger - his wide, sculptured mouth smiled just for her. Fine black hair, only the faintest glints of silver creeping in, was carelessly brushed back and flawlessly cut.
Altogether elegant and brilliant and part of her. Fay set the photo back on the table.
She dreamed and heard that answer again that night. The answer to a question it had never occurred to her to ask.
'For you?' The man on the roadside pushed back his cap again and frowned. 'Not far now, I think. Quite close actually.'
That had been the answer to her question. Again the words ran persistently through her mind along with the sick realization that the voice and intonation were those of the caretaker at the Judge's house. The angry, bearded man in his jeans and moccasins.
'Not far now, I think.' The man with the cap had spoken judiciously. 'Quite close actually.'
But if it meant skirting the caretaker...
Baby day again. Just what she needed.
Fay collected a new batch of folders and passed through the crowded examination area outside the offices, leaving a wave of shocked silence in place of two dueling infant voices.
"Thanks," Mac called out from one of the further cubicles.
Making it into her office, she leaned back against the door she closed behind her. It was a good thing she liked him. Only that morning - at least she thought it was that morning - he'd been pestering her again to go out to dinner and her knack for quieting the youngest patients was an unfunny joke at the best of times. That day, like the ones before it, were not the best of times. Nothing had been amusing since she'd made the mistake of going to the Judge's. And not thinking about it was not helping.
Nor was thinking about it. Any more than being bothered because she could scare small creatures into sniffling silence. Setting the stack of folders on her desk, she looked down at them blankly for a moment before sitting down and going back to work.
She had almost an hour before it was the administrator's turn to harass her. Only when she entered without knocking, did Fay remember that Ronnie'd asked her to come look up the administrator between morning appointments and it was midafternoon now, her appointments having been done with before lunch.
Fay laid her pen down and crossed her hands on the blotter. Obviously, nobody intended to leave her any time or privacy for work. Even for clinic Mondays, this one was setting new records in aggravation.
Veronica stepped fastidiously past the leaning tower of magazines and dropped the Boston Globe's Sunday magazine into the center of Fay's desk. The stack of files she'd worked on all the previous week cascaded gently to the floor.
Fay ran her finger down the index of the Globe magazine and found the name of her associate in Boston. Steve had gotten his article published. Telling her, just because she provided his case histories, had slipped his mind.
"I can see our work was covered in the Sunday paper," Fay said. "I don't see the problem. If it's a surprise, he didn't let me know either."
"I didn't take this position to be part of the 'believe it or not' group!" Veronica prowled restlessly around the tiny office, swinging the smooth sable curtain of hair away from her face. Furiously feline eyes slanted above high cheekbones. "You're turning this place into a side show!"
Fay's stomach twisted queasily. The passage of months had not made this easier. This was Mac's doing, the results of a brief and abortive entanglement with Veronica that suddenly was over and not mentioned. A slipup that had turned Veronica's attention to annoying Fay at the smallest excuse.
Thanks, Mac, she said to herself. Great timing. This was just what she needed, on top of everything else.But much as she hated wrangling, this was bearable if only because it wasn't really about her. Only the oddly impersonal twist to things had let her cope. "I didn't write that," Fay pointed out. "Or even expect it. But you know I have permission to use case histories for my paper and Steve's book. That was the whole point of this - letting people know they have choices besides pills and knives."
"Some choice. A physician or your parlor tricks," Veronica said coldly. "And why are you seeing the Mowry boy at your house?"
Fay blinked in surprise. "Its more convenient for his mother. Its the easiest time for her to get the car." Veronica hadn't cornered her like this before. Mac didn't know what he was doing if he could stir the elegant administrator to this pitch.
"This isn't anything new," Fay said slowly. "I don't know why you're bringing it up again."
"Because in a few months you'll be gone and I'll still be here. And these people you're seeing will run out of placebos. What happens then? What happens when they see that the label on their pill bottles has been sugar?"
Fay didn't believe Veronica had been able to shut out what she did for so long. "Nothing will happen. Hypnosis - meditation - has been around for hundreds of years. I'm just helping them take responsibility for what they believe and how. Nothing anyone can take away."
Dangerous color stained Veronica's pale cheeks.
"You're helping THEM take responsibility? The merry widow who's slumming for a year? That's rich."
Fay felt her cheeks warm. "So's your looking down on people here because they're not as scared to believe in anything as you are."
A slammed door punctuated Veronica's retreat and verified the accuracy of Fay's shot. The dark, self-destroying streak in Veronica was as wide and pervasive as the black in Jed. She hadn't seen it then - she'd been so damnably, stupidly blind - but she saw it now. When it was too late.
Her anger at the other woman flickered out like a spent match.
Lost so deeply in her thoughts, she forgot the other woman had even been there. Nor did she realize that the noise outside gradually faded, the bulk of the day's work finished. With the pen poised over the papers before her, she saw only the past.
The black had always surrounded him, but Jed had led her away from that knowledge. His brilliant, incisive mind had redirected her from the beginning, away from the warm, foggy jungle-growth richness of her mind to the wine-sharp, astringent heights and shimmering stark glory of his.
Jed had been her love. Her life.
"Why the bloody hell did you bring him HERE?" Mac's furious challenge echoed through the hallway. Fay's hand slipped, a slashing line slicing across an innocent record.
"No more today, Mac," Fay said to herself. "One day just doesn't need anything more." The pressure of the side emergency doors opening rattled the loose glass panes in her window where the putty had fallen away.
"Jesus H. Christ! Linda! Sandy?" He bellowed for help and neither nurse answered. "Who the hell IS here anyway?"
Behind her, Fay heard the glass rattle again in the sash. Her fingers tightened on the pen.
"Get back to the desk. Have them push the ambulance," Mac ordered just outside her door. Fay sat very still, on the chance she could yet escape. The nearly bald doctor poked his head around the corner. "You're here. You'll have to do." His voice drifted back as his face disappeared. "Hurry up."
"Mac?" He wouldn't do this to her, she told herself, even as she found herself running in his wake. But of course, he could. The doors still swayed on the second treatment room and an emergency took precedence over everything.
She froze outside the doors. "Come on, Mac." Her inner warning would not be ignored. "This isn't where I belong."
"No kidding. But you'll have to do. I need another pair of hands. Christ," he muttered when she finally pushed the door open, "its worse than pulling teeth to get help around here."
With her hand still on the polished oak door, Fay stopped, everything in the room trapped in amber, not a detail blurred or uncertain.
An unconscious man lay stretched out on the examining table. He filled the table. She could hear the paper covering under him crackling with each breath. A wiry brown beard threaded with gray hid most of his face. Thick, shaggy brown hair stood on end as though he had just raked his fingers through it in exasperation.
His left leg, from the knee down, twisted and lay crooked. Blood had soaked through the faded jeans and blackened his left boot. Only his eyes, those brilliant hazel eyes, were veiled.
Again, his anger beat around her. His hard hand burned her wrist, only to slide up inside her sleeve and close softly around her upper arm, his fingers light against her breast.
Seven weeks. All the quiet between the second week of September and the first week in November flickered out like a spent match.