Because I'm Watching (28 page)

The doctors had warned her to keep her strength up, but the dinner that had enticed her an hour before now made her feel vaguely ill. She took one last bite and a sip of tepid coffee and pushed the remains away. She shook a pill out of her loaded pill case and washed the pill down with water.

Captivated by the drama across the street, she had delayed too long, and now she had to sit, holding tightly to the edge of her table, waiting for her pain to subside.

Finally it did. She pulled her laptop close. She opened the security video and pushed
Play.

She had at last discovered how to program and slow her security camera and at the same time discovered a better way to spy on the neighbors. With the dog poop malefactor in jail, she felt free to allow the lens to roam up and down the street. The camera was equipped with a motion sensor; motion attracted it, and it focused on each man, woman, child—and pet—as they walked, ran, skateboarded, drove through her historic neighborhood. She understood that none of the neighbors appreciated her diligence. But she did what she did not as spying but as a community service. After all, look at the good she'd done by unmasking the arsonist Floren. Why, she deserved a public service medal!

Not that she would get one. People were so ungrateful.

She sipped her water and observed first the early morning's action as her neighbors left for work and school. She fast-forwarded through the lull in the early afternoon, then slowed to watch the neighbors' returns. The action was lively all the way through the long, late daylight hours.… She again saw Madeline cross the street, saw her ascend Jacob's steps … then the camera moved to follow Mrs. Nyback's obnoxious dog as he trotted out into the front yard, raised his leg, and piddled on the picket fence next to Candy's house. The little beast did that every day, and Mrs. Nyback did nothing to stop him. In fact, Candy had heard Mrs. Nyback praise him. Which made Candy so angry … but in the big scheme of things, it wasn't important. She needed to remember that. Mrs. Nyback and her urine-laden dog could not interrupt her serenity.

The doctors told her it was important to maintain her serenity.

On the monitor, she watched the sun set—that had been less than an hour ago—and the camera went into nighttime mode. That is, it switched back and forth between infrared in the dark patches and regular under the streetlights. Candy didn't like that; it was hard to watch and gave her a headache. If it were up to her, she would flood the neighborhood with light all night for everyone's security. Her eyes began to burn and she moved to shut down the computer—and paused.

What was that? In infrared mode, she'd caught a flash of someone who had jumped over her fence—she checked the time stamp—ten minutes ago. She hitched her chair forward and played those brief moments again. The camera tracked the person, but she couldn't tell who it was. Male, she guessed, someone young, tall, and strong, by the way he vaulted the fence. And in a costume? With a hat and a cape…?

Candy remembered Madeline's babblings, her own worry that she had misjudged Madeline, and her fleeting thought that if someone was actually tormenting Madeline, that person would be very dangerous.… She pushed back her chair and prepared to stand. “I must call the police!”

A broad, strong hand clamped onto her shoulder and pushed her back down.

She turned and looked up into a familiar face, and heard a familiar voice say, “No you don't, Mrs. Butenschoen. You've seen—and said—too much already.”

 

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Jacob said he needed the dark. “All right.” Standing, Maddie took his hand and led him through the kitchen, through the bathroom, and into the bedroom.

He followed obediently.
Blindly.

She shut the door behind them. Profound darkness pressed like a weight on her eyeballs and her own fear sprang to life.

Monsters lurked in the dark.

But he wrapped his arm around her shoulders and led her to stand against the wall. He tugged her hand and the two slid down until they sat on the floor, shoulder to shoulder, staring into nothingness. She could feel his body struggling for breath, reaching for speech, and she pressed herself harder against him, trying to lend him strength. “Tell me,” she said.

“After the medical team performed the operation that gave me my sight back, everyone congratulated me and celebrated … for me. They seemed to think I would be … happy. But I didn't deserve the gift because … I could already see.”

She didn't understand. “See … what?”

“A beach, crashing waves, sunshine, and salt air. Snowcapped mountains. My family running toward me to embrace me.”

Now she was glad of the darkness, for it hid her horror.

“I saw what Dr. Kim told me to see. That was why I snapped, why I risked everything to kill him.” Jacob's voice grew hoarse with torment and memory. “He had done as he vowed. He won. He took possession of my mind. He broke me.” Putting his head in his hands, Jacob cried, great, ugly, wrenching sobs, a primitive whirlpool of anguish that swept Maddie into the depths with him.

She put her arms around him, pulled him toward her.

He resisted, rigid with anguish.

But she wouldn't let him go. She held him, never wanting him to ever be alone again. Not when sorrow held him in its grip and unceasing cries broke from his throat. This was more than hurt. This was shame.

And yet practicality ruled; he was crying. He needed to wipe his nose. He needed tissues.

She couldn't stand to leave him alone, not for a second. Gently she pushed him away, stripped off her T-shirt, and shoved it into his hands.

He muffled his sobs with the cloth, rocking as misery came tearing out of him.

She petted his head, ran her hands through his hair. She kissed his forehead, rubbed his back, kept her arms around him until they ached. She did for him what she had longed for in her own despair.

At last he lifted his head to say, “I'm selfish.”

Maddie smacked him on the shoulder. “Selfish? You're not selfish. You're broken.”

He caught his breath. “Broken. Yes.” He cried again.

She understood. He had held it in for so long, never confessing his great dishonor, and his hell-bound soul gave vent to its torment.

When at last his sobs had eased, she said, “Look. I've seen ruined minds. At the asylum. Really ruined. Insane for God knows what reason. Or hurt by a parent for terrible reasons. Or cut down by disease that takes a brain and makes it a wasteland.
Those
people are ruined. They cannot be cured. They cannot fight their way back.” She couldn't see him, but she felt him lift his head. He was listening. That was more than she expected and all she wanted. “You and me—we can fight. We can win. We have hurt parts, parts in our brains that our whole lives will never get better. Sometimes somehow we'll brush up against those parts and cry. Sometimes those parts will come back in nightmares. But in real life, we can put those parts away.”

A metal grater couldn't have made his voice more rough. “I can't ignore what happened.”

“No. Not ignore. Move the memories to a separate place where they are safe while you continue with your life.”

“Sure.” He moved away from her and leaned against the wall. “That's what the experts tell me. According to them, it's been two years. I should be recovering from the trauma.”

She gave one brief, mocking laugh. “The experts? What do they know? It's a rare and wonderful therapist who can view each individual's behavior as his or her own. They don't want to think they don't understand. They want to put everyone in a box. They give you a list of how you should recover from grief, from pain, from broken hearts and broken dreams and a mind so shattered by what you've seen you can never forget it.”

“I didn't see anything. I only … heard. I only … imagined.”

“Whatever. About this I am the expert, and right now I tell you—
you
recover when and how
you
can.” She was a warrior in the same deadly battle, and she recognized his reality. She spoke to his reality. “You have guilt for the young lives lost. If you weren't a good man, you would tell yourself it wasn't your fault. Not your responsibility. But it
was
your responsibility. You know that.”

“You're the first person to admit that. To admit that what I feel is valid.”

“They are your feelings. Of course they're valid. Now you have to find a way to live with them.”

His voice firmed. “There is no way.”

“There has to be a way. Your comrades are dead in horrible conditions, tortured to entertain a psychopath. You owe it to those young men and women to continue in your course to become a better man, a charitable man, a kind man. It's up to you to make the loss of their lives worth something. No one else can do it.” She caught her breath. “Wait! That's not right.
No one else owes it to them.
”

He choked up again, and when he could speak he asked, “What if I can't? What if I can't move on and become that better man?”

“Then you are truly beyond repair. You are ruined.”

 

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Jacob cried again, but for a different reason. This woman who everyone believed to be mad … she had listened to his confession, comprehended his emotions, and saw what he could not see, that he owed his kids not his death but his life.

He had to live? With his shame, his grief, his memories? He had to use them to build character, to help others, to be a shining example in the eyes of God?

He used the cloth in his hand to muffle his sobs.

He knew now that when he stood on the precipice above the ocean preparing to leap, he would remember that Maddie in a few words changed his guilt to obligation—and that deep in his heart, he agreed with her.

No one else owed his kids for the losses of their lives and their innocence. Only him.

But he was too weak. Life was too painful. He couldn't stand it. He couldn't do it.

Yet Maddie leaned against him, warm-woman-scented and soft textured, running her hands through his hair and murmuring nonsense about his strength and courage and her belief in him.…

When he slowed down with the pathetic crying, she took his hand and put it on her breast.

Just like that. On her breast. Which was bare.

It was at that moment he realized the cloth he'd been sobbing into was her T-shirt, and although he'd had little experience with boobs since his return from Korea, he recognized that small, plump, soft flesh and the thrust of a nipple.

She pressed her fingers over his fingers and acted as if holding this boob were the one thing in the world he needed and wanted.

Women! How did they know these things?

Later, Jacob would be embarrassed to remember how he reacted. Because he launched himself at her, frantic, reckless, wild with wanting. He had needed more than her understanding. He had needed sex: hot, sweaty, desperate sex. He knocked her over on his floor. All because of her breast.

She clawed at his T-shirt.

He fumbled for the zipper on her jeans and at the same time worked to get her naked from the waist down. He needed more than two hands, but he made do with what he had.

When he wouldn't lift his arms to let her pull the T-shirt over his head—c'mon, priorities!—she dug her fingers into the material of his shirt and ripped the cloth to bare his chest. He heard her mutter something about “So old you could see through it.” He guessed she was casting aspersions on his favorite T-shirt. But he didn't care because she put her mouth on his nipple.

Good idea!
He did the same to her
and
simultaneously managed to strip her pants off completely. Took both hands and one leg, but by God, he did it.

And this was all in the dark. Took damn near a miracle to find and remove those garments with no injuries to either of them.

When Jacob suckled on Maddie, she moaned and made a move on his shorts.

He was so skinny they slid right off his hips, and his underwear with them.

With one hand she found his erection. He would have come right then, but she giggled.

Wrong!

She said, “Let's do this thing, big boy.”

Big boy.
Right.
They would do this thing.

And they did.

Fast. Too fast.

When he was sprawled on top of her, trying to recover his breath, he was dimly aware he should apologize. For everything. Blubbering. Jumping her bones. Coming like a teenager on his first time and leaving her behind.

But she was hugging him and touching him like she still liked him.

So he blurted, “I'll be ready again in a few minutes.”

“Then I'd better make the bed, because this carpet is thin and hard on my butt. Come on.” She wiggled out from underneath him. She groped for his hand and pulled him to his feet. She pushed at him. “Go shower. And hurry.”

That phrase—“And hurry”—motivated him as nothing else could. He groped to the door. He opened it and glanced back.

She was peeling back the aluminum foil on his window to let in the feeble glow of light from the alley.

He supposed she could do that.

He broke speed records getting naked (he had to remove the shreds of his T-shirt). He leaped into the shower, washed everything once and the important parts twice, and jumped out. He toweled off and quickly discovered there was a thin line between drying himself and stimulating himself, so he hung the towel on the rack—military training was hard to break—and took a breath. He vowed, “I will go slower this time. I will make her happy.” He hustled back into the bedroom.

She had found sheets and made the bed. She reclined in the middle of the mattress, her head on the one pillow. Her arm was behind her. The top sheet draped her. She smiled when she saw him, and smiled wider when she saw his erection. She said, “You weren't kidding. You
are
ready in a few minutes.… I like a man who keeps his promises.”