Cold Cold Heart (13 page)

“I can't even remember what happened to me,” she said.

“You may never,” Burnette said. “Or it may come back to you in bits and pieces.”

“I think I have some memories from the days before . . . But I don't know how much of that is real and how much of it my brain has pieced together from other sources—or just made up completely.

“I don't remember him at all,” she said. “I can't see him. I don't want to see him.”

“You don't have to.”

“But how can I be so terrified of something I have no memory of?” she asked. “And how can I move past something I can't remember?”

“Because the brain stores emotional memories and the physical details of what happened in two separate places. This is oversimplifying, but in a sense your mind doesn't want you to remember the details of that trauma,” Burnette said. “And the brain injury makes it easier to pull that off. You've got a built-in excuse to not
remember. But whether you consciously remember it or not, that experience, and the emotion attached to it, is a part of you. It's just deeper than you can readily access.”

“I don't want to access it,” Dana said. “Everybody wants me to remember. They want to know every gory detail.”

“Unfortunately, that's human nature. It's entirely your call what you want to share, Dana. And how you feel about that may change over the course of time. Some victims find it cathartic to talk about their experiences. Some find it empowering to share their stories in a way that might help others. Some just want to move on.”

“I want to move on,” Dana said impatiently.

“Fair enough. But don't think that means you don't have to deal with the effects of what happened. You don't have to access the physical details to address the emotional damage within yourself. You can't escape your own experience.”

“I don't know about that,” Dana said. “I hardly recognize who I used to be. It's like that girl is someone I met once a long time ago. I'm someone different now.”

“That doesn't mean she's not still a part of you,” the doctor said. “She always will be.

“But let's focus forward,” she suggested. “You want to move on. So do you have a plan? What are you going to do with yourself?”

Dana shrugged and nibbled at a ragged cuticle. “I don't know. So far today I managed to take my clothes off
before
getting into the shower. That might be the highlight. My mother tells me that should be enough. She says my job now is healing.”

“Healing is ongoing,” Burnette said. “But I don't think that's going to be enough for you. It's Mama's job to protect you. You're her baby, and she's not going to be quick to forgive the world for hurting you. She's going to want to keep you in the nest. That's understandable. It's even okay for a while. But that's not going to be good for you long term. You need a goal. You're a fighter, Dana. You need something to fight for.”

Dana didn't think she would have described her Before self that way. A worker, yes. Ambitious, yes. Goal oriented, yes. But a fighter? No. Before Dana had been a rule follower, a diplomat. She had thrived on making people proud of her, on meeting and exceeding expectations. But a fighter? Someone who kicked and scratched and fought to win? No. She hadn't needed to be.

“What do I have to fight for?” she asked. “I'm an unemployable newscaster living in my mother's basement.”

“When you woke up in the hospital, you had a goal to get out of the hospital. When you went to the Weidman Center, your goal was to get well enough to go home. Now you're home. You need a new goal. And when you reach that goal, you'll need another goal. Does that sound like a plan?”

“It sounds like a lot for someone who got lost on the way to the kitchen last night.”

“They don't have to be big goals. A small one each day. They're like handholds and toeholds as you climb the bigger mountain. Ultimately, you will get to the top of the mountain, but in the moment you only need to focus on the next ledge.”

“Yesterday I dumped all my clothes out of my suitcase into a pile, then couldn't cope with what to put in drawers and what to hang on hangers,” she confessed.

“So your first goal is to put away one thing, then another thing, then another. Eventually, the pile goes away and the job is done.”

“‘Brain-Damaged News Girl Empties Suitcase. Film at Eleven,'” Dana said sarcastically.

“Nine months ago you were in a coma.”

“Ten months ago I was a morning news anchor.”

Dana looked out the window again, at the people walking up and down. Burnette waited patiently.

“I loved my job,” Dana confessed after a moment. “Yesterday, standing there in the driveway, looking at that reporter, the blond girl . . . I saw my face. I literally saw my face on her body. That
should have been me asking someone else the questions. It's so unfair.”

“Yes, it is,” Burnette agreed. “Life is completely unfair. That's no news flash, is it? You lost your dad when you were young, right? Your best friend disappeared when you were barely out of school. No one has seen her since. You know firsthand that bad things happen. You've no doubt reported on stories of child abuse, rape, murder.

“It's no surprise to you that life isn't fair. You just never thought you'd be the one getting the shit end of the stick again. Neither did I,” the doctor confessed. “I had my life all planned out. I was going to win a gold medal and have my picture on a Wheaties box, and get a million-dollar Nike sponsorship, and go on to be a star for ESPN.”

“You still could have gone into broadcasting,” Dana said. “You're a beautiful woman.”

“Thank you, but my life took a different turn. After what happened to me, I fell down a deep, dark rabbit hole. Depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress—the whole nine yards. It was a long climb out of that, and on the way, I learned a lot about myself and what I really wanted to do with my life—which is help other people out of their rabbit holes.

“So maybe you can't be in front of a camera anymore,” she said. “That doesn't mean you don't still have skills. Dr. Dewar told me you like doing research on the computer. So you start by researching subjects that interest you. Maybe you end up doing research for news stories. Maybe you end up becoming a writer. Start with writing a blog. Or maybe this journey takes you on a whole other path. I don't know. But I do know if you don't have a destination, you'll never go anywhere.

“I want you to think about that for next time—after you've organized your closet,” Burnette said, unfolding herself from her chair. “What's your first goal going to be?”

Dana got up, chewing her lower lip as she thought about her answer, smiling a little when she did. “Finding the elevator.”

The doctor smiled with her. “I'll help you with that one.”

Burnette padded barefoot across the room to a door that exited directly into the hall within sight of the elevator.

“None of that was in your bio,” Dana said, lingering in the doorway. “What happened to you. None of that came up when I researched you.”

“I had a different last name then,” Burnette confessed. “I was a different person. Just like you were.”

“Which you is better?” Dana asked.

“I've learned to love them both. You will too.”

“Will I?”

“When you were in the hands of a killer, your goal was to get out alive, and you achieved that goal,” Dr. Burnette said. “After that, I wouldn't bet against you, girl.”

I hope so,
Dana thought as the elevator descended, dumping her back into the world. But as she caught the shocked glances of people passing by, she had nothing but doubts.

A Liddell County
sheriff's cruiser was waiting at the end of the street when Dana turned onto the cul-de-sac.

After her appointment with Dr. Burnette, she had decided her goal for the day would be to take a small step toward independence by driving home. If she could prove to her mother that it was possible for her to get from point A to point B without getting lost or crashing into someone or something, she would begin to build her case to get her own car back. After a minor glitch in that she had no idea how to start her mother's Mercedes, she had succeeded with the aid of the navigation app on her phone, only mixing up right and left twice.

She was feeling very pleased until she saw the sheriff's car. In that instant, the bottom dropped out of her stomach and an old feeling that was attached to an old memory came rushing up through her, taking her breath away.

Suddenly she was fourteen, sitting in the backseat with Casey, giggling and laughing, excited to get home to show Daddy the dress she had bought for their father-daughter dance at the country club. It was a fall day, just like this day—a little chilly, a little blustery, but the sun was shining and the sky was blue. It was too pretty and too
perfect a day for something bad to happen, but something bad
had
happened.

A county cruiser had been parked at the curb in front of the house. The deputy standing beside it with his arms crossed looked grim. Roger paced the length of the patrol car, agitated, running his hands back through his hair again and again.

From that memory, Dana's mind went back to the last time she had seen her father that same morning. He had made breakfast, as he did every Saturday. Even though the weekends were busy at the nursery, he insisted on his family time. Ed Nolan's Saturday mornings consisted of cooking breakfast for his daughter: chocolate chip pancakes, bacon, and scrambled eggs. Sacred time.

Dana remembered she had chattered nonstop that morning about the big day she was about to have with her mom and Casey and Casey's mom. They were headed to Louisville for shopping and lunch, manicures and pedicures. She was looking for a dress like one she had seen in a magazine. She had shown the picture to her father, and he had told her she would make that dress look special, not the other way around, because she was the most beautiful, special girl in the world. She could still feel his arms around her as he hugged her tight and kissed the top of her head.

He had come out of the house to wave them off as they backed out of the driveway. She could see him in her mind's eye like she was looking at a movie. Her father waving with one hand, the other hand hanging on to the collar of Moose, their chocolate Lab. She could see her father's face, as clear and sharp as a photograph—his wide, rectangular smile, his piercing blue eyes crinkling at the corners. He was a compact, athletic man with more stubble on his square jaw than hair on his close-shaved head. Even without hair he was as handsome as a movie star.

It was the last time she had seen him alive. He had been found dead that afternoon. An accident, they said. No one knew really what had happened. There had been no witnesses.

They knew he had taken Moose and gone pheasant hunting by himself in the late morning. He and Roger—his best friend and business partner—owned seventy-five acres of hunting property a few miles east of town—a rugged mix of woods and open fields bordered on the south by bluffs that dropped off to the river. Speculation was that, for whatever reason, he had ventured too close to the edge of the bluff and had fallen to his death. Some hikers had found his body, still warm, but too late.

“Dana? Dana? Dana!”

Dana came back to the present, turning to her mother, indignant. “What?”

“We're sitting in the middle of the street.”

“Oh.”

She had stopped the car a good fifteen yards short of the driveway. She pulled ahead, only glancing at the deputy who had gotten out of the cruiser. He was holding a bouquet of pink and white flowers.

“Tim!” her mother exclaimed, getting out of the car. “Oh, my goodness!”

“Hey, Miss Lynda. How's your day today?”

“Oh my God! What a wonderful surprise! I had no idea you were a deputy! Dana, look who it is! Tim Carver! For heaven's sake!”

Dana got out of the car, rearranging her hood, hiding herself in the back of it. She looked across the roof of the car at the deputy. He was medium height, broad shouldered and slim hipped, built to wear a uniform. He turned and looked at her, a wide white smile firmly held in place, blue eyes shining, set off by laugh lines.

“Dana,” he said.

Dana stared at him as he came around the car. Tim Carver, her high school sweetheart. Of course she recognized him . . . now that she did. She remembered his easy smile, the hint of good-natured mischief in his eyes. She had no memory of him becoming a deputy—or a grown man, for that matter. She hadn't seen him in years—not that she could remember, anyway.

They had broken up the summer after graduation. She remembered that. It wouldn't have been practical to try to keep the romance going. She was off to college in the fall. He was headed to West Point with much fanfare—something Roger had helped to orchestrate. Then Casey had gone missing, and nothing else that summer had mattered.

They hadn't stayed in touch after they had left Shelby Mills. Dana had gotten caught up in her new life at school. There had been a new boyfriend—whose name and face she couldn't recall now. She had lost track of Tim Carver.

“Welcome home,” he said, holding the flowers out to her.

Dana accepted the bouquet, looking at it like she had no idea what to do with it.

Her mother broke the awkward silence. “Tim, how long have you been a deputy?” she asked, coming around the hood of the Mercedes to stand with them.

“Five years now,” he said. “Not all in Liddell County, though. I started up in DeKalb County for two years, but I wanted to come back home, you know.”

“You've been back three years and you haven't looked us up?” Lynda said. “Shame on you!”

“Well, you know,” he hemmed and hawed, ducking his head. “Time gets away. Busy with the job and all.”

“How are your folks?”

“They're well, thanks. My dad is with a firm in Lexington now.”

“And your mother?”

“Moved back to Texas. My sister's down there in Austin.”

The Carver family had come to Shelby Mills from Texas, Dana remembered. Tim had joined her seventh-grade class. He had never entirely lost the twang of Texas in his voice.

“The last I remember, you had gone off to West Point,” Lynda said. “You were going into the military.”

He nodded, looking a little uncomfortable, Dana thought.

“Yes, ma'am. Well, it didn't quite suit me,” he said. “After what happened with Casey, I kept thinking I would rather go into law enforcement, and . . . well . . . here I am.”

“You're losing your hair,” Dana blurted out.

Her mother gasped. “Dana!”

Dana frowned. “Well, he is.”

“I can't very well deny it,” he said, chuckling, running a hand back over his head. Dana remembered him with a full head of fine blond hair. He wore it cropped short now, not trying to hide the fact that his hairline at his temples had receded markedly.

“Dana sometimes says things without thinking now,” Lynda explained.

“Don't talk about me like that!” Dana snapped. “Like I'm a fucking moron or something.”

Her mother arched an eyebrow. “Case in point.”

Dana made a show of turning away from her, giving her full attention to Tim.

“I look different, too,” she admitted.

“I'd know those pretty blue eyes anywhere,” he said with a kind smile.

“You always were a charmer, Tim,” Lynda remarked.

“Well, ma'am, that's easy around beautiful ladies.”

“I'm not beautiful,” Dana said flatly.

“Why don't we go inside?” Lynda suggested, taking the bouquet from Dana's hands. “Can you stay for a cup of coffee, Tim?”

“Yes, ma'am. Thank you. I'd like that. I'm not on duty for a while yet.”

“You and Dana can catch up.”

Her mother turned to go to the house. Tim reached out as if to put his hand on Dana's shoulder. She twisted away.

“Don't touch me,” she snapped. “I don't like to be touched.”

Surprised, he stepped back, raising his hands. “Sorry.”

“It's not your fault,” Dana said, turning away.

They went inside, into the kitchen to sit at the big table, Dana at one end, Tim with his back to the wide expanse of window. Dana looked past him, past the deck that stepped down in levels to the flagstone patio, and beyond to the gentle green slope that rolled down to the woods. A deer stood in the clearing looking up at them, then flicked its tail and dashed away.

Dana wished she could dash away. What was she supposed to say to him? What kind of small talk was a person supposed to make after they'd looked into the face of evil and barely snatched their own life out of the jaws of doom? Were they supposed to talk about high school after that? Was she supposed to ask him if he had married, if he had a family? She didn't care.

“So are you married, Tim?” her mother asked, as the coffee machine hissed and spat into a cup. She busied herself at the sink, snipping the stems of the flowers, putting them into a vase.

“No, ma'am,” he said. “Married to the job, as they say.”

“That's not very romantic,” Lynda said as she brought the bouquet to the table.

“All things in their own time,” he said. “I'm on a serious career track with the sheriff's office. I passed the detective's exam recently. I'm just waiting on an opening in the department.

“You know, I had the best girlfriend,” he said, nodding toward Dana, eyes twinkling. “I haven't found another girl who could fill those shoes.”

“I remember you now,” Dana said dryly. “You were always full of shit.”

“Dana!” her mother scolded.

“Who? Me? Not at all!” Tim protested with a laugh. “That's the God's honest truth, Dana. You ruined me for other girls.”

“Cream or sugar for your coffee, Tim?” Lynda asked.

“No, thank you, ma'am. Black is fine.”

“Dana, would you like a coffee?”

“Do I like coffee?”

“You did this morning.”

“No, thank you,” she said, feeling stupid.

“I'll leave you two alone to chat, then,” her mother said, setting Tim's steaming mug on the table in front of him.

Dana drew a quick breath to tell her not to go but stopped herself. Tim had been her first crush, her first kiss, her first young love. He had been her best friend after Casey. She should be able to have a conversation with him.

He sighed as Lynda left the room.

“I can't say how sorry I was to hear what happened to you, Dana,” he said quietly. “I can't even imagine what you went through.”

“I don't remember it.”

“None of it?”

“No.”

“Thank God.”

“For what?” she challenged. “If there's a God, he let a sexual sadist kidnap and torture me—after he'd already killed who knows how many girls. God gets a big pat on the back for that?”

His eyes widened a little. He only knew Before Dana, sweet Dana, happy Dana, the diplomat, the good girl.
Welcome to After Dana,
she thought.
Damaged Dana. Unfiltered Dana.

“I guess I didn't think of it that way,” he said.

“Nobody thinks of it that way. But the God that lets me forget the details is the same God that let it happen in the first place. So forgive me if I'm not entirely thankful to a higher power.”

He raised his hands in surrender. “Hey, I don't blame you. You have every right to be bitter. People just want to make sense of things that can't be made sense of. You and I both know there's not always an answer to be had. We learned that with Casey. Seven years and we still don't know what happened.”

“Did you really become a cop because of her?”

“Yes, ma'am, I did. I watched the investigation and the searches
and all when Casey went missing. I was a part of that, just as you were. It stuck with me,” he said. “And I read that you were reporting on the murder of a teenage girl when you got abducted. The newspaper said you were putting in extra hours because you had lost a friend from high school.”

“Casey had a big impact for someone who isn't even around.”

“More than she could know.”

“Do you have anything to do with her case?”

“Not directly. The original detective—I don't know if you remember him—Dan Hardy—he retired a couple of years ago. The case got reassigned,” he explained. “It's just been sitting, cold, truth to tell—until now. There hasn't been anything to go on.”

“I heard there had been sightings of her in different places,” Dana said.

“Reports here and there,” he said. “Nothing panned out. People see the story on the news or on some reality crime show, and they want to help or they want to feel important. They think they see the person, or they just flat make it up. None of those leads went anywhere.”

“And now?”

“The detective in charge is going to want to talk to you about the possible connection to the man who attacked you,” he said. “I told him I know you. I figured it might be easier coming from me.”

It might be easier coming from an old friend with a wink and a smile and a bouquet of pink flowers,
Dana thought, looking at the vase her mother had set on the other end of the table.

“You don't have to try to suck up to me,” she said bluntly. “Just ask.”

“I'm not trying to suck up to you, Dana,” he said, offended. “I can't bring flowers to a friend? I thought that was the gentlemanly thing to do.”