Flashback (15 page)

His answering smile was in his eyes. “Good. Thanks for listening.”

When they walked into the lit kitchen, they found Denise and David sitting silently at the table, both with coffee in front of them, both brooding. At their entrance, Denise jumped up and glanced quickly from Peter to Dana, but Dana was watching only David. He didn’t look up at all. His hands tightened on his coffee cup, and his face, shuttered and withdrawn, was turned to the window where the first grey streaks of the predawn were filtering through. His strong shoulders were hunched.

She walked over and stood beside his chair and still he didn’t look up. Uncertain as to what she should do or how she should do it, she slowly raised a hand and held it briefly in the air before dropping it lightly on to his shoulder and squeezing with her fingers. He stayed immobile, walled into himself, and finally in desperation she tried to convey to him a strong welling of reassurance in silence, pushing it at him with all of her mental capacity. His shoulder muscles relaxed, slumped, and he sighed, passing a large hand over his eyes tiredly. Then he looked up at her, weary, impassive. She smiled. She’d felt his troubled mind ease.

Exhaustion then hit her like a ton of bricks and she slumped slightly where she stood, vaguely aware of her mother and Peter talking in low voices at the other end of the room. David stood quickly and passed a supporting arm around her shoulders, steering her to the hallway. Feeling suddenly embarrassed at the intimacy of the movement, she dragged her feet and glanced back at her mother, but Denise was intent on whatever Peter was telling her, her own face lined with signs of weariness. Dana looked at David and surprised a smile of understanding on his face. But nevertheless, he still impelled her to the staircase. She gave in.

Back in her room, she dropped her bathrobe on the floor uncaringly and sank down to her bed, slumping against the bedpost. The bed creaked as David eased himself on to it also, close beside her, his denim clad thigh touching hers.

“What did Peter tell you?” he asked quietly.

She looked at him. “You know.”

“No, I don’t,” he replied, and she felt a wave of anger at him. His brows shot up.

“You do,” she returned flatly. “You know you do. Why are you trying to hide from yourself? Why aren’t you acknowledging that part of you that is, for some reason God only knows, sensitive to me? You’re not only lying to yourself, you’re trying to lie to me, and it doesn’t work. You can’t pull that one off.”

He surged to his feet, prowled around the room, turned. “I’m
not
you!” he grated, and she flinched. “I’m
not
used to this, I haven’t been attuned to this all my life like you have! You moan and complain, and you say that you have this great affliction! Just how would you feel if you suddenly lost that ‘great affliction’ forever? How would you feel if that part of you was well and truly silenced?”

She blanched, became incredibly white, her mouth shaking. He may try to deny his sensitivity to her, but he knew. He knew what she’d been afraid of, though she’d been too afraid to acknowledge it even to herself. He’d sensed the half-buried fear that she felt whenever she wondered if she was losing that ever-present sense of other people, the constant, tiring, familiar invasion of another’s emotions and sometimes thoughts. She’d managed to keep her fear at bay by succeeding in reaching out to her mother’s awareness and capturing, by conscious effort, that sensitivity to thought and emotion. But the fear had been there and he had known.

She pushed herself off the bed and retreated as far away as possible from the now still and silent man who had invaded her thoughts and awareness, and now her privacy. Then she turned to face him, like an animal at bay. She said bitterly, her voice quivering, “At least in my entire life, I have never been cruel to another person with the knowledge my sensitivity brings me. Look at what you’d said. And tell me, looking back, just why you said it!” She waited a moment and listened to his silence. Finally she whispered, “See? You’re lying to yourself more than you really know. Now, get out. I’ve had enough for one night. I don’t want to listen to you anymore.”

With that she leaned against the side of her window and stared out at the grey dawn. Tears eased out and crept sneakily down her cheeks. She heard him move, sensed his intention, and she shrank against the wood as if she were trying to ooze through it to reach the outdoors. But the wood and the room, and the man trapped her and she did nothing but quiver as his hand came down gently to her shoulders and turned her around. He very gently put his arms around her and held her close to his warm, bare chest.

After a long silence, he said softly, “The only thing I’ve ever done to you is hurt you, one way or another. I’m sorry. The last thing I’d ever want to do to you is hurt you. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not true,” she whispered, leaning her head on his shoulder and letting him take her weight as her eyelids fell shut. “But when are you going to stop hurting yourself?”

After a time, David eased his head back to look down at her tired, sleeping face. Then, with an infinite gentleness, he carefully picked her up and eased her on to the bed, drawing the covers up over her. She opened her eyes once and looked at him with a grave, owlish look that, combined with the slenderness of her neck and the pallor of her face, made her look like a small, solemn child. It made him smile. Her lids fluttered closed again, this time for good, and her breathing deepened.

He stood over her for quite some time, stroking the hair that was splayed out over the white pillowcase, his eyes containing something dark, his own visage exhausted. Then he stirred, unaware that Denise and Peter had come to the open doorway and were watching him silently, worriedly. With that great weariness that had seeped into every one of his bones and built up over the years, he whispered the answer to her as if she’d just uttered the question.

“I don’t know when, Dana. I just don’t know when.”

The two silent people at the doorway glided away without a sound. Then, after a time, David stirred himself again and left.

Chapter Eight

Dana slept well into the next day and when she woke up, it was with a feeling of refreshment. After a quick and horrified glance at her clock, she edged out of her bed and slipped on her bathrobe, intent on heading for the shower. As she walked out of her bedroom and into the hall, she heard voices floating up the staircase, and she stopped stock still as a feeling of amazement and dismay flooded through her. Why hadn’t she known?

No one could have surprised Dana in the past. It didn’t matter if she was particularly sensitive to a person or not, she always knew when someone other than family was in the house, just as she always knew when they were about to receive a long distance phone call, though she occasionally didn’t know who was calling. She groped out mentally, her dismay making her clumsy, putting quite a lot of effort into it. Before anything had had a chance to register, she heard David’s deep voice roaring from the living room, impatience and pain tingeing his bellow.

“Dana, for the love of Heaven, will you cut that out?”

She jumped violently, completely disconcerted, and footsteps came rapidly down the hall. David’s large bulk appeared at the bottom of the stairs and he paused, one foot resting on the first step, his expression now concerned. “What is it? What’s frightened you?” he called up.

She pulled herself up tight, clamped down on the turbulence in her, and said irritably, “Nothing. Nothing at all! Excuse me.” With that she whirled and dashed into the bathroom, and shut and locked the door. She showered furiously, rubbing at her tender skin until it was red, and roughly shampooing her hair in deliberate ignorance of her smarting scalp. Then she marched back to her room, slammed the door and dressed as jerkily and as haphazardly as she’d showered, yanking at a delicate summer top so hard that a spaghetti string snapped. She threw it viciously into a corner and yanked on another. Dragging a comb through her thick, long hair, she then tossed it back over her shoulder where it fell with a damp plop, and she marched out of her room and down the stairs.

When she went into the kitchen, she found it occupied, with her mother at the coffee maker and both Peter and David sitting at the table. Everyone looked up when she entered. She nodded shortly to Peter, looked once at David, and touched her mother on the shoulder as she went by. She opened the refrigerator, hearing absolutely nothing behind her. She clamped down on her thoughts and feelings instinctively, trying to shut out the possibility of David inquiring into her mind. She then heard a muffled sound like a snort of laughter, but she wouldn’t allow herself the luxury of turning around to see who stood behind her.

She grabbed out the milk and slammed the cubicle’s door shut, whisked a box of cereal down from the cupboard, and slammed them on the table before going back for a spoon. The only available chair was next to David.

As she opened the box and started to shake out some corn flakes, the man beside her moved and put both hands down flat on the table as he asked flatly, “Okay, what gives?”

Dana looked up and encountered three pairs of interested eyes on her, one pair full of impatience and too close for comfort. “There’s no privacy in this world, is there?” she muttered, hunching a shoulder. She splashed milk into the bowl and then dumped a spoonful of sugar on top of everything, glaring at it furiously as if she wanted to pick it up and throw it across the room for just sitting there.

“Both your mother and Peter know fully well what is going on between us,” he said very softly, as she jabbed her spoon into her soggy cereal. He leaned forward as if to stare her down. “They aren’t going to be shocked or surprised by anything said.”

“And who’s fault is that?” she snapped irritably, her eyes, mouth and neck taut with effort to suppress her frustration and upset. It wasn’t working.

“Why, you little—” he bit out.

“Don’t swear at me, I won’t—” she exploded, standing furiously.

He surged to his feet also. “—And you’re dictating my behaviour, now, is that—”

“—Because you’re striking out with absolutely no—”

“—I’ve had a hell of a lot of provocation, and it’s not exactly—”

“Shut up! Shut up!” Dana clapped her hands over her ears as she screamed, and the metal spoon she still held smacked painfully and wetly against her ear.

“Ouch!” David thundered, seeming bigger than life because of his anger. He clapped a right hand to his ear. “Dammit, you nearly took off—”

Taking both fists, she pounded once on the table, very hard, and she yelled furiously, “—And it’s
my
blessed ear, not yours, so get out of my head, will you?” And all four of them watched as the full bowl of cereal and milk that she’d knocked with the spoon still clenched in her hand, arced up into the air, almost in slow motion, to flip twice and spew its content of soggy flakes all over the table, the wall, and both Dana and David. The bowl clattered to the floor with an ear splitting
crack!
and the fragments shot out to speckle the tiled floor with jagged stoneware.

Dana looked at the floor in appalled silence after the accident, her face tight, her jaw jutting out and her expression fed up. Then without a backward glance, she marched for the door determinedly. On the way out she grabbed at the tea towel hanging on the refrigerator door latch and mopped her face. She stalked into the living room and threw herself on to the couch.

Peter said humorously, “I suppose you two had a complete and intelligible argument underneath all that?” David shot him a piercing black glance, but it apparently bounced right off the older man’s thick skin.

Denise said helplessly, “I’m very sorry for Dana’s behaviour today. I just don’t know what to say.”

Peter stood up. “Don’t be sorry. Both David and Dana are responsible for their own actions, not you. They’re both under a lot of stress, and it is, after all, understandable. And I think I might know what to say.” He too headed for the door, crunching on broken china, which Denise hastened to begin picking up.

David shot out a hand to halt Peter’s progress. “I think this time I’d better go and talk to her,” he said shortly.

Peter carefully removed the other man’s hand. “But I have a previous appointment,” he replied smilingly. “Calm down a bit, David. There’s plenty of time.”

David’s lips tightened but he remained behind and let the slighter man have his way. After Peter left the room, he sighed, shook his head, and started to help clean up the mess left behind.

Dana didn’t look up immediately when she heard someone enter the room. She’d instantly put all of her concentration on clamming up her fury and frustration, appalled at how she’d erupted like a volcano and determined not to let it happen again, no matter what David said. Then Peter was talking and she sagged with relief. She’d been expecting David.

“You do realise that it’s all right to get upset and scream things out once in a while, don’t you?” he asked her, smiling at her tense, unhappy face. The kindliness in his voice made her sniff madly. The older man’s voice was gentle as he sat down next to her. “Are you one of those people who are afraid to get angry and cause a scene?”

She nodded miserably, a sneaky tear slipping down her face. She swiped at it, angry at herself, and muttered, “I’ve never shouted like that in my life. I…I don’t know what came over me, I…he was so angry and tense, it…it beat at my head like a hammer and I couldn’t get it out.”