Miracle in the Mist (9 page)

"It's about my Assignment."

Ellie didn't experience any surprise at Alvin's announcement that he had an Assignment.

"Emanuel told me about Dr. Donovan," she said in answer to his questioning expression.She didn't add that she was in total agreement with Emanuel's decision to try to help Alvin by placing him in a position in which he'd have to help someone else facing a like predicament. From their first meeting, she'd known Alvin had something gnawing away at him, something that had been troubling him for a long time. But as long as he chose not to face it or share it with anyone, she was helpless to show him the way through the mire of his problems. She also knew that as long as Alvin had this shadow hanging over him, he could not go on with his life, a life of which she wanted very much to be a part.

For a long time, she didn't say anything and instead gave Alvin the opportunity to gather his thoughts. Obviously he was deeply distressed and rushing him wouldn't help.

Ghost rose from the hearth rug, arched his back while he stretched his legs out in front of him, and then ambled over to her. Ginger turned onto her back with her paws in the air and ignored the removal of her comfortable resting place. The dog laid his head in Ellie's lap and turned his soulful eyes up to her in a silent plea for attention. Returning her gaze to Alvin, Ellie automatically scratched absently behind the dog's floppy ears.

When the silence had stretched out as long as Ellie was willing to allow, she cleared her throat, drawing Alvin's attention away from his contemplation of the floor at his feet.

"What about your Assignment is troubling you?"

Alvin made a disdainful sound. "Everything."

"Such as?"

Sitting up, Alvin leaned forward and rested his forearms on his muscular thighs. "Such as, Emanuel thinks I can help Donovan."

"And can you?"

"No."

"Why not?"

Alvin stared at her, his irritation at her lack of help clear in his expression. He opened his mouth, but then snapped it closed and shook his head.

Ellie patted Ghost's shaggy head and, needing her entire concentration on Alvin, mumbled, "Enough," to the animal.

The dog meandered back to the hearth rug, walked in a circle a couple of times, then flopped down beside Ginger, sighed heavily, and closed his eyes. The cat immediately snuggled into the arch made by the dog's curled body. Even from this distance, the cat's contented, rhythmic purrs vibrated loud enough for Ellie to hear.

Ellie shifted her gaze back to Alvin. Her heart ached for him. How she wished she could instill such contentment in the troubled man seated across from her. She cared deeply for Alvin, but until he looked inside himself and exorcised his demons, she could do nothing to ease his mind or his conscience.

"Alvin, the best way to help Frank Donovan is to get him to talk about what's caused him to feel he has to carry a burden that's not his to bear. Perhaps when he pulls it out of the darkness to which he's consigned it and faces it head-on, he can look at it through clearer eyes. Hiding from our troubles only magnifies them in our minds until they become so overwhelming that it seems impossible to get past them."

Frustration bloomed on Alvin's face. "And exactly how do I get him to do that? Maybe he doesn't want to talk about it. Maybe he feels like if he does, he'll have to go back and relive it all over again. Maybe he can't stand that kind of pain anymore."

Ellie knew Alvin had ceased discussing Frank and was now talking about himself. "That's a decision he and he alone can make." She smiled and stood. "Perhaps you should find him and encourage him to talk about it." She placed a hand on Alvin's arm and squeezed. "You won't know if you don't try, Alvin."

Alvin stood, convinced that Ellie had known he was applying what she'd said to himself. But even if she had, it didn't help him with his problem with Frank. "I'll have to think on it," he mumbled and hurried to the door.

For the first time since Frank's arrival, Alvin turned toward the one refuge that offered him any measure of contentment, if indeed a guilty man could find such a commodity. It seemed the only way he would get this albatross from around his neck was to get Frank to talk. Unfortunately, he knew how reluctant Frank was to talk about his problems. Alvin would go to any lengths to avoid talking about his past, and he couldn't believe that Frank was any more eager to talk about his. But if Alvin wanted back his quiet life in the village, he'd have to find a way to get Frank to open up.

Alvin crossed the small footbridge. He took one step off it and felt as he'd been hit in the gut by a tree trunk. Everything went off tilt. His world spun in crazy, colorful circles. The only thing to which he could compare it was when he was a kid and he'd spin in circles and then walked drunkenly around his house, waiting for his balance to return to normal.

As the spirals tightened, his stomach began to heave. Just as he was sure he could stand no more of the rotation, little by little the tornado-like feeling lessened. When everything finally settled down and stopped rotating, his vision slowly cleared. To his astonishment, he was sitting at the table in his cottage. For a moment, he was stunned, and then the explanation for what had just happened became painfully clear.

He couldn't leave the village. There was only one reason for that. Assignments, once they'd entered the village, could not leave until they came to terms with what had brought them there. Alvin was not only a mentor for an Assignment, he
was
an Assignment himself.

Swamped suddenly by unreasonable exhaustion, Alvin went to his bed and lay down. Moments later, his eyes drifted closed, and his breathing became regular and deep.

***

Alvin pressed the cordless phone more tightly to his ear and stared blindly out the twelfth-floor window of the Marriott that looked down on the bustling Los Angeles street below. His reflection in the window clearly portrayed his irritation with the person on the other end of the telephone connection.

"You said you'd be back in three days, and you've already been gone for more than a week. You promised me you'd be home tomorrow, and now you're telling me you want to extend your trip another day? Where does this end, Alvin?" His wife's voice choked with emotion. "When are you going to put us before that damned business you love so much?"

He straightened. "That damned business just bought you a new car, Alice." He knew he was being pigheaded, but his anger drove him on.

A long sigh came through the receiver. "Do you think I wouldn't trade that car in a second for a few uninterrupted hours with my husband?"

Alvin gritted his teeth. Didn't she understand that this business was his future—their future? It was still in its infancy. He had to work hard at it now so it would be easier down the road. Once he had a well-established clientele, he would be able to spend all the time in the world with her.

Will you
? a little voice in the back of his head prodded.

He pushed the voice aside. "For God's sake, Alice, it's one lousy day." He sighed, exhaustion driving him to end the conversation. "I'm very tired, and I have an early day tomorrow and a dinner meeting tomorrow night. I'm taking a red-eye out as soon as the meeting's over. I'll be home tomorrow morning. We can discuss this then." Silence met his promise, a promise he'd made too many times before, a promise he knew in his heart she no longer believed.

"Alice?"

Nothing.

"Alice, talk to me."

"Why, Alvin? You won't hear a thing I say anyway."

The phone went dead.

***

The next morning, his anger forgotten, Alvin hurried down the hallway to their Greenwich Village apartment with a distinctive bounce in his step. He couldn't wait to tell Alice how well everything had gone. Not only had he secured a large shipment of his computer chips to one of the biggest computer manufacturers in the world, but he'd also been told confidentially by the president of the company that, if this new chip worked, Alvin's company had a good chance of becoming their exclusive supplier. Alvin had no doubt it would work. He'd spent many long nights testing it with his engineers before approaching Grayson Tech.

This meant so much. He and Alice would be able to take their long-overdue honeymoon. She could buy that house in Westchester she'd had her heart set on for months, and furnish it any way she wanted. Life was going to be good from now on.

As he started to slip his key in the lock, he whistled a nondescript tune. When the door swung open at his touch, the tune died away. Giving the door a tentative shove, he stepped inside the apartment. He stopped dead in his tracks. His suitcase slipped unnoticed to the floor, along with his suit coat and briefcase. Silence. So much silence.

Then a high, piercing cry rent the air.

"Nooooo!"

***

Alvin sprang up in the bed. The dream still played vividly through his head, so vividly that he had to look around to make sure he was no longer in the Greenwich Village apartment he and his wife had shared. He flipped his long legs over the edge of the mattress and planted his feet on the solid wooden floor. With a deep sigh, he covered his face in his hands, his elbows propped on his thighs.

The dream was back. The same one each time. The one that stopped just short of allowing him to see everything. But he had seen it, and the memory, even if his brain wouldn't allow him to see it again, would always be with him, because he didn't know how to erase it.

After that horrible morning, he'd walked away from it all. There was no longer any reason for him to pursue his dream. He'd had the one thing that really mattered stolen from him, the one thing he treasured above all else—his beloved Alice. Shortly after that, he'd met Irma in Central Park, and she'd sent him to Renaissance. He'd been there ever since.

He'd so hoped when he'd gone a few months without experiencing the dream that it meant he was past being tortured with memories on a nightly basis. Obviously, he'd counted his blessings too soon. Or had he?

He knew Emanuel had the power to do many things. Had he intentionally caused Alvin to recall the worst nightmare of his life? The more he thought about it, the more certain he became that the dream had been a product of Emanuel's well-meaning guidance.

He slammed his fist into the mattress, and then rose and strode angrily to the door.

Chapter 8

Lulled by the gurgle of the stream and the perfume of the abundance of flowers surrounding them, Frank leaned back on his elbows in the grass and shifted a bit to the side to afford him a better view of Carrie's canvas and the picture she was creating. Once he'd urged her to try it again, she'd started hesitantly, but now seemed totally engrossed in her subject. She guided the brush across the canvas with an ease that told Frank, despite his being a novice about art and its creation, this was not a new process for her, even if she had no memory of it.

Progress was slow, and it didn't take long before he lost interest in the snail's-pace development of the painting. His gaze veered from the canvas and settled instead on the artist.

Carrie was without a doubt one of the most beautiful women he'd ever seen. His wife, Sandy, had taken his breath away, but Carrie made him forget to breathe altogether. As lovely as she was on the outside, he could see so much more in her eyes. Reflected in their green depths dwelt a gentle, compassionate, and loving woman. At the same time, he saw the shadows of a frail creature haunted by a past she couldn't recall.

He had to fight down an overwhelming urge to gather her close and protect her from her unknown demons. But he knew that, like him, she would have to find them and face them to be whole again, and until she put a face on her dream man and figured out his connection to her life, Frank had a feeling that would not happen, that her memories would remain tantalizingly just beyond her reach.

Frank knew no more about this guy's identity than Carrie did, but something deep down told him that whatever his connection to Carrie was, it was not good. Otherwise why couldn't or wouldn't she put a face on him? As long as she didn't know him, she would not have to face the atrocities of which she felt him capable.

He wasn't all that well versed in generalized amnesia and its treatment, but he did know that it was the brain's way of protecting a person from something particularly traumatic. In Carrie's case, it had to be something excessively traumatizing for her to have blanked out her entire life. He also knew that the return of her memory, if it came back at all, couldn't be rushed, and when it did come back, it would not be pleasant.

"Oh my!"

Carrie's exclamation drew Frank out of his dark thoughts. "What?"

She held the canvas up. "Look. It's so… " Her eyes sparkled, and her animated face had broken into a wide grin.

"Beautiful," he finished for her, not really sure if it was the painting or the artist that he was talking about.

Dragging his gaze from Carrie, he studied the painting. She had chosen the stream and its surroundings as her subject. Although the painting was still wet and would probably never hang in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it replicated perfectly the landscape before them.

The soft colors, the misty feel of the village, the flowers, the stream with its little footbridge spanning it. It was all there, right down to the monarch butterfly that had landed on her shoulder. All perfectly reproduced. But in every brushstroke was a love that reached out to the observer.

"It's truly lovely, Carrie."

She grinned again. "Yes, it is, isn't it?" A small giggle escaped her. "I guess I am an artist after all."

"I guess you are, and a damned good one, I'd say."

For a long time, Carrie studied her work, her wide, lively smile telling Frank how pleased she was with both it and herself. Then, without warning, she set the canvas aside, then leaned forward and kissed his cheek.

She drew back a little and said, "Thank you for your encouragement."