The Edge of Recall (40 page)

“Please sit.”

“How dare you keep that from me? You … you liar!”

“I never lied to you.” Dr. Brenner’s clipped words showed Tessa had scored a hit, and for once Smith didn’t think she’d exaggerated. If he’d kept something this monumental from her, there had to be a reason.

She hissed through clenched teeth. “I told you everything you wanted to know—my dreams, my fears. I ached for my dad, and you never said anything!”

“If you will sit down …”

Smith caught her before she launched herself at the doctor. “Careful, Tess.”

Dr. Brenner’s glance flicked to him, then back. “I had nothing to do with his death, unless you count warning him.”

“Warning him? About what? No, don’t bother. Why should I believe anything you say?”

“I understand you’re upset.” Dr. Brenner took the photo from her fingers. “This isn’t how I would have wanted you to find out.”

“How exactly would you want it, since telling the truth was obviously out?”

“That isn’t accurate. Telling you the truth before you had reached this point was out.”

“Why?” Tears filled her eyes.

“Because I needed you to remember, to break the silence you’d imposed that night.”

Still holding her waist, Smith caught her slackened weight. “You knew what I’d seen?”

He shook his head. “I knew you’d seen something. You were mute and catatonic. Your mother—”

She shook her head emphatically. “My mom was not part of this.”

“Sit down, Tessa. Do you want the truth?”

Smith was prepared to take her out the moment she said no. When she nodded, he guided her over to the couch, sat beside her, and kept a firm arm around her shoulders. Though Dr. Brenner had regained some control of the situation, Smith would not give it over completely.

“Your mother and I agreed your mental health could not be sacrificed.”

“To what?”

“To learning what you’d seen.” His face grew stern. “I’ve waited a long time for the information you’ve kept inside.”

“Why didn’t—”

“I urged you more than once to trust me with it, but each time you refused to acknowledge the memory.”

Smith expected her to argue, but Tessa slackened. She pressed her hands to her face. “It’s my fault.”

“That’s not a productive direction.”

“Mom died without knowing. She thought he’d left us because I was too scared to say what really happened.”

“You chose that explanation, not your mother.
You
needed to believe he was out there somewhere.”

Tessa groaned. “What do you want me to do?”

Dr. Brenner rolled his chair closer. “Tell me what you know.”

CHAPTER

36

Grief hit like a hammer beating her down with each throb of her heart. How could she say what she’d seen, what she had kept secret, pretending it hadn’t happened? Dr. Brenner set the machine to record. “Before you tell me what you remembered last night, I want you to recall the first time you saw a labyrinth.”

Confused, she looked into the face she had trusted with so many issues. “I’ve told you that already.”

“There might be more now.”

Now that she knew they were connected. The memory didn’t start in the workshop; it started with that flight, the one she had carried inside her, that had driven her over and over again to make paths that would enlighten her. How stupid not to realize the connection.

She swallowed the painful wreck in her throat, closed her eyes, and expected to feel the rumble of the plane seat. Instead she was in her dad’s Jeep. “I’m excited Dad’s taking me in his plane. He has to make a delivery, but he wants the company of someone small and talkative.” Had she remembered that part before? Mostly she’d recalled flying, seeing the labyrinth.

“What does he have to deliver?”

“I don’t know. Someone at the airport gives him a box.” Definitely new.

“How big a box?”

“Not very. Wider than a shoe box, but about that high.”

“Are there words on the box like a commercial package?”

She frowned for a moment, then shook her head. “Just brown, I think. Maybe it’s wrapped in brown paper.”

“Go on.”

“We’re flying over the mountains, then down into a valley. I see roads and fields and horses like dots.” She opened her eyes. “They might have been cows, but I wanted them to be horses.”

He smiled, the little triangle of beard beneath his lower lip jutting sharply. “Do you want to lie down?”

She leaned into Smith. “No.” She closed her eyes and drew a slow breath. “I see the labyrinth. Daddy tells me what it is, and it’s … magical. I can’t stop thinking about the curling path.”

Smith’s fingers rested gently on her shoulder. He must have been really worried to have brought her there to Dr. Brenner.

“Go on.”

“We bounce down on the dirt road. Daddy says, ‘Hold on, kitten.’ ” She felt the rumble of the gravel as they touched and bounced up, then touched again.

“Are you near the labyrinth?”

“I think so.”

“Does he use it as a landmark?”

“I don’t know.” Tessa frowned. “I don’t think it’s there anymore. I’ve located all the documented labyrinths in the country.”

“Stay with the memory, Tessa.”

She swallowed. “Dad gave someone the box, and then we flew back home.”

“Describe the person he gave it to.”

“I don’t remember.”

“Try.”

She glared. “I was five years old. I don’t remember anyone but my dad.”

Dr. Brenner’s jaw twitched. “I want you to lie down.”

She started to protest, but he said, “Please.”

She looked at Smith, who reluctantly got off the couch but took up his guardianship behind her.

Dr. Brenner directed his gaze to Smith. “This might go better without distraction.” His suggestion carried an uncharacteristic edge.

“I want him here.”

Smith folded his arms and remained.

Dr. Brenner acquiesced. “Close your eyes. I’m going to relax you.”

His declaration alone created a physical response, an autonomic softening of every muscle. She closed her eyes.

He spoke slowly. “Relax your forehead. Relax your face. Let your jaw hang slack.”

Could she stop it?

“Relax your throat.”

Her airway cleared.

“Relax your shoulders—the left, and the right.”

The tendons and muscles softened.

“Relax your arms.”

She couldn’t lift them if she tried.

“Relax your diaphragm. Let your abdomen go slack. Your hips and pelvis are melting into the couch.”

She was no longer aware of Smith’s presence.

“Let your legs go limp. Relax your feet. Relax each toe.”

She lay a moment absorbing the silence, then realized she wasn’t alone in it. The warmth, the light she had encountered enclosed her once again. He was there. Not the dad she had lost, but the Father she’d found.
Help me.

“Relax your face.”

She let it go slack again.

“The plane has landed. Your father gives someone the box.”

Daddy said to stay in the airplane, but she wants to ask about the
labyrinth. She jumps down from the stair onto the pale gravel and skips
over to her daddy, her white sandals kicking up the dust.

Daddy puts his hand on her head and pulls her to his leg. The man
says something. She looks up.

With a cry, she flew up from the couch. “It’s him. The man in my nightmare. The man I saw, that I remembered.”

She had looked into his face. And that was why she’d believed it when he said he would find her. If he had found her daddy all the way up in the mountains, where would she ever hide?

“Tell me what he looks like.”

She described him.

“Do you know him?”

She shook her head.

“Say it out loud.”

“I don’t … know.”

“Would you know him if you saw him?”

“Yes.”

“It’s been a long time.”

“I’d know him.”

Dr. Brenner hesitated, then said, “Tell me what you saw last night.”

So many years he had walked her through exercises to relax and reveal. It all came together now. She drew a breath and described her dad’s brutal death. Smith’s hand formed a protective cuff around the curve of her neck, but she didn’t need protection. She was exposing the monster at last.

By the time the doctor turned off the recorder, Smith seethed under a thin veneer of civility. “Are we through?”

“
We
are through when Tessa says so. This has been a traumatic session—”

“You think?” Smith’s hands fisted. He could hurt the man for dragging her through every gruesome detail.

“She might need to further process the emotions.”

“What exactly does that mean? That you tell her what to think and how to feel?”

Dr. Brenner sat back in his chair. “I hear your hostility, Smith, but I’m unsure of its basis. Is it my treatment of Tessa that’s making you antagonistic … or your own?”

“My … You’ve kept her helpless and dependent.”

“I’ve kept her safe from her own mind.”

“She’s strong and capable.”

“You don’t know—”

“Stop. Please.” Tessa looked from one to the other. “I just want to finish this.” She focused on Dr. Brenner. “I gave you what you wanted; now tell me what happened to my dad. Why did they kill him?”

Dr. Brenner slow-blinked. “Another day would be better for that.”

“No it wouldn’t.”

“Give yourself time to deal with this much.”

She raised her chin. “Tell me what you know.”

“I don’t—”

“You said you warned him.”

Dr. Brenner looked away. “If you’re willing to spend the night here, and let Smith go home, we can—”

“No.” Smith spoke for her. “She’s coming with me.”

Dr. Brenner pursed his lips. “Tessa?”

Smith held his breath. Did she have it in her to resist the man’s power?

She sagged. “I’m going home.”

Thank you, God.

Dr. Brenner’s eyebrow twitched. “We’ll talk tomorrow or the next day.”

Smith took her arm and led her to the door, looked once over his shoulder at the doctor, then took her out. Bair and Genie stopped talking and stood up.

“Let’s go,” Smith said, before anyone asked another question. Something felt wrong, and the sooner they were out of there the better.

From his seat at the breakfast table, through his dark glasses, Donny saw her. He looked up and saw her outside the barred window, walking. He ground back his chair and rushed over, banging his hands against the glass. He wanted her to look, wanted her to see him, but he couldn’t get to her, couldn’t …

“Stop banging the glass, Donny,” the attendant with pink hair said. “You’ll get in trouble.” Only part of her hair was pink. The other part was like straw, like the tall grasses in his field, and he had found it interesting, but he didn’t care about that now. Tessa was out there.

“It’s her. I have to talk to her. I have to tell her I want to go home.”

The attendant gave his arm a little tug. “You can’t talk to her. She can’t hear you.”

Because he’d been caught, trapped, taken away. He wasn’t in a cage but in a room again and couldn’t run and couldn’t go outside at night and couldn’t see the stars and feel the cool air on his face. “I have to tell her I want to go home.”

“Why would you want to be back in that hole?”

“It’s not a hole. It’s a cistern and it’s mine, and she said Dr. Brenner would help me, but I don’t want help. I want to go home.”

“Well, you have to stop banging the glass or someone’s gonna get ticked.”

Pink-haired Danielle didn’t look at him. She looked around him, because she couldn’t stand looking. He wanted Tessa, who looked and didn’t scream—if he could only make her see him. He slapped his hands against the glass, shrieking when they came and pulled him away, pulled him where she couldn’t see him as she went farther and farther away.

And then Dr. Brenner was there, his face stern and unhappy. “What are you doing, Donny?”

“It’s her. It’s Tessa. I want to see her. I want to talk to her.”

“She can’t talk to you now. You need to go back to your room.”

“I want to tell her I have to go home.”

“We’ll talk about seeing her another time. Now you need to go to your room. I’ll bring you a book. How would that be?”