The Edge of Recall (6 page)

It might be planning to stay. It should not, but might, because
they
had put it there.

And
they
had been all around and down and over the place they should not be. He smelled them when he came out, heard them when he was in. Their voices made him shake. Their eyes peering through the light with no pain at all.

He laid the metal spyglass on the ground near the trailer door. He would have liked to keep it, or smash it, but more than that, he wanted them to take everything and go. He stretched out his finger and ran it along the metal side of the trailer as he circled it in the moonlight. His finger jumped and dragged over the trim around the door, beneath the windows, the seams.

They were not supposed to be there. Not supposed to be. He needed them to go, but how could he make that happen? Fists clenched, he gave the trailer one last glare, then crept into the night.

CHAPTER

5

Silver gray light filtered through the giant oaks and loblolly pines as Tessa moved through the forest, her boots squelching in the mulchy ground, the scent of wet earth and leaves surrounding her. She’d left the car on the road so she wouldn’t alert the men, since she really wanted to study the property alone. Smith had apparently sensed nothing yesterday at the labyrinth, and she didn’t want him distracting her again.

Pausing at the tree line, she studied the meadow, adding its grassy fragrance to the heady organic perfume. She leaned against the ash gray trunk of a shagbark hickory and gazed up through the branches, studying the pinnate leaves hinting at the true gold they would soon flaunt. The green, leathery husks of the heavy nuts were turning brown and brittle. Soon they would fall, the husks splitting open around the hard nutshell that mallards and wood ducks, squirrels and raccoons could feast upon. It amazed her to think that the saplings she’d planted would one day be like this tree, old and storied.

She stepped into the meadow, absorbing the scene as the rising sun began to change everything around her, turning silvers to gold, grays to green and brown. A trio of white-tailed deer raised their heads, ears angling forward. Finches and orioles overlaid the morning with song as the deer sprang away. The dewy grass misted with the rising warmth. She crouched down and dug, cupping a handful of rich, pungent earth. Had it lain fallow for over two hundred years? She breathed its scent, always amazed at the complexities of the differing soils, and smiled to think she was a connoisseur of dirt.

She lowered herself to sit cross-legged and watched the transformation from dawn to day. She noted the slope of the land, possible drainage issues, natural vegetation. She observed the fall of sunlight at this time of day, and she would note it throughout the next hours.

All of this would impact her design. But what she wanted to do before anything else was unearth the labyrinth, learn what she could from its remains, read every clue the records might reveal, and lovingly restore it. Even though that was far from her typical job description, she didn’t get hung up on titles and hierarchy. Her sense of purpose stirred. She was meant to do this.

There were so many things to consider, to discover. Had the monks followed the Chartres model of sacred geometry in placing the labyrinth to mirror an element in the church itself? The rose window in Chartres, if folded down, would perfectly overlay the pattern on the floor. She probably couldn’t hope that Smith’s design had taken any of that into consideration. He hadn’t even been sure it
was
a labyrinth.

“Tessa?”

She turned as Bair reached the edge of the field and called, “Everything all right?”

She waved. “Yes, fine.”

“I’ve got you set up in the office.”

“Okay.”

He seemed unsure whether to wait or go back without her. She sighed. “I’ll be right up.”

Bair rubbed his meaty hands as she joined him in the trailer. “That desk is for you. There’s an outlet underneath.”

“Thank you.”

Smith’s desk was against hers. It held a few stacked folders, a silver laptop, and a few preliminary sketches. Bair’s held the fax, printer, phone, and heaps of folders. He turned and bumped his thigh, caught the landslide, and manhandled it back onto the surface.

“What is all that?”

“Detritus from old and possible projects I’m organizing until we’re fully underway here.”

Intern grunt work. “Why are you guys on-site, instead of Smith’s office?”

“Gaston wants Smith on the premises, start to finish. A bit of a control thing. I’m here because Smith thinks this might prove an instructive experience.”

“Oh.”

He leaned close. “I don’t think he liked the idea of staying out here alone. Lose your mind that way. Especially when you’re as sociable as Smith.”

She remembered that about him.

“It is out of the way, should something happen.”

“What could happen?”

“You know . . . stuff.”

“So you’re watching his back?”

He shrugged. “Always have. He was a skinny kid, and smart. Not a good combination.”

She smiled. “No?”

“Not when he let people know it. Plus he wore glasses. If I hadn’t walked alongside, he’d have had more than his share of scrapes.”

“What was in it for you?”

“Did I mention he was smart?”

“He did your homework.”

“Not entirely.” Bair flushed.

She didn’t want to think of Smith as a boy, didn’t want to think of him at all.

“There’s tea brewed,” Bair said. “And Smith bought some instant coffee, in case you prefer it.”

“No one prefers instant coffee.” Yet there was Smith, making assumptions. “I brought my own iced green, though it’s in the car I left outside the gate, in case you guys were still sleeping.”

“Let me have your keys; I’ll drive it in for you.”

“Thanks for the offer, Bair, but my name’s on the rental, and I’ve seen you drive.”

“I’ll take it like a church mum. And I, um, transferred the rental to the company.”

She canted him a skeptical glance, then surrendered her keys. “The tea’s in a Nalgene bottle in the console. My briefcase is on the seat.”

“Right.”

As he exited, Smith came through the inside door in a blue button-down Oxford shirt and crisply pressed jeans. His hair was barely towel dried, his glasses slightly fogged, sleep softness still in his face.

“Didn’t you sleep well?”

“It shows?”

She had not intended to notice or comment on anything personal, but he looked uncharacteristically rough around the edges. She nodded.

“I tossed all night. You’ll laugh, but I think this property is haunted.”

A frisson crawled her spine as she recalled her sensation of being watched. “By what?”

“I’ve no idea. And don’t tell Bair. I’d never hear the end of it.”

He crossed the office toward the kitchen. “Hungry?”

“I ate.” And she didn’t want anything from him that wasn’t directly job related.

Bair carried in her tea, briefcase, and a rather nice engineer’s level that he held up to Smith. “Didn’t we leave this set up yesterday?”

Smith nodded. “We did.”

“What’s it doing lying out by the door?”

Smith frowned. “I don’t know. I left it covered on the rise beyond the foundation.”

Tessa looked from one to the other, reading their perplexity and hoping it had nothing to do with the haunting Smith had just mentioned.

Smith rubbed his face. “One of us must’ve carried it back; I just don’t remember doing it.”

“I wouldn’t have left it on the ground.”

Smith wouldn’t have left it either, Tessa knew. He’d never been careless with his tools or any of his belongings, not like other guys whose dorms looked like hazardous waste dumps. His natural orderliness stemmed from his highly organized mind. If he said he’d left it, he’d left it. But if neither had carried it back, who had?

She cleared her throat. “You mentioned monastery records?”

Smith made a move, but Bair beat him to it, rummaging behind his desk, then laying a large portfolio on her desk. “That’s what we have so far. Gaston’s collected them.”

“Thanks.” As the men moved to the kitchen for breakfast, she withdrew two matted etchings depicting front and back views of the original chapel and cells. Her breath caught when she saw a circular window that overlooked the green hand-inked labyrinth.

Excitement welled up, and even more so when she found a handwritten document that described the prayer walk’s dimensions:

Four steps in and turn to the left, twelve strides form the first curve. The pattern is regular yet intricate and interlaced, as are our lives.

Were these the words of the labyrinth’s designer?

The cross is the center, the path leading to the blood sacrifice that is our hope and our salvation.

Blood sacrifice referred, of course, to the crucifixion and death of Christ, but had there been a physical cross at the center? Or was it the symbolic destination of the pilgrimage?

Smith leaned his lanky frame in the kitchen doorway. “We’re completing the plot plan today, Tessa. If you want measurements for the labyrinth—”

“Thanks, but I’ll manage.” She pointed to the back-view etching. “Just tell me that window is in your design.”

When she’d finished organizing her workspace, Tessa gathered her sketchbook and pencils. Being around Smith stirred up memories that muddied her mind like a jar of sand and water, though Smith didn’t seem fazed at all. Maybe he’d never felt as much as she’d thought.

He had listened and cared when she’d opened up in ways she hadn’t before—outside of therapy. She could have sworn his compassion was real. But what did she know? She didn’t have a mother guiding and advising her, though she wondered what Mom could have told her. I know how it is? I trusted the one I loved too?

She shouldn’t have let her thoughts go there. Time was supposed to dull the memories, but the smell of the hospital room, the sad smiles of the nurses, the sounds of the machines still came back so vividly. Her mother’s bald head, nestled against the hospital pillow, her brown eyes luminous in her pale face. Tessa could almost feel her mother’s skeletal arms as she’d crawled onto the hospital bed beside her, an awkward teen and the woman she could not bear to lose.

She made her way through the sparser woods surrounding the trailer and forced her thoughts onto a more positive course. Her mother had instilled the strength to be alone and the ability to value life—however long it lasted and whatever trials it held. Vanessa Young had taught her that death could be peaceful for a wounded creature buried in the backyard or a person who had lived as fully as she could in the time given her.

But that didn’t help the person left behind.

Her mother had delighted in the beauty of nature—delicate shells left behind when baby birds had flown, wild onions and herbs pulled straight from the earth. Tessa blinked back her tears. To block the painful connection to her mother, she had learned to create man-made structures: wood, steel, and concrete—Smith’s delight, but never really hers. Once she’d switched to landscape architecture, the fractured pieces of her life had come together—as much as they could.

Her focus on labyrinths had concerned both Smith and Dr. Brenner for completely different reasons, but she knew there was something essentially healing in that for her. Never had she suspected Smith would react the way he had when she’d told him her plan, calling it a waste of her abilities. She’d had no way to explain how deeply she needed to reconnect with elements she might not understand, but that mattered nonetheless.

She remembered so clearly his earnestly dissuading her, their arguments, and finally, the day she had approached the classroom door and heard him laughing with his friends. She didn’t have to hear to know the tone he’d used to express her vision, and the way they had looked away, clearing throats and waxing silent. She knew.

She shoved the hurt down as she approached Smith gazing through the level toward the rod Bair held. She drove the emotion from her voice. “Don’t you already have a plot plan?” It was not ordinarily the architect’s responsibility.

He drew back from the eyepiece. “Either this property had none, or the record’s been lost.”

“And you’re not having a surveyor—”

“Gaston wants me to do it.”

“Isn’t that strange?”

“Unusual. But I’m qualified.”

“I just wonder why it all has to be so secret.”

Smith planted his hands on his hips. “Tessa . . .”

She raised a hand. “I know. They’re paying for privacy.” She looked across the field. “Will I be in your way if I walk the labyrinth?”

“Can you give me one day?” He marked something on his clipboard. “I need Bair to concentrate.”

She folded her arms at his offhand compliment. As though she’d actually distract either one of them. “You have one day. And then the grounds are mine.”