Cast a Pale Shadow (35 page)

"You would not be there."

He took his finger from the trigger and pulled the barrel from his mouth. He snapped the gun open again and, one by one, he removed the bullets and tossed them away from him into the woods. "Sorry to disappoint you, Duncan. Again."

From far away he heard Trissa's voice calling, "Nicholas! Nicholas! Cole?"

But he didn't know if it was really her or his mind playing tricks on him again.

*****

They had fanned out in three directions from Jack's car when they found it, Augusta and Roger together, Jack, Fitapaldi, and Trissa. The doctor didn't want her to go alone, but she insisted. They had to cover as much ground as possible. She had seen the empty holster on Jack's front seat, though they had tried to shield it from her view. She knew what little time they had. She knew it might already be too late.

When she first saw him slumped against the tree, his golden head dipped almost to his knees, she thought it was too late. It seemed her heart grabbed her and choked her as she stumbled blindly over the tree roots toward him. He did not raise his eyes to her until she bent over him and timidly touched a curl of his hair.

"Trissa?" He lurched to his feet and into her embrace. "I'm sorry. I -- I was too weak."

She hugged him fiercely. "Oh, no. Oh, no, you're strong. You have experienced things that would have broken others."

"You don't think that I'm broken?" he asked with sad irony, backing away. "Shattered. Splintered. Split. Broken. Aren't they all the same? Would it have been suicide or murder, Trissa? Tell me that."

His eyes looked so dead to her with none of the spark she loved as Nicholas' and no trace of the intensity she now recognized as Cole's. The hollowness of his voice and the emptiness of his eyes tore at her heart. She feared she may lose them both, and she knew she could not survive that. She lay her hand on his as it gripped the gun so casually at his side and was alarmed that it felt so cold, as cold as the gunmetal itself. "Don't. Don't do this to me, please."

"For you. I was doing it for you, Trissa."

"Did you give me back my life to take it from me again?" She covered his gun hand with her own and moved closer to him.

"Stop, Trissa."

He tried to push her away, to release her, but she would not let him. She pressed her ear against his chest. For a moment, she held her breath, listening to his heart, wanting it to go on forever, fearing he would not let it. "Please, please, don't take yourself away from me. I don't want to live without you."

"I can't live without you," came Cynthia's voice, an echo of Trissa's, whispering across his mind, and he saw again Cynthia's cold, little body wrapped in the quilt, deep in her dark, lonely grave. "God, no. No, Trissa, you don't understand." The memory struck again and it was Trissa's face he saw. His legs buckled and he slumped through her embrace to his knees. He relinquished the gun to her grasp alone. "God, Trissa, help me. I can't go on like this. I can't."

She knelt with him, carefully sliding the gun away from them across the ground.

"It's empty," he said. "It's empty." But she did not understand.

With her hands on his temples, she searched his eyes and saw Nicholas there. "Remember. Remember, Nicholas, how you held me in the hospital? How you told me the world needed me, you needed me? I didn't believe it then. I didn't know how to believe it. But now..." She kissed his forehead and the corners of his eyes. "Now, I believe. You taught me. As Nicholas. As Cole. You taught me how to love and be loved. I need you. The world needs you. We need the magic. Your magic."

*****

Magic. It was the wrong word. It conjured up Doreen and Janey and Cynthia, and all the magic he had sought in them to sear away the memory of his childhood, to dispel the shadows and the darkness that waited to swallow him. He would spare Trissa that magic. He did not believe in it anymore. He did not want it anymore.

It was as if the illusion he'd chased for so long had cracked and shattered within him, falling away in slivers like a broken mirror. His arms circled her and he held her, so warm and real and solid, so much more than magic. From deep within him came the words she had whispered to him the first time they'd made love, "Keep me safe, Trissa. Never let me go."

"Never," she promised as he had then. "Never."

Chapter Twenty

Bryant Edmonds called on Trissa the next day waving the newspaper account of the arrest of Edie Kirk for the murder of her husband. He was eager to point out the phrase that described Nicholas as the alleged common law husband of the daughter of the accused.

"So?" Trissa snapped. "Are you surprised? You've been alleging that all along, haven't you? One of the few parts of the story you got right, I might add."

"Nobody's been proven guilty or innocent yet," he growled.

"That being the case, you'd best run along, Dr. Edmonds. You wouldn't want to taint your reputation by associating with libertines and murderers, would you?"

Edmonds ignored the warning and returned to the article. "'Mrs. Kirk allegedly struck her husband several times with a shovel when he returned from disposing of the unconscious Nicholas Brewer who confessed he had fought with Mr. Kirk earlier that evening. In her statement to the police, Mrs. Kirk admits having witnessed the fight from an upstairs window of their home, and seeing her husband put Brewer's body in the trunk of his own car but says she has no memory of the events that followed when Kirk returned later on foot,'" Edmonds read from the paper. Through narrowed eyes, he peered at Trissa over the top. "You don't believe this, do you? Your mother? That little woman is capable of--"

With a quick and startling swipe, Trissa snatched the paper from him. "Believe it? I can take the 'alleged' right out of the story for you." As if reciting by heart from the article, Trissa closed her eyes, took a deep breath and began. "Mrs. Kirk claims that as a victim of years of abuse from her husband, Mrs. Kirk attacked him as he attempted to force his way into their home. She pushed him down the back porch then beat him about the head and shoulders with a garden shovel. Later she heaved his body into her late son's toy wagon and wheeled it to nearby Calvary Cemetery where she partially buried it in a grave where a recent interment had taken place."

As she finished, Trissa's voice shook and her eyes were open and sharp with anger. She smacked the rolled newspaper against her side for emphasis. Edmonds backed away from her to the door. "Are you convinced I believe it now? It may take us a long time to get riled, but we little Kirk women pack quite a wallop when we're angry. Care to try me?" Trissa steamed.

"I suggest you heed the warning, Edmonds," Cole said as the doctor backed into him in the doorway. "Trissa is the fighter of the family. But I promise you, it is the only one of her abilities you will ever have the occasion to know."

On the same day Edie Kirk won her second indefinite postponement of her trial pending the completion of more psychological tests, Cole Brewer and his now lawfully wedded wife and his doctor Lorenzo Fitapaldi left for Michigan. As Fitapaldi crammed the rest of the suitcases into his car, Augusta kissed Trissa goodbye and made her promise to write.

"Everyday. Or at least every other. I know how honeymooners are."

Beverly and May smiled as Maurice produced a silver envelope and pressed it into Trissa's hand when they hugged. "From all of us. Use it for something special." Ruth and Jack came out of the kitchen lugging a huge picnic basket between them.

"All this?" roared Fitapaldi, scratching his head. "I hope I can find a place to put it.

"Well, it's a long road to Michigan."

Trissa, Cole, and Fitapaldi well knew how long a road it could prove to be. With Fitapaldi's help and Trissa's love and support, Cole had faced and begun to accept the horrible childhood memories that haunted him. Trissa's unyielding faith in him, proven by her insistence that they marry without delay despite his protests, gave Cole the strength to struggle forward instead of running away from his memories as he had in the past.

"How can you want to marry me? You would place your life in the hands of a man who for all we know could be a murderer?"

"For better or worse, my life is already in your hands."

From the portfolio of photographs, Nicholas's photo log, and Cole's scraps of recollection, they had pieced together a route into the still shadowy time since he'd left the state's guardianship at eighteen.

They would try to track down Janey first. She seemed safe enough to start. He no longer feared for her physical safety now that he had the memory of sending her away, but there was emotional damage to be repaired, if they could find her. For Beth, the ending was clearer. Beth had run off with Mitch.

Janey was not so easily found. He had been down these dead ends once before. Then Fitapaldi had the notion of contacting the high school she'd attended. They might have her listed in alumnae records even if she didn't graduate. The school was polite but firm. They could not share their information with anyone. Finally, Trissa sweet-talked them into forwarding a note to Jane's last known address. Three days later, Phyllis phoned from Dr. Fitapaldi's office with the news. Janey had called and if Nicholas was still interested in seeing her, she would wait in their park for him until four on Tuesday.

Trissa watched from the car as Cole approached the bench where Janey sat. She had noticed the bittersweet smile on his face when he first saw her there and had gently pushed him out the door without her tagging along. "Just remember " she reminded him, "No matter what she says, she can't have you back."

When Janey stood and turned to spread her arms out to him, Cole covered the last hundred feet or so running. They kissed and parted and kissed again. Janey lifted a chubby, bald infant out of the baby carriage she'd been jiggling when they drove up. Cole held the child up and beamed at him then jounced him on his knee when he and Janey sat down to talk. A half an hour later they hugged and parted and Cole returned to the car.

"She's happy. She says she understands," he said. Trissa kissed him and squeezed his hand. Now it was on to the hardest part, Cynthia.

Cole felt uneasy from the moment they drove into Flint. Nothing looked the same to him. What had been fields and farms and woods were now plats and rows of new houses. How could so much have changed in so little time? He thought he'd remember the woods where their cabin had been but when they reached that spot there was no woods. Instead a Zayre Department Store surrounded by an acre of cars filled the site.

"Stop the car. I have to get out." Fitapaldi pulled to the side of the road and Cole bolted out. He staggered a few feet away then doubled over and retched into the grass.

Trissa started after him, but Fitapaldi held her back. "Wait here. Let me talk to him." He wet a handkerchief in the melted ice in the cooler and went to Cole. Cole wiped his ghost white face, then squinted toward the store. "Maybe you are mistaken. Maybe we are in the wrong place."

"No. No, this is it. I know it. What have I done, Lorenzo? God, what have I done?"

Fitapaldi left the two of them in their hotel room, prescribing a mild sedative and a rest for Cole -- which Trissa promised she'd see that he took -- while he went to the morgue of the Flint newspaper. He returned to report that the clerk remembered the ground breaking for the shopping center and steered Fitapaldi to the right year. He could find no article about a body being unearthed. He searched the papers dating back from then to eight years before and found nothing.

"We have two choices," he told Trissa in hushed tones while Cole slept in the bed across the room. "We can go home and forget about it. Or we can try to seek out Cynthia's family."

"Will he ever live in peace if we give up?" she asked, knowing the answer before he gave it.

There were only eleven Dickensons in the Flint phone book. They had reached the seventh before they had any luck. "I had a cousin, Cynthia, but she died."

"I'm sorry, but that may be the one we are looking for. May I ask when?"

"Oh, I don't know. It has to be seven years ago now."

"Yes, I think, that may be the one. Would you mind answering a few more questions?"

"Who did you say this was again?"

"Trissa Kirk. I went to school with Cynthia."

"Well, I don't remember too much. I was only eleven when she left."

"Left?"

"Yes, she had leukemia, you know. They sent her to Ann Arbor for some experimental treatments. She was gone for more than a year. She was okay for a while when she came back, but she got sick again. I think they were going to send her away for more treatments, but they never had the chance."

"She died?"

"No, she ran away. With some guy. Her parents tried to hush it up, but I heard mine talking about it. It was supposed to be a scandal, but, you know, I think my aunt was relieved. Cynthia called and said that she was happy and not to try to find her. She didn't want to spend the last of her life in a hospital, and my aunt didn't want that for her either."

Silent tears began to sneak down Trissa's cheeks. "Did she ever hear from her again?"

"He called. It was very strange."

"Strange?"

"He said she had died and that he was sorry. He had promised Cynthia he wouldn't tell, but he had buried her in a place she had picked out, a place where she'd been happy. But after, he knew it wasn't right, that she should be where her family could take care of her, since he didn't think he'd be able to. He told my aunt exactly where to find her and then he hung up. They never even knew his name."

"Did they find Cynthia?"

"Yes, she's buried now at Resurrection Cemetery."

"Thank you. Thank you very much."

"You're welcome. You know him, don't you? The guy."

"Yes. Yes, I know him. I think this will allow Cynthia's ghost to rest in peace for him now, too. Thank you."

In a shady hollow in Resurrection Cemetery, Cole and Trissa found Cynthia's grave. Cole knelt and plucked the grass and caked dirt away from the flower cup that was embedded at the base of the marker. He placed the bunch of lilacs and columbine he had brought inside the vase. "There was a lilac bush outside the cabin. She never lived to see it bloom."