Listen to the Shadows (24 page)

“She was tiny, with large brown eyes that often darted about like a frightened doe.”

He sees her now, Katie thought. He sees her and it’s killing him.

“Why was she afraid?” she asked quietly.

Jonathan shifted his weight in the bed, and when he spoke again his voice was oddly wooden and empty, and she understood that he’d needed to detach himself emotionally in order to get the words out.

“The fear came later. But I’m getting ahead of my story. As I said, these things I’m telling you were related to me by my father.” He cleared his throat. “Except for her eyes—oh, yes, I do remember her eyes. I remember…he took her from the reservation and married her, and her people turned their backs on her. She was no longer one of them.”

“Oh, Jonathan, how terrible.”

“My father said she grieved for her family, her friends every minute of her short life. She was an outcast in our neighborhood. She made no friends. There were prejudices, as there are now, only then they were more deeply embedded, more overt.”

“Did you feel the prejudices, too?”

A pause. “Often.”

Katie understood now why he made his little self-deprecating ethnic jokes. It was a defense mechanism. You make the joke before someone else gets the chance to.

“Go on.”

“I never really saw her depression until I was much older,” he said. “She always had a smile for me and Lona, a touch. Sometimes she sang to us at night—soft, sweet lullabies that I never understood the words to, though it didn’t matter. I can still hear them.” He smiled at the memory. Waited, went on. “I remember the way she smelled when she hugged me close, of some delicate wild flower I never knew, and don’t now. Anyway, my father—he said if she left him, she might be accepted back into the tribe. I think they talked about it. He couldn’t bear her unhappiness, and naturally he blamed himself. But she loved him—loved us, and she wouldn’t leave.”

Jonathan plucked a loose thread in the blanket. Katie ached for him, for the terrible pain that was in him. A part of her wanted to halt the flow of words, to chase back the memories. Yet she felt that he needed to look at his past, to delve into it, and perhaps in this way to rid it forever of the power to torment him with such savagery. She remained silent.

“And—and then one day…” He went on, faltered, stared harder at the ceiling, began again. “It was summer, toward the end of the school term. I’d run all the way home from school to plead to be allowed to go swimming. Lona was five then, and being the gregarious one, was off playing with her friends. I can’t be sure, of course, it was such a long time ago, but I think she was. Even before I burst into the house, I heard my mother’s screams. In my rush, I’d paid little attention to the ambulance parked at the curb, thinking, if I thought of it at all, that it didn’t have anything to do with us.

“Two men in green hospital coats, and a tall woman wearing glasses shaped like cat’s eyes—were in our living room. My mother was caught between the grim, red-faced men who were attempting to drag her by her arms toward the door where I stood, watching. She just kept screaming and screaming, bucking and kicking like a trapped animal, trying to free herself, while my father stood by like a gray statue, silent tears rolling down his face.”

Katie’s heart ached at the scene Jonathan described—a scene so traumatic it would etch itself forever in a child’s mind and follow him like some demon throughout his adult life.

“And suddenly she was looking straight at me. Her screams stopped and her body went limp. The biggest of the two men picked her up in his arms as easily as if she were a child. I will never forget her eyes then—big, empty velvet eyes that saw nothing. Or perhaps some long ago memory. She didn’t know me, that much I understood.

“I flew at them, flailing out with my fists, commanding the man to let her go, but it was like beating a wall, like commanding the wind to change direction. When I could do nothing, I ran after them into the street, chasing the ambulance that was taking her from me even after it was long out of my sight. And the wailing siren only an echo in my mind. I ran until I could run no more…”

Again, he shifted his position in the bed, and his pain was visible in the movements. “At last my father came and took me home. I never saw her again. It was just three weeks later that Dad told us she was dead. He didn’t explain why or how, just that she was dead. It was only much later that I found out that one night she slipped out of bed in the darkness of her room in that mental hospital where they’d taken her. Clear vision must have surfaced from the shadows of her mind for that brief moment. I’ve often imagined how frightened, how alone she must have felt then. Some attendant or careless nurse had left a glass in the room. My mother found it, smashed it, and slashed her wrists.

They didn’t find her until the next morning.”

“Oh, Jonathan,” Katie whispered, her hand going out to cover his.

Neither of them spoke for a long time.

At last, he said, “See, I told you it was a long story.”

Ignoring his feeble attempt at lightness, she asked, “What—what about your father?”

Jonathan shrugged. “He nursed his grief with alcohol. His suicide took a little longer to accomplish—about ten years.

“Anyway, I had this idea I wanted to help people with emotional— mental illness. I couldn’t do anything for my parents—I thought I might—I might be able to do something for…” He swallowed hard.

“And you have. It’s a noble calling, Jonathan, and with good motivation.”

“I don’t know,” he said, his voice weary now. He laced his hands behind his head, and looked at the ceiling. “Maybe I was only trying to help myself to understand it all. I—uh, lost a young patient recently.”

Bewilderment creased his forehead. “A girl—sixteen…” His voice failed.

“Yes, I know.”

He looked at her in mild surprise. “Linda Ring, no doubt. A first rate nurse, but she can’t bear confidences.” Another sigh. “It doesn’t matter. Anyway, I found myself wondering for the first time if what I was doing had any real worth. You talk—you apply years of accumulated knowledge—you try. And then…”

Katie, anxious to still his self-doubts, said, “You know better than anyone, Jonathan, that psychiatry isn’t an exact science. And you do help people. I know from my stay in the hospital that you have a fine reputation as a doctor.

“You said you try—and that’s all any of us can do. That girl wasn’t your failure. Maybe she was society’s—or her own…”

“Maybe.”

A silence fell between them, then Katie asked, “Does Lona remember her mother?”

“She says she doesn’t, but I suspect she’s blocked it out. Maybe that’s part of the reason the acting profession has such an appeal for her. She can pretend to be someone else.”

“You blame yourself for your mother’s suicide, don’t you?” she said gently, deliberately returning to the subject, going only on her instincts, and love.

He didn’t answer.

“Did you cry when your father told you she was dead?”

“No.”

“Did you ever let yourself cry?”

“Katherine.” A plea. A warning.

Katie began to stroke his arm. “Did you?”

He shook his head. “I—I couldn’t.”

She had no thought as to where her questions were leading, only that they came from her heart, from the love she had for this man beside her, and that the words, finally, felt right.

She reached for his hand. “Then why don’t you cry for her now?

Let it all come out once and for all.”

“Katherine,” he protested, trying to laugh and not succeeding. “I’m a grown man. I’m no longer that twelve year old boy. All of that—it happened a long time ago.”

“No, it didn’t, darling,” she whispered. “It happened yesterday.”

She kissed his face, his hair, and she held him close against her. And she rocked him. Ever so gently, she rocked him.

And at last, she felt something break within him, heard the harsh, wracking sobs that shook his body, sobs that seemed to tear up from the very depths of his soul.

Chapter 25

It was coming on to darkness when they finally left Stoneybrook for Black Lake. The smell of more snow was in the air. As Katie drove down Belleville’s Main Street, she glanced in her rearview mirror, warming at the sight of Jonathan following in his car, waving to him, honking her horn like a happy schoolgirl, grinning when he honked back.

Damn, he was sexy. No, he was far more than just sexy. He was downright beautiful, inside and out, and he was hers, she thought in glad possessiveness, and would have hugged herself right there had her hands not been on the wheel.

A first, he’d been embarrassed by his tears, barely able to look at her, making weak jokes about her sending him a bill for analysis, uncomfortable that she had witnessed his terrible vulnerability. But it had only made her love him all the more, and she’d been quick to reassure him that tears were not a sign of weakness, only of feeling.

He sure didn’t know much for a psychiatrist, she thought. Not when it came to himself.

It seemed no time at all until she was making the turn onto Black

Lake Road, feeling the car, as always, beginning to jump and bounce over the washboard road. Soon the road narrowed, the trees closing them in. Minutes later, the brown house loomed into view. Katie eased up on the gas, wiping her perspiring hands alternately on her coat. She turned off the ignition and sat in silence. I don ’ t want to be here. I want to turn around and go back. Behind her, Jonathan’s door opened and closed.

She had a right to happiness. She did. She would not allow negative thoughts to rob her of her good feelings. Maybe Jason really did just slip and fall in the lake after all. A tragic accident, but an accident all the same.

The police would have accepted that, too, if not for the strawman, which could, she tried to convince herself, have been merely the work of a prankster. And then she remembered her photograph tucked in Jason’s hand—and the tire tracks down by the lake—and the phone calls, and the gladness in her heart began to fade, eclipsed by a dark foreboding. She got out of the car just as Jonathan came up to her. As they stood looking up at the house, Katie’s chest grew heavy. She shivered involuntarily.

Why couldn’t she and Jonathan just have stayed forever in that fairy-tale house in the woods? she thought in childlike petulance.

Inside, the air was cold and dank and musty. No surprise.

“I used to love this house so much,” Katie said, feeling a welling of sadness as they walked through to the studio. “Now it looks as cold as it feels.” All the charm and warmth Aunt Katherine’s presence had given the house had somehow vanished, been replaced with something else—something frightening.

There is evil here now, she thought. I can feel it all around me, emitting from the very walls, defiling the air. She told herself she was being melodramatic, but the fact remained that she could not go upstairs to her room without seeing that effigy of Todd sitting on the chair. Nor could she bring herself to go down to the cellar again, which, of course, she would have to do if she stayed on here. She would just have to—deal with it. And then there was the lake where she loved to swim in summer. She sighed heavily as Jonathan’s arms went around her.

“Maybe that cop’s suggestion that you move wasn’t such a bad one at that. Perhaps you should consider selling this house. Would you really mind?”

“No,” she said at once, and knew it was true. This house was no longer her home. Something else, some dark and malevolent presence had taken it over. “I’ll list it tomorrow,” she said. “And I won’t mind one bit.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m very sure.” She lit the lamp.

“Good.” He smiled. “I know I’ll be a lot happier not having to think of you being way out here.”

“Do you think it’ll bring much of a price without electricity or heating?”

“It won’t matter. I’ve got enough money for both of us.”

“Oh, I see,” she teased. “I’ve got me a rich man as well as a handsome and brilliant one.”

“Flattery, my dear,” he said, draping the afghan over her shoulders and sitting her down in the chair in front of the fireplace, “will get you anywhere. Now, don’t go ‘way. I’ll get some wood, and as soon as I get a fire going, I’ll make some tea. Hungry?”

“You must be kidding. After that feast you prepared?”

Grinning, he said, “I always knew I’d make someone a good wife.

Comfortable?”

“Like a ‘bug-in-a-rug,’ as they say. You’ll spoil me, Jonathan.”

His eyes swept over her. “Every chance I get.” Then he laughed. “I love it. A woman who knows how to blush.”

“You’re terrible. I hate to tell you, but I think I used up the last of the wood you stacked in the pantry.”

“Then I’ll get it from the cellar. Won’t take me but a minute.” As he turned, his gaze stopped on the nearly completed portrait of Hattie

Holloway. Katie felt a rush of pleasure at the unmistakable gleam of admiration in his eyes.

“Katherine, this is wonderful,” he said, moving to get a closer look. “The likeness—the detail…”

“You really like it?”

He turned to her, smiling. “Darling, you must stop sounding like an insecure little girl. You’re a truly gifted artist, and there’s no reason whatever for you not to be very, very pleased with what you’ve done.”

“Thank you. It’s for her husband. An anniversary gift.”

“He’ll be crazy about it. And she’ll recommend you to all her friends.”

Katie glowed under his praise. “Will she?”

“Of course. Soon you’ll be famous and independently wealthy,” he said, tousling her hair, “and I’ll have to make an appointment to see you.”

“You’re making fun of me.” She gave him a mock pout.

The teasing left his eyes. “No, it really will happen for you,

Katherine. I have absolutely no doubt of that.”

When he was gone, Katie played happily with the idea, indulging in the fantasy of being a rich and famous artist, and after a little of this, laughed at herself. Getting paid for work she’d gladly done for no pay for years (and maybe just a little recognition) would suit her just fine.

She didn’t need more than that. Except for Jonathan, of course. She very definitely needed Jonathan.

As she snuggled deeply into the afghan he’d wrapped so tenderly around her, she thought with a smile of utter contentment, I could get used to this.

She looked around the room—this room she had once so loved. It held nothing for her now. All the pleasure she had known here had diminished under the terrible things that had happened. She would finish the portrait of Hattie Holloway, and then she would never work in this room again.

Jonathan had talked about building a studio for her at the house in Stoneybrook. He also hinted at his desire for a child. Was it possible?

Dare she hope? It all seemed too good to be true.

Perhaps it was. No! Why did that thought keep coming back? She mustn’t let it. Mustn’t think that way. She and Jonathan were good and decent people. They deserved a chance at happiness. Yes, they would have a good life together, one filled with love and sharing. No guarantees, of course, but she now knew that without the risk of pain, of disappointment, no joy was possible.

Katie held her watch close to the lamplight, frowning. Jonathan should be back by now. It had been nearly twenty minutes since he went down to the cellar for the wood. What was keeping him? Maybe he was checking locks—or had found something of interest. After several more minutes of sitting, of fidgeting, she rose, opened the drapes and stood looking out through the glass doors.

The moon floated in and out of dark boiling clouds, a scene the lake mirrored perfectly. As she stared down into it, she had the uncanny sensation that if she jumped she would just float down and down for all eternity, like falling through space. She made herself look away. At the same time she heard a loud thud that made her jerk the edge of the drape she still held in her hand. What was that? It had seemed to come from outside. But she couldn’t be sure of that.

Sliding the doors open, Katie shivered against the cold and drew the afghan more tightly about her shoulders as she stepped onto the tiny balcony.

A stirring of uneasiness in the hollow of her stomach.

Behind her, the phone rang.

It surprised her to hear Clayton Jackson’s softly modulated voice on the line. She couldn’t remember her art teacher ever phoning her before. It must be important, she thought, especially to call so late.

“I’ve been trying to track you down most of the day,” he said. “I called The Coffee Shop, but they said you no longer were employed there.”

“No, Mr. Jackson, I’m not. We—uh, decided to part company.”

“Well, no matter, Katie.”

Did she detect a note of excitement in the unexcitable Mr. Jackson?

She pressed the receiver closer to her ear.

“… I just wanted to give you the good news, Katie,” he said, and she heard the rattling of paper. “I only just received word by mail this morning. Your painting took second prize in the state art competition, dear, and I wanted to be the first to congratulate you.”

For a moment, there were no words. Then, “I can’t believe it.”

Mr. Jackson chuckled. “Well, believe it, my dear, because it’s true.

I’m so very pleased for you, Katie. And since you’re no longer working at The Coffee Shop, I’ve a proposition for you. I was wondering if you’d be interested in teaching a beginner’s class, part-time.

“We could start the first of the year. There’s been a fair amount of interest locally, and I’ve been wanting for some time now to open the school to less advanced students.”

Katie accepted without hesitation. “And thank you—for everything, Mr. Jackson,” she said.

“It’s I who thank you, Katie. I’m not so without ego that I’m not extremely proud to have two of my students walk off with the two top honors.”

“Two of your…” There had been the faintest hint of sadness in his voice as he’d said it. In the space of a breath, she understood. “Jason,” she half-whispered, her eyes filling.

“Yes, his painting ‘ City At Night’ won first prize. And I can’t think
         
of anyone Jason would rather have accepting the award for him than you, Katie.”

After hanging up the phone, Katie just stood there trying to digest her instructor’s words, playing them over in her mind like a favorite song. Finally, desperate to share her good news, she took off through the house—through the dining room, the parlor, past the front door in the hallway and on into the kitchen.

The door leading down to the cellar was partly open.

“Jonathan?” she called out.

Through narrowed eyes, Katie strained to see into the thick darkness. There should be some light from his flashlight. The dank cellar smell rose up to her like the smell of an open grave and sent the faintest trickling of fear along her spinal column.

Too good to be true, an inner voice taunted. Again that sense of deja vu. She had run this scene before, only days ago when she got the phone call from Hattie Holloway. Then, too, she had felt an eagerness to share her good news. Then, too, she had raced through the house, gone down to the cellar.

There was a lamp on the kitchen counter, Katie lit it, turned up the wick until she had a good flame. She checked the time. A half hour now since Jonathan had gone down to get the wood. Far too long. She stepped down one, two—hesitated—three steps, called out his name again, heard the tremor in her voice, listened hard for some sign that he was safe. Maybe he’d found something of interest down there, she thought again, and the time had simply gotten away from him. She heard only the dull beating of her heart.

“Jonathan, are you down there?” Her fear was in her voice. “Please answer me.” She stepped down onto the fifth step, closer now to the din of silence and darkness below. The lamp was slippery in her hand as she played the light slowly over each step below her, crouching low to allow the light to reach as far as possible.

Panic seized her suddenly, and she screamed Jonathan’s name.

Easy, easy, she told herself, fighting back a wave of dizziness that threatened to send her tumbling down the rest of the stairs. She gripped the railing. She must remain calm. Getting hysterical would help no one—not Jonathan, not her.

He’d been there for her all along. Now it was her turn. She must be strong—and clever. She had to think what to do. She took a deep breath, let it out slowly. And again.

Something—someone was down there—waiting. Jonathan was hurt or gagged or—NO! Don’t even think it. He’s fine—just fine. You have to figure out what to do, that’s all. Whoever is down there with Jonathan expects you to come rushing to the rescue, is counting on it.

But she wouldn’t do that. No, she would do the sensible, logical thing. She would go back upstairs and call the police.

A rush of air behind her—a footstep. Before she could turn around, or even complete the thought, the door above her slammed shut. The metal bolt clunked home.

She’d taken too long in making her decision, and now, as she stared up at the locked door, a terrible sinking sensation was in her. She thought of trying the knob anyway, but knew it would be futile. She turned away. Holding the lamp, with its tiny, yellow flame, before her, Katie looked down into the black void below.