Kitabı oku: «A Season To Believe», sayfa 3
He could hardly blame her. If he’d gone through the horrors Jane must have faced at the hands of whoever had gone to so much trouble to end her life, he wouldn’t be looking forward to searching that dark, shadow-filled memory, either. But he was aware, now even more than he had been when he was first assigned to her case, how important it was to pull the monsters out of the closet and defeat them.
“Jane.”
She jumped and turned to him. He gave her what he hoped was a reassuring, lighthearted smile. “Do I go straight, or turn again?”
After a getting-her-bearings glance around, Jane said, “Straight. It’s the four-story gray house on the left. You can park in the driveway.”
Matt followed instructions, pulling his black Jeep up to a double garage door of the same color. By the time he switched the motor off and removed his keys from the ignition, Jane had already unbuckled her seat belt and opened her door. He got out and followed her up the curving staircase, with its ornate wrought-iron handrail. Before he could say a word, she had stopped within the arch of the second-story portico and was opening the bright pink door.
She turned as he started to follow, her eyes dark. For one moment he thought she was going to tell him she’d changed her mind, that she just wanted to leave the past alone—and then slam the door in his face. When he stepped into the foyer as a defensive tactic, however, she closed the door behind him and glanced at her watch.
“Zoe usually naps from three to three-thirty,” she said, then moved toward a pair of French doors to her left. “She should be up by now. Wait in here, while I go up and tell her what’s going on.”
Matt followed Jane into a long, narrow room. To his right, a mahogany desk sat between a pair of bookcases. On his left, golden light spilled through an arched window onto a large tobacco-colored sofa. Two chairs sat on either side of the glass-and-iron coffee table in front of the couch, one a muscular wing chair covered in brown leather, the other a curvy, dainty thing upholstered in a tapestry flower print.
“Take a seat,” Jane said. “I don’t think we’ll be long. Something tells me Zoe will be almost as excited as you to learn about what happened today.”
Matt saw Jane’s lips curve ever so slightly before she turned and left the room. The ghost of a smile was encouraging, Matt thought as he lowered himself into the leather wing chair. However, her eyes hadn’t lost that haunted expression. It was almost enough to make him think twice about making her face the past she’d worked so hard to…well, put in her past.
After all, how often did anyone get a chance to start over, with a completely clean slate? No embarrassing mistakes to make you second-guess yourself, no old opinions to try to overcome, no emotional wounds urging you to lock your heart up, where it couldn’t get tromped on again. Jane, it seemed, had taken full advantage of this freedom, had made a new life for herself, just as she’d vowed. And now here he was, stepping in to insist that she—
“Matthew?” A soft voice broke into his thoughts.
Matt got to his feet, stood and turned to greet the tall woman with the short gray hair who moved toward him.
“Ms. Zeffarelli,” he said, taking her hand into his as she reached out. “It’s good to see you again.”
“Call me Zoe, please,” she said with a smile and just the faintest hint of a French accent. “I am sorry you and I did not get to know each other better last year. But I am happy to see that you have recovered so nicely from your horrible ordeal. And now, according to our little friend here, it seems we will finally have a chance to work together.”
Matt nodded, then glanced at Jane. Her eyes no longer looked haunted. Instead her eyebrows dipped beneath the uneven fringe of her bangs in an expression he recognized as pure determination. Her eyes locked with his briefly before she turned to Zoe.
“Well,” Jane said, “I guess we’d better get down to it.”
Zoe lifted thick black eyebrows. “You are suddenly excited now, after months of insisting you want nothing to do with your past?”
Jane shook her head tightly. “Hardly. I just want to get this over with. And I assumed you’d want to work with this memory, if you can really call it that, while it’s still fresh in my mind.”
“True.” The woman nodded. “But I would prefer that you be at least a leetle bit relaxed when we attempt this thing. I suggest we all sit down and have a cup of tea, a cookie or two, and a tiny chat before we get down to business.”
A half hour later, Jane sat in the center of the overstuffed sofa, with Zoe in the delicate chair the woman had proudly rescued from a thrift shop years before, and Matt looking right at home in the leather wing chair.
Although Jane had suspected that the combination of Zoe’s strong tea and a sugar-laden sweet—make that several sugar-laden sweets—would render her even more keyed up, she was surprised to find that she was actually feeling calm. Maybe all that stomach-churning angst she’d experienced upon arriving at the house hadn’t been due to dread. Perhaps she’d simply been hungry. After all, she’d actually only ingested a bite or two of that cookie in Maxwell’s cellar, along with a few tiny sips of that eggnog coffee.
“The tea too strong, ma petite?”
Jane turned to Zoe with a smile. “It’s always too strong. But loaded with milk and sugar, it is just perfect.”
To prove her point and clear her palate of the remembered eggnog, Jane lifted her teacup and drained it of the bittersweet, milky contents. She then returned the cup to its delicate saucer and said, “In fact, I think I’d like a second cup.”
Zoe’s smile was gentle and she slowly shook her head. “I think not. I think it is now time for you to tell me what happened to you at Maxwell’s. But first, get yourself comfortable. Take a deep breath.”
As Jane leaned into the sofa cushions at her back, she glanced from Zoe to Matt. His expression was encouraging. Zoe wore a similar expression as she spoke again.
“Draw the breath deep into your belly, hold it, then release it very slowly.”
Jane nodded. She knew the routine, had followed it each time Zoe worked with her in the hospital. All to no avail. Not one hypnosis session had brought forth even the tiniest scrap of memory.
“Jane.”
Zoe’s sharp tone broke into Jane’s errant thoughts. She looked over to see that her friend was frowning.
“You are not listening to me, are you.”
Jane shook her head. “I’m sorry. Let’s try again.”
This time Jane focused carefully on every word Zoe said, followed each direction carefully. After breathing deeply several more times, she closed her eyes as she was bidden and pictured herself back in Maxwell’s Department Store. As instructed, she let herself recall the slightly perfumed air, the weight of her purse on her shoulder, the hard floor beneath the thin soles of her shoes. Then, when Zoe asked her to, Jane let her imagination put the image into motion, reaching toward the brightly colored strips of fabric draped from a metal rack sitting atop a glass counter.
“I’m examining a burgundy-and-tan plaid scarf,” she reported.
“How does it feel?”
“Soft,” Jane replied. “Cold and silky at the same time. Like the ocean.”
The moment Jane uttered that last word, the image on her closed eyelids changed. The fluorescent-lit department store was replaced by the sight of a wave curling toward her. No longer did hard flooring punish her feet. Instead, moist sand supported every arch and curve, and icy water slipped over her toes.
“I’m at the beach,” she said.
“And what do you see?”
“White foam at my feet, pale green waves breaking farther out. Beyond that, sunbeams dancing on the dark blue sea. A cloudless blue sky above. The beach.”
“Hold that image,” Zoe urged. “Relax, then see what you can make out in your peripheral vision.”
Jane did as she was asked. To her left there seemed to be nothing but foam sliding onto the damp sand. But— “I see cliffs, on my right.”
“Close, or far?”
“Far, I think. I can only see the part where the cliff juts into the sea, not where it meets the shore.”
“Do you know the name of this beach?”
Jane waited, feeling again the cold water over her toes. Nothing about the image changed. The same wave broke in exactly the same way it had a moment before, like some instant replay. No knowledge accompanied either the sensation of silky salt water or the image of curling, foaming green-blue water.
“No. I don’t,” Jane replied.
“All right,” Zoe said. “Focus on your other senses.”
As if by magic, Jane found she could suddenly smell salt—the briny scent that she knew, somehow, belonged to seaweed drying on the sand. “I smell the sea,” she said. “And I hear birds—gulls crying and screeching and…”
Jane frowned as another sound intruded. “I hear music. It’s too soft to identify the tune. It might be coming from a radio playing on the beach behind me. No. It’s coming from above me, louder now. I can almost make out the melody. It’s—”
Jane jerked straight up, her eyes flew open. Gone was the sun-sparkled water, the crashing waves, the cloudless blue sky. What she saw now was Zoe, regarding her with an expression that blended excitement with concern. The woman leaned forward in her chair.
“The song I heard was ‘Silver Bells,’” Jane said woodenly. “That was the tune playing on the department store sound system just before I harassed that salesgirl for rushing the Christmas season.”
“And that was the tune that pulled you out of that moment from the past,” Zoe said.
Every muscle in Jane’s body had constricted. Her heart was racing, her breath was shallow as she stared at Zoe. Focusing on the woman’s strong, angular features, she managed a stiff nod.
Zoe’s black eyebrows formed a worried frown. “Jane, you understand, do you not, that it was this memory that confused you so, made you think that it was not November, but May?”
“Yes.”
Jane wanted to say more, but at the moment it was all she could do keep from leaping to her feet, dashing up two flights of stairs to her attic apartment and shutting the door behind her.
“Why May?”
Matt’s question brought Jane’s attention back to him.
“Why did you think this particular sunny day was May?” he went on. “Why not July, or August? Or any other month, for that matter? This is, after all, California. Even up here in the northern regions, we have pockets of warmth all year long that draw people to the beach.”
Jane couldn’t answer. She knew only that her first thought upon hearing that music was that May was too early for Christmas tunes. She would have given that reply, if it weren’t for the strange, insidious panic now clamping her jaws shut, holding her body prisoner. She could only stare into Matt’s eyes, watch them darken as he moved from the chair to the floor next to her. Resting on one knee, he took her hands in his.
“You’re afraid, aren’t you,” he asked gently.
Jane frowned. Yes, this tension gripping her was indeed fear. What was worse, she didn’t understand what exactly had caused a memory of sea and sand to freeze her with terror. Now, crowds of people was a different matter. Add to that—
“Do you think,” Matt was asking, “that you might have been abducted from that beach? You know you’re safe now. There isn’t anything to be afraid of.”
Jane glanced at Matt’s large hands sandwiching hers. The gentle strength in his grip returned sensation to her fingers, warming them. She looked again into his eyes—eyes that promised to bring her assailant to justice, to make sure she was safe.
Oh, how she wished it were as simple as that.
A shiver broke her paralysis. She shook her head. “That memory didn’t make me afraid of whoever tried to kill me,” she finally said. “It made me afraid of the person I was.”
Chapter Four
Afraid of herself?
Matt tightened his fingers around Jane’s icy hand, and wondered what in the hell was going on in that mind of hers. Of course, uncovering what was going on in her mind—or hidden in it—had been the point of this exercise in hypnotherapy.
He was surprised at the details Zoe had managed to draw out of what had to have been the briefest of flashbacks. Perhaps, with a little time, Jane might begin to recall larger pieces of her past, giving Zoe more than the image of an unnamed beach to—
The beach. If he could find that beach, take Jane to it, perhaps revisiting the sights and sounds she recalled so briefly would open her mind to further details. However, would Jane go along with his plan, such as it was? The fear plainly etched upon her pale features said not, but he knew how to take care of that.
Cocking his head to one side, Matt squinted at her in exaggerated puzzlement. “You’re afraid of the person you were?” he asked. “What, you recall being at the beach, and suddenly worry that you might have spent your past roaming the seashore, randomly destroying sandcastles built by innocent children? That you were once an evil surfer girl bent on mowing down unsuspecting swimmers with your ten-foot board?”
His ploy worked. Jane’s lips twitched slightly, and some of the anxiety retreated from her eyes. “No.” She sighed. “I’m frightened of what happened at Maxwell’s, after I became aware of the music.”
Matt squeezed her hand. “You thought it was May. Most people would be irritated by having the holiday buying season forced upon them in late spring. It’s bad enough that Halloween is barely—”
Jane shook her head. “It wasn’t just the timing. It was the idea of Christmas itself that irritated me. No. Infuriated me.” She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. “When the salesclerk suggested I might like to get a cup of coffee, eggnog flavored to be specific, I informed her that I hated the stuff.”
“Then, why did you try to drink it later?”
“Because I don’t want to hate anything about Christmas.”
“What about last Christmas? Did you like it then?”
“I had a cold and couldn’t really taste or smell it. Besides, disliking eggnog isn’t the worst part. When I realized that it was indeed the day after Thanksgiving and that I had been Christmas shopping, I actually shuddered with revulsion.”
As she finished speaking, a tiny tremor shook her slender form.
Matt smiled. “You zeem to have a very zerious zyndrome, young lady. You are afraid zat in your past you ver Ebenezer Scrooge, or ze Grinch Who Stole Christmas. Is zer a cure for ziz, Doctor Zeffarelli?”
He turned to Zoe, but she didn’t look at him.
“Jane,” the woman said softly. “I have spoken with many people who have issues with Christmas. Most feel overwhelmed at the idea of adding shopping, wrapping and parties to already incredibly busy lives. Some feel that commercial aspects overpower the spiritual meaning of the season. And many are plagued with childhood memories of Christmas involving deprivation or, worse, abuse. Sometimes, the effort to put on a show of good cheer is such an effort for these people that they end up resenting everything about the holiday.”
Matt felt his smile grow tight.
“That makes no sense,” Jane said, “I had a wonderful time last Christmas with your cousin’s family in Maine, tromping through the forest to chop down the tree, then decorating it with the popcorn and cranberries I’d helped string, wrapping the gifts I’d made and walking over glittering snow on the way to midnight Mass.”
Matt was relieved when Jane brought her Currier and Ives reminiscences to an end. With each new jolly image, his muscles had tensed further. The smile faded from his lips and he glanced away from Jane’s features, where the glow of remembered joy warred with an expression of annoyance.
“Yes,” Zoe replied. “But we were in a very small town, not a large city. She turned to Matt. “Does this description sound like any of the Christmases you remember?”
He forced his smile to widen. “Well, certainly not the snowy part. However, my McDermott cousins do have a party every year, where whoever wants to can string popcorn.”
Zoe’s sharp glance suggested she was going to ask him another question. Instead, she gave her head a little shake and turned to Jane.
“When you insisted on going downtown today, I warned you about the crowds. That might be what set you off, so it is best you put your worries out of your mind until you remember more of your past.”
“I’ve got a question about that, Zoe,” Matt said. “I think I might be familiar with the beach Jane described. Do you think it would help her to remember more if I took her there?”
“Well, the senses, that of smell in particular, are known to have a powerful effect upon the memory. Jane, how do you feel about a trip to the beach with Matt?”
Jane wasn’t sure how she felt about anything at that moment. Other than completely exhausted. A profound sense of weariness had banished the tension in her muscles, leaving her with barely the strength to remain upright with her eyes open.
“That would be fine,” she replied at last.
Matt stood. Jane managed to look up just as he smiled and said, “Good. I need to speak with Jack on a few matters in the morning, but I can be here at eleven.”
On the one hand, Jane told herself as she pulled the door to her studio apartment behind her, it had been wonderful seeing Matt Sullivan again. Aside from the fact that he was every bit as handsome as she remembered, she’d yet to meet anyone with the same knack for making her laugh, even when she didn’t particularly want to. But still, her insides were in knots over the idea of going anywhere with him.
Jane took a deep breath as she started down the flower-print runner that carpeted the stairway.
On the other hand, she wasn’t sure she wanted anyone to read her all that well. When Manny’s death and Matt’s injuries had pulled those two men out of her life, she had looked for someone to take their place—someone she could trust with her thoughts, hopes, fears. The person she had chosen had used those things against her, so now the idea of trusting anyone made her stomach twist and brought a sour lump to her throat.
And, after the way she’d behaved in Maxwell’s, she wasn’t even sure she could trust herself.
When Jane reached the foyer, she moved to the small window to the left of the front door and stared at the street below. She wouldn’t want to even know the tense, dismissive person she had become for those few moments the day before, let alone be like that. How would Matt Sullivan feel about her if today’s trip to the beach happened to bring out that “dark side” of her personality?
“Ah, there you are—”
Jane turned as Zoe stepped out of her office.
“You look like someone who was about to be led into the lion’s den, or some other horrible fate, instead of what is supposed to be, as they say, a day at the beach.”
Jane drew a deep breath and released it in a quick whoosh. “I know. I am looking forward to spending some time at the ocean again. It’s just that I have some figures to finish, special orders I got when I stopped in at The Gift Box yesterday, you know, and I want to get to work on that new line of elves I started.”
“And you are frightened of what you might remember, of what you might learn about yourself.”
Jane hesitated, then nodded.
Zoe placed a hand on Jane’s shoulder. “My girl, I see patients every day who are afraid of the same thing. People with perfectly good memories, you understand, who have nevertheless built up layer upon layer of fear and denial, until they no longer know where they begin or end—in other words, who they are. They come to therapists like me when they discover that ignoring their pain has become more frightening than facing it.”
“How do they do that?”
“One step at a time. I tell them what I will tell you now. Life tests you only when you have enough strength to rise to the challenge.”
The sound of a car engine drew Jane’s attention to the window. In the driveway below, she saw Matt get out of his black Jeep. Her heart began to pound as he started up the stairs. She turned to Zoe.
“How do you know if you have that strength?”
The corners of the woman’s eyes crinkled. “When life tests you, of course.”
Jane surprised herself by laughing. “Dabbling in Zen, are you?”
“Whatever works,” Zoe replied with a shrug.
At the solid knock on the door, Jane pivoted and pulled it open, then froze—just as she had when she’d seen Matt yesterday, framed in the doorway leading to Maxwell’s security office.
He was, as the saying went, larger than life. Not just because his height topped six feet by several inches, that his shoulders were broad, or that his nearly black hair intensified the sea-green of his eyes. Those physical attributes were formidable, certainly, but the element that sent her heart racing had more to do with the quiet power in his stance, the undeniable cocky tilt to his mouth, and the sudden light of appreciation that swept her form, washing her body with heat.
“Looks like you’ve decided to rise to the challenge,” he said.
“Challenge?”
Jane cringed inwardly at the breathless way the word came out, but Matt’s simple nod suggested he hadn’t noticed.
“You appear to be dressed for a day outside. I assume that means you’ve decided to accompany me and see if we can’t track down the source of that memory of yours, and perhaps scare up some more.”
Although Jane felt a shiver coming on, she found herself giving him a wry smile. “I guess so. Scare being the operative word.”
Matt stepped forward and took her hand in one swift motion. As Jane looked into his eyes, she was aware of the strength of his grip, the warmth of his skin on hers and the reassuring determination in his gaze.
“No matter what happens today,” he said quietly. “I have no doubt that you’ll rise to the occasion.”
“Have you and Zoe been comparing notes on how to handle me?”
When Matt looked quizzical, Jane explained. “She was just bolstering my courage with very similar words. So—” she drew a quick breath “—yes, I’m ready to see if we can find the gate leading to memory lane.”
“All right. Get your jacket and we’ll be off.”
“A jacket? It’s beautiful out.”
“Sun or no sun, the wind on the coast can be quite chilly. You need a jacket.”
With a nod, Jane turned. Matt watched her cross the foyer and start up the stairs, then noticed the way her sneaker-clad feet bounced off each step as she lightly ran up. It seemed like yesterday that he and Manny had escorted Jane, enveloped in a navy sweat suit that only served to emphasize her extreme thinness, to the hospital’s physical therapy department.
Lying in bed for a month, comatose, had given the pelvic fracture she’d suffered in the accident time to heal, but the inactivity had left her as weak as a baby—she was going to have to learn to walk all over again. He and Manny had watched like proud parents as she gripped waist-high parallel bars, then wobbled like a newborn colt as she slowly made her way down the length of the track.
There was nothing spindly or wobbly about Jane now, Matt noticed as she neared the landing. The cut of her faded jeans hugged slender but shapely legs, and her hips had rounded into decidedly womanly curves.
“She has grown much in the past year.”
Zoe’s words made Matt realize where his thoughts had been leading. He turned to the older woman, aware his face had grown uncomfortably warm.
“It seems she has done exactly what she said she would,” he said. “Created a life for herself, on her terms.”
“Yes, she has. She has turned her lack of memory from a handicap to a strength.”
“How so?”
“With no preconceived concept of what she could or could not do, she approaches each challenge with an open mind, along with the assumption that she can succeed.”
Matt mulled this over. “After her accident, one of Jane’s doctors told a reporter that the bruising her brain took may have resulted in permanent memory loss. Do you agree with that assessment?”
Zoe shook her head. “No.”
“Well, Jane mentioned that you haven’t been pushing her to regain her memory. Do you think it’s wrong for me to encourage Jane to remember her past?”
“Not at all. Jane was disheartened when the hypnosis sessions in the hospital were unsuccessful. It would have been cruelty on my part to force her repeatedly to search her memory, only to encounter emptiness. But yesterday’s incident indicates that her mind, and perhaps her spirit as well, has recovered to the point that she can access and, more importantly, accept whatever she remembers.”
Hearing the sound of feet on the stairs above, Matt asked quickly, “Do you have any suggestions about how to handle this? Do I get her to relax, like you did yesterday? Or should I try to push her into remembering?”
Zoe seemed to consider his question for several seconds before she shrugged her shoulders and replied, “Try one first. If that doesn’t work, try the other.”
“All right, now,” Matt said. “I want you to close your eyes and keep them that way until I tell you differently.”
It had taken Matt and Jane over an hour to cross the Golden Gate Bridge and drive up Highway One. After turning on a road leading west, Matt had pulled onto the side of the road, then turned to face Jane before issuing his order.
“Close my eyes?” she repeated.
“Yes. And keep them shut.”
“I thought we came here so I could identify the beach I saw in my memory. I can hardly do that with my eyes closed.”
“No, the prime objective here is to provoke further memories. Although your description was pretty sketchy, I’m fairly certain I have the right place. Remember, I grew up surfing these beaches.”
“So, you think it will be more effective to lead me to the area, then spring it on me all at once.”
“Exactly. Ready? Close your eyes.”
Once Jane had obeyed his order, Matt put the Jeep in drive. Several minutes later, he turned onto the road that would lead them to Limantour Beach. It took him beneath a canopy of cypress trees, then wound down through a sea of golden grass and a crescent of sand that arched to the right, ending at the foot of a sheer cliff that jutted out to the sea.
“Tell me,” he said, “just how do you create these magical dolls of yours.”
“Well, I sculpt the faces, hands and feet from a polymer clay, which hardens in the oven. The bodies are made of wire and stuffing, held together with fabric bodies. But they aren’t meant to be played with, like dolls. They’re collectibles.”
Matt glanced at her. “People collect elves?”
“People collect all sorts of things, it seems. Zoe’s cousin Clara in Maine makes very realistic little men, women and children. She creates three or four new characters each year, and collectors from all over the country buy her numbered pieces.”
“Nice of her to teach you to do this.”
“Well, actually, she’s published a book on her technique. I used it as a jumping-off point to create my own little world, and I assume others do that, too.”
Matt downshifted as he neared the dirt parking lot. “I had no idea there was such a market for…”
“Fantasy figures?” Jane finished for him. “I didn’t, either, but Clara took a few of my pieces to one of the stores that carry her things, and mine sold out right away. So, I made more when I got back to San Francisco, got a few specialty shops to carry them, then participated in a couple of craft fairs this summer, and the thing just mushroomed. Since July I’ve been really busy. I decided to adapt my faces to create special Santas and his little helpers in place of woodland elves and make angels instead of fairies. That’s one of the reasons I was downtown yesterday. I delivered some of these to a place called The Gift Box, and they asked me to make even more.”
“It seems you’ve become quite the businesswoman,” Matt said as he pulled into a parking space overlooking the beach, then added teasingly, “I hope you have someone you trust keeping your books.”
He switched off the engine and turned to Jane.
“I suppose,” she said in a mock huff, “that crack was a veiled reference to my mathematical abilities.”
“No,” Matt said as he opened his door. “It’s a direct reference to your decided lack of said abilities.”
Before Jane could respond to this allusion to what he and Manny had termed her “numerical dyslexia,” Matt slid from his seat and said, “Stay where you are,” before snapping his door shut and stepping around to her side of the car.
“I’ll have you know,” she said the moment he opened her door, “that I have managed to master math. The important stuff, at any rate. I can add, subtract, divide, multiply and figure fractions with the best. The rest is superfluous. The idea of adding a’s and b’s and coming up with x’s is an exercise in futility, if you ask me.”
Matt hooked his hand over the top of the door’s frame, noticing the way Jane’s closed eyes wrinkled as she blindly reached for the buckle of her seat belt. That intense concentration of hers was a wonder to behold. It was the secret, he suspected, behind her swift recovery from the sort of injuries that had kept muscular linebackers out of commission far longer than they had this delicately boned girl.
Woman, he corrected himself when, freed of her seat belt, Jane pivoted toward him, slid out of her seat, then stumbled into his arms.
For the second time in two days Matt found himself holding her close to him. For one moment, he wondered if he could somehow absorb the joy that seemed to emanate from her, even when she was frightened. He had once responded to life that way, too, thrilled by the surge of adrenaline that came with walking the tightrope between safety and danger. He hadn’t experienced that since leaving the hospital.
