Miracle in the Mist (30 page)

"Clara?"

The woman blinked. "Excuse me? The name's Millie, child." She flashed at Carrie the red and white plastic name badge hooked to her lapel. The white engraved letters read
Millie
.As the server walked away, she slid a sideways glance at Meghan. Carrie was not convinced she'd been wrong about the woman's identity, nor was she surprised that Clara was there to help, but at the moment the server's identity was the least of her worries.

Meghan stirred sugar into her coffee. The spoon clanking against the cup magnified the silence inside the diner. It was then that Carrie realized there were no other customers, save her and Meghan.

"Do you recall the first memories that came back to you?" Meghan finally asked.

"Yes, but what has that got to do with Frank acting like a wild man?"

Meghan didn't say anything. Obviously she was giving Carrie time to think about what she'd asked. What could her earlier recollections have to do with any of this? With Frank. With Catha—

"Does it have anything to do with my sister? Is she still in danger?" Carrie started to get up, but Meghan's hand on her arm stopped her.

"Cathy's fine. Steve and Frank are with her."

Carrie wasn't sure that having Frank there right now gave her much peace of mind, but Steve's presence did. She sat back.

"All right," she said, leaning back and trying to relax and concentrate on Meghan. "What do my earlier memories have to do with any of this? And please don't hand me a bunch of questions, riddles, and evasions. For once, be straight with me."

Meghan sighed. "Carrie, this is your memory. This is something you have to decipher for yourself. I'm just here to guide you."

"Memory?" She frowned at Meghan. This didn't make sense. Clara had told her that she couldn't leave Renaissance until all her lost memories returned. And they had. Hadn't they?

"I thought I'd recalled everything I'd forgotten."

Laying down the spoon she'd been fiddling with, Meghan locked her gaze with Carrie's. "You didn't forget this one. You suppressed it. I can't help you remember anything you've chosen not to. This time, I'm afraid it's entirely up to you."

Carrie cupped her forehead in her hand and racked her brain for anything she was pushing deep into her memory. Nothing came to mind. But then, if she'd been repressing something, could she just summon it to the forefront?

"Think about those first memories, Carrie. The ones you recalled while you were in the village." Meghan's voice seemed to come from far away.

From deep in her subconscious, Carrie deliberately summoned the awful memories of the man she now knew to be her brutal brother-in-law, starting with the dream in which she'd awakened to find a man without a face standing beside her bed. One after the other, they tumbled through her mind, until she came to the one in which she'd first seen the woman in the woods, the woman she'd later find out was her twin sister, then again in the kitchen. Those had been the only two in which she hadn't been the woman being pursued by the man.

Why? Why had that suddenly changed?

***

While Steve stood guard like some kind of watchdog to make sure he didn't flip out again, Frank sat beside Cathy's bed, determined to be there when Carrie came back. Besides, when Cathy came to, he didn't want her to be alone.

A heart monitor beeped rhythmically beside the bed. An intravenous system stood beside the bed, dripping blood slowly into a tube attached to the bend of her right arm. The dim bed light illuminated her swollen face.

He stared at her. She was so stark white against the sheets. A long white bandage covered the laceration that had received over twelve stitches and still oozed blood through the gauze. Traces of dried blood on her scalp were visible through her hair. A large bruise had formed around one eye and across the bridge of her nose. Her bottom lip was split and swollen out of proportion to the top one.

Even for a seasoned doctor, seeing another human being like this and knowing the cause was unnerving to say the least. Staring down at her identical twin was like staring down at Carrie. The thought of anyone hurting Cathy like this was unbearable, but the thought of Carrie being battered brought his rage to a boil again. He clenched his fists to harness his control. He was not a violent man under normal circumstances, but if anyone touched Carrie, he wasn't sure what he'd do. If the beating he'd administered to Dan was any indication…

Frank shook his head. "How could anyone do this to another human being?"

Steve, who'd been prowling restlessly in front of the window, stopped and glanced at the woman in the bed. "It's usually to maintain a twisted sense of control."

"By beating them into submission?"

Steve nodded. "Most of these guys are insecure. The only way they can feel manly is to keep the woman in what they see as
her place
, which is tightly under their thumb."

Frank laughed without humor. "Kind of like that old saying? Barefoot in the winter and pregnant in the summer. And they call that love?"

"I'm sure that barefoot and pregnant would be preferable to what she's been through." Steve sat in the chair beside Frank. "Unbelievably, in their insecure, twisted minds, these guys do believe they love these women. At least that's what they keep telling them. It's all a part of the brainwashing process. They have the wife so convinced that she's to blame, that it never occurs to the woman to blame the man. She just continues to try to please him, to stop making mistakes in an effort to stop the beatings. She doesn't realize that no matter how perfectly she does things or keeps herself, it will never be enough." He stopped and shook his head. "Of course, the abuser punctuates the periods of abuse by what they call Calm Phases. During that time, he'll apologize abjectly and solemnly swear it will never happen again. Desperate to believe it's over for good, the woman doesn't believe there will ever be a
next time
. But there always is. And then the cycle starts again. It's all a rather complicated domino effect, but most abusers are experts at making it work." He glanced at Cathy again. "In this case, I'd say she was lucky she came out of it alive."

Getting up and going to the window, Frank sighed tiredly. He stared out into the night, wondering where Carrie had gone to. "I don't understand why someone didn't try to stop it. Why not Carrie? She was her sister, and she had to know what was going on."

Steve came to stand beside him. He laid a hand on his shoulder. "Not necessarily. Abusers are as good at covering up their crimes as they are at perpetrating them, and the woman is either too afraid or too ashamed to say anything, even to her relatives and closest friends. What doesn't help her confidence is that these guys present a different face to the public than they do to their wives. So she has to wonder if anyone would believe her if she did say something." He sighed. "Even if Carrie had known and had tried to talk Cathy into leaving Dan, there's every chance that Cathy was either too afraid to leave, or that she just didn't believe Dan was a bad man. She might have still been blaming herself."

Frank glanced over his shoulder, and then turned quickly away again. "Every time I look at her, I see Carrie."

"You love her a lot." It wasn't a question.

For a long time, Frank said nothing. His silent hesitation was not because he didn't love Carrie. God knew, he loved her more than he did life itself. He just had never before shared those feelings with anyone but Carrie.

Outside the door, the muffled shuffle of people moving up and down the hallways, the hum of the elevator and
whoosh
of the doors opening and closing, and the rattle of late dinner trays being collected punctuated the thick silence.

At last Frank nodded. "I never thought I'd ever love a woman as much as I did Sandy, but Carrie is… well, she sneaked into my heart to stay." He looked at Steve. "I just don't understand why she ran away from me like that."

"You will," Steve said. "You will."

"And how can you be so sure?"

Steve said nothing. His face took on that closed expression that Frank had become very familiar with in Renaissance. There would be no answer to his question.

***

"I still don't understand what my early memory has to do with all this." Carrie leaned back. The brittle vinyl covering of the booth crackled beneath her. Millie refilled both coffee cups for the third time.

"Memories are funny things. Sometimes they just show up because of something you see or something you hear or smell. But if we think about them long enough, they'll tell their own story." Millie smiled kindly at Carrie, and then moved off.

Carrie raised an eyebrow and looked at Meghan.

"Listen to her. What she says is true."

Again Carrie combed her memory. While she delved into her past, she stared at the diner window. Her reflection stared back at her, reminding her of Cathy. Just then, a shadow fell across the windowpane as a man passed outside in the street.

Carrie jumped. Her father? It couldn't be. He'd died years earlier when she was twelve. She blinked and looked again. It was a total stranger who looked nothing like Gerald Henderson. Nothing. So why had her father jumped into her head? She'd made a concentrated effort for years to make sure he never invade her thoughts.

Why? He was her father. Why would she not want to think about him?

She squinted, trying to force through a memory that hovered on the fringes of her mind.

Millie refilled Meghan's coffee. Carrie stared at the cup as though waiting for it to move. Meghan picked up the sugar dispenser and turned it upside down. White crystals poured into her coffee from the hole in the top of the dispenser. Then, she deliberately moved the cup, and the tiny crystals cascaded onto the tabletop.

For a long time Carrie watched the tiny crystals skip across the Formica and then fall over the edge to the floor. They looked so innocent, but Carrie knew the kind of violence they could bring about. She jumped as if she'd received an electric shock.

In her mind's eye, a scene started to take form. Little by little, it became clearer and clearer. Then it was there, clear as any photograph she'd ever seen. It was the kitchen of the house in which she grew up. Her mother was pouring sugar from a paper sack into the sugar bowl. The sack split, and sugar spilled all over the table and onto the floor.

Carrie held her breath, and looked from her mother's terrified expression to her father's face, purple with rage.

"Stupid bitch! You're as stupid and ugly as your two brats. Do you think I work my ass off all week so you can throw sugar around like it was sand?" His hand flew up and caught her across her cheek.

Her head jerked backward. The sugar sack flew out of her mother's hands, hit the floor, and exploded. Bright red droplets of blood oozed from her split lip.

"Damn!" Her father's curse had nothing to do with his injured wife. His full attention was on the floor where the sugar sack had landed. Beneath it, white sugar flowed onto the tiles. "Just look at what you did!" His voice filled the room. He kicked his chair from beneath him and lunged for her mother.

Cathy shot from her chair and raced around the table. She grabbed her father's arm to prevent the fist he'd made from hitting her mother. "Momma didn't do it!" Cathy yelled. "You made her do it. It's your fault!"

Before he could retaliate, Carrie saw a younger version of herself step between him and Cathy. Carrie's jaw received the full force of the stinging backhand meant for her sister. She flew off her feet and backward into the corner of the stove. The sound of her head coming into hard contact with the appliance echoed through the kitchen.

Despite the pain in her head, she scrambled to her feet and once more put herself between her father and her sister. He swung, this time catching her off balance and sending her crashing into the corner of the counter. A deep, searing pain cut into her shoulder. She could feel the warm flow of blood on her skin, but she vaulted to her feet once more.

He turned back toward her mother. Cathy again inserted herself between her parents. Before her father could swing, Carrie pulled Cathy away. Again her father's hand found her instead of Cathy. This time she fell against the corner of the table, and blackness engulfed her.

Carrie started. She looked around, dazed, but with tears filling her eyes. She was back in the diner, sitting across from Meghan.

"You always got between them, Carrie, so Cathy wouldn't get hit." Meghan's voice cut through the haze that had enveloped Carrie in her harsh memories.

"That's why, at first, I saw myself as the woman being abused in my memories. I had always protected Cathy, and even in my recollections, I continued to protect her by taking her place and putting myself between her and Dan."

Meghan nodded.

Carrie could feel tears running down her face. She wiped them away. Cold fear gripped her. She raised her gaze to Meghan's gentle face. "Why couldn't I remember that in Renaissance when I remembered everything else?"

"Because you chose not to. It was not a part of the amnesia Emanuel used to keep you from the trauma of recalling everything too fast. If you had, the damage would have been inestimable. Something you may not have recovered from. But this memory of your father was something
you
had suppressed, and only
you
had the power to bring it back to the surface." Meghan's warm hand closed over her icy fingers. "But there was just enough residual memory there that when you saw Frank fight with Cathy's husband, you got scared and ran."

Carrie covered her face with her hands and wept. How could she have hurt Frank like that? She knew in her heart that he could never hurt her. Still, he had been so very violent. How did she know he'd never turn that rage on her? She'd read that women who grew up in abusive households often married abusive men. Cathy had proven that to be true. Carrie didn't want to end up being the second notch on her father's belt.

"Don't allow your father to make you a victim again, Carrie. Don't give him that power."