The Edge of Recall (33 page)

Smith scowled. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Her psychiatrist told him she might be having a psychotic break.”

“Why would he say that?” Tessa depended on him overly much, but that was Dr. Brenner’s fault and certainly didn’t make her unstable. She’d shown remarkable courage and sense.

Bair shrugged. “She was hysterical the night it happened, something about a monster coming out of nowhere. And there’s a lot of time unaccounted for today.” He clenched his hands. “Did she try to kill you, Smith? Are you protecting her?”

If he were, he’d be rousting everyone out of bed and demanding she be set free. Instead he was protecting the miscreant who’d stabbed him. “She’s telling the truth.”

“She can’t be. Not the whole truth.”

No, but that was the promise she’d made, and he’d agreed, tacitly if not audibly.

Bair loomed over him. “You know who did this. And you’re not saying.”

“Not tonight.”

Bair threw out his hands. “I drive down here, thinking you’re dead, spend hours searching for your body in the soaking rain, hours getting grilled by the sheriff, and you won’t say where you were and what happened?”

Smith sagged into the pillows. “Just don’t go back to the trailer.”

Bair stared. “He’s out there, is he? The one we never reported?”

“It’s complicated.”

Bair scowled. “He’s out there free and you’re lying here with a hole in your chest.”

“Tomorrow, Bair.” Smith cracked his eyelids open. “Where’s Katy?”

“Back where she belongs. And don’t worry, nothing happened.”

A smile pulled Smith’s mouth as he surrendered to the drowsiness. He’d almost been killed and Tessa was in jail, but the strongest thing he felt was gratitude and a sense that things were in better hands than his.

Tessa lay on the steel bed with a blanket in the holding cell, replaying the twists that had put her there. Yesterday she’d been upset that Danae had come to see Smith. She’d been distraught that God had let her down like everyone else. Somehow finding the cross had seemed terribly important, but then Donny had attacked, and …

She couldn’t think of him that way, springing up behind Smith, teeth bared, knife flashing. Even in that moment she saw his fear, but that didn’t change the fact that he had plunged a knife into Smith’s chest. If Donny’s anatomy had not been wrong, Smith might be dead. How could she feel compassion?

She’d spent formative time with misfits and people like herself whose issues overwhelmed their capacity to cope. She’d seen the difference between patients with true pathologies, and those who’d been broken by life. She didn’t know Donny, but she had responded empathetically to his plight. Having seen her emptiness, she could ache for his. Maybe God had not been silent after all. Maybe he’d heard and answered in a way she could not have imagined.

“God is not a cosmic force. He’s a true being who wants you to
know and love him, as he knows and loves you.”

When she’d heard Smith pray, it had sounded like a communication of true connection, not something she’d allowed herself when so many pleas had gone unanswered. He was right that she’d kept God in the labyrinths, a mystery, a divine source of wisdom like Superman’s kryptonite-crystal-encased ancestors. It was always her decision to enter—and hers to walk away. She had thought she opened herself, and maybe she had, but on her terms, seeking knowledge, growth—not relationship.

Smith’s words had startled and disturbed her.
“You’re searching
for some cosmic force of a God when what you need is the Father who
loves you.”

She shifted on the hard bed. It still disturbed her. If she allowed a relational God, a Father, how could she know she wouldn’t lose him too?

“God is faithful, even when we’re not.”

Why had that bothered her so much? Smith had said he didn’t mean her specifically, but as he’d said it, she had felt a stab of faithlessness, something she couldn’t identify. Had she failed God—or someone else, someone Smith’s words illuminated? Her daddy?

Panic seized without warning. Tears choked her. How could she have failed him when she hardly remembered him? Her mother had told her time and again that she was not to blame for his leaving, yet the feeling persisted stronger than before. If she had failed her own daddy, how could she stand before a Father God?

Tears burned her eyes. Maybe she couldn’t. Maybe she wasn’t expected to.

“God wants to give you what you need.”

Smith had said she needed more than any man could give. But God? Could God fill the emptiness, the wretchedness she’d seen inside herself? The aching hunger, the crushing guilt. The abandonment. Was that the real monster she feared?

“God vanquishes monsters.”

She had no path to walk, no meditational prayer, no thoughts or feelings to examine. She lay in the darkness, afraid to sleep, afraid to surrender. When she thought Smith had died, she had almost surrendered to despair. Could she submit to hope?

Smith rode a slow spiral to wakefulness. He felt worse than the last time he’d opened his eyes and wouldn’t have opened them now but for the persistent voice calling his name. He woke to a man in a gray dress shirt and pale yellow tie, a tidy mustache and goatee, intense brown eyes that seemed to know him, even though they’d never met.

“I’m sorry to wake you, Smith, but some idiot has locked Tessa in a cell.”

Smith blinked in the morning light coming through the slatted window blind.

“Dr. Brenner.” The man extended his hand.

Smith didn’t take it. “You told that idiot she was psychotic.”

“Given her hysteria, I thought it possible.”

“Who were you to make that call without even seeing her?”

“She’s been in my care a long time. With her history …” He spread his hands. “Anyway, she refuses to clear herself until you tell me where to find our friend.”

Smith dragged air into his lungs, scrutinizing the person Tessa put so much faith in. “Seven point eight miles past the Brockhurst Inn, you’ll come to a gate. I don’t know if it’s locked, but there’s a key in my jeans pocket.” He motioned to the closet and the doctor found the keys.

“You’ll have to walk from the office trailer to the meadow just visible through the woods.” Again it took moments to catch his breath. “Past the Bobcat you’ll see a mess of vines. Beneath that, a bronze disk. The disk covers a cistern and he’s inside.”

“All right.”

“He’s dangerous.”

“Yes, I gathered that.” Dr. Brenner clasped his hands before him. “Tessa said he has your phone, so I can let him know I’m there before I open the hatch.”

She had thought it through. Smith swallowed. If Tessa had called the doctor in to help, she must still trust him. “She promised they wouldn’t lock him up.”

“I’ll do my best to keep that promise.” He headed out the door.

Smith lay back. He hadn’t overestimated the man’s hubris, and it irked him the way he’d dismissed Tessa’s truthfulness beneath her issues. More irritating still was the sense of possessiveness he’d given the word
care.

The phone rang in his hand, but if he answered it, everything would change. Donny gripped his head. He hadn’t slept; he hadn’t eaten. He hadn’t read one book. He was losing it, losing it all, and he didn’t know how he’d let that happen.

But the phone rang and vibrated in his hand, and he pushed the button that said Talk and listened. “Donny, this is Dr. Brenner. I’m outside and I’d like to come in. Or you come out if you prefer.”

He didn’t want anyone else in his place. It was his no matter what they said. His chest tightened as he looked at the space he’d filled with things that mattered and pleased him, things he’d collected. His throat ached when his glance landed on one thing, the thing he prized most of all. He bent and picked up Tessa’s drawings, slipped them into his shirt, then told the doctor he was coming out.

What choice did he have? It was over. He was found. They might hurt him, but he had to go out. Tessa said he’d already lost his place. Only a matter of time. She had not stopped it. As though he carried a sack of books, he climbed the ladder and pushed aside the disk.

Bright. It was too bright. Even the crack around the disk. The sun would hurt his eyes, hurt his skin. He wanted to crawl back down, but then the light dimmed with a yellowish hue.

“I’m holding a hooded poncho over you,” Tessa’s friend said. “And I have dark glasses for your eyes.”

His heart swelled. She had thought of that! Thought and made it better. He crawled out of the cistern beneath the poncho and the man there slipped it over him. Then he pulled on the dark glasses and looked out. It was bearable, but he still shrank from looking at Dr. Brenner. At last, however, he had to.

The man held out his hand. “I’m Dr. Brenner.”

Donny looked at the hand, then put his out too.

Dr. Brenner clasped it. “We have our work cut out for us, but I think I can be of help to you.”

CHAPTER

31

Waiting in the daylight was worse than the preceding night. Trapped in there alone, she felt more keenly Donny’s plight. Tessa wrung her hands, longing to hear that Dr. Brenner had taken charge of Donny and confirmed her story with the authorities. She wanted to get to the hospital, to know how Smith was, to see for herself that he’d made it through surgery as she’d been told.

When finally someone unlocked the cell door, she sprang up. She had not been officially arrested, only held, so it took little for her to be released. Sheriff Thomas was not there to offer his apologies—like that would ever happen—but she didn’t care. The deputy told her that Dr. Brenner and Donny had gone. Since Cedar Grove was a lockdown facility, he must have received custody, at least for now, and they were on their way to safety.

She had spoken briefly with Dr. Brenner and directed him to Smith so that Donny’s location would not be overheard by anyone at the jail. She was not trying to circumvent justice, only give Donny a chance to be heard where he had a chance of being understood.

Dr. Brenner would assess Donny’s mental, emotional, and physical health and make a determination as to his immediate care. He would not live like a rat in a drain anymore. There might be little help for his appearance, but he would receive what medical attention he might need, and he would not be punished for his fear of being seen. She didn’t know who had screamed and hurt him, but those emotional scars had certainly contributed to his attacking them.

She stepped into the sunshine and breathed the fresh air. Freedom truly carried a scent unlike any other. The ground was drying, the sun absorbing the excess. It no longer mattered what evidence had washed away. Smith was found, Donny rescued, and no one thought her a killer or a lunatic.

With no other transportation from the station, she walked to the hospital. Smith rolled his head to the side when she entered, looking far from hale but a good deal better than the last time she’d seen him. “You’re all right!”

“More or less.”

She rushed in and gripped his hand. “Does it hurt?”

“Not if I stay in front of it.”

“Oh, Smith, I’m so sorry.”

“For what?”