The Bride Collector

23
“THEY’RE COMING!” Andrea cried. She whipped back from the window overlooking the park, eyes wide. “Quick, they’re coming!”
Paradise was hanging back, pacing by the couch, determined not to give in to all of their antics, but hearing the announcement she rushed forward with Casanova and Roudy for a look.
“Who’s coming?” a voice shouted from behind. “Zeus?”
They spun and faced a goggle-eyed Flower in a pink dress. “Out,” Roudy snapped.
“But my sculpture isn’t ready for Zeus! It’s going to be majestic.”
“The room is reserved for a meeting with Allison. You have to leave.”
“But…” Then Flower turned and fled, uttering something about the gods.
Paradise was already homed in on Allison and Brad crossing the lawn toward her. She was suddenly unsure she could go through with this. Worse, she wasn’t entirely sure what this was.
“Now, remember what I told you,” Cass said, straightening his shirt. He was feeling better, full of vim and vigor, he said. “I know I tend to be straightforward, but it doesn’t always work so well. Trust me. Try not to stampede. Try to be subtle.”
“Subtle?” Andrea said. “Is that what you are?”
“I said it depends. You have to know how women think!” He held up a finger authoritatively.
“I still think we should accompany you,” Roudy said. “Why on earth would he want to meet with you alone?”
“Don’t be a fool, man,” Cass quipped. “Three’s a crowd.”
“Thus speaks the man who was sleeping when we found the jack.”
“This is about Jill, not Jack,” Cass said.
Paradise couldn’t bear their nonsense a moment longer. “Stop being ridiculous! All of you! We don’t know who he wants to meet with, or why. This has nothing to do with anything you’re talking about!” Her voice rang through the atrium in the women’s wing. “Andrea, tell them, for heaven’s sake.”
“It’s true, Paradise wants me to flirt with him.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“That’s the spirit,” Cass said. “But go slow, Andrea.”
“You didn’t?” Andrea asked with a look of confusion. “Sorry, sorry. I thought…”
“I said you could for all I care,” Paradise snapped. “That doesn’t mean I want you to.”
The door burst open and Bartholomew, a skinny resident who suffered from delusions, pulled up sharply. “They’re coming, Paradise! And he looks good today. Handsome devil.”
Paradise faced Casanova. “You told the whole center?”
He shrugged. “Just a few.”
Bartholomew spun back. “Sorry. My lips are sealed.” He set off toward the hub, where he would likely tell every living soul, assuming they weren’t lined up at the window already.
“Out,” Paradise said, seething now. “I want all of you out!”
“We can’t, Paradise,” Roudy protested. “Like you said, he might want to talk to all of us.”
“I doubt it.”
“So you see, he is coming for you,” Cass said. “I can see that look in his eyes from here. He’s got one thing on the brain, that one. Not to worry, it’s all I think about as well. Just remember what I told you.”
Before Paradise could respond, the door opened and Allison walked in, followed by Brad Raines. Two thoughts collided in her mind. The first was that they’d been caught staring out the window.
The second was that she’d forgotten how beautiful Brad Raines was. He wore jeans today. She’d never seen him in jeans. They made him look more like her, in some ways. She felt silly for comparing herself to him.
“Hello, friends,” Allison said, smiling. “I see you’ve been expecting us.”
“No,” Paradise said. “Yes, they have been, talk, talk, talk, you know. Can’t shut Casanova up.” She wished she could meld with the wall.
“Hello,” Brad said, dipping his head at them all. His gaze settled on Paradise. “I guess you all heard.”
“What’s this all about?” Roudy demanded. “More evidence? He left another note, I suspect.” He flipped out his hand. “Give it to me and I’ll have my assistant prepare it for my analysis immediately.”
“You look handsome today,” Andrea said.
Paradise glanced at her friend, and saw that she was staring at Brad with those eyes. How could Andrea be so forward now, after everything?
“Yes, you do,” Paradise agreed, then felt silly for saying it. But she wasn’t going to let Andrea walk all over her, either.
“Thank you.” His eyes were on her. “If you all don’t mind, I need to speak to Paradise. She may be able to provide us with information—”
“What, the ghost thing again?”
“Roudy, please.” Allison tsked. “Don’t be like that. There are a lot of desperate people out there right now. Now, please, give us a few moments. Hmm?”
“How long?” Roudy persisted.
“An hour, Roudy. Maybe two. Please. Paradise will be along.”
“I need a shower,” Andrea said. “Sorry, sorry.” She walked quickly toward the hall door.
Roudy set his jaw and headed toward the exit behind them, pouting.
Casanova walked up to Brad and took his hand and kissed it. “I’m so sorry for your loss, young man. She was indeed a stunning beauty. Just remember, there are more where she came from.” Then he, too, left.
“The room’s all yours,” Allison said. “But I wouldn’t linger here long. You’re bound to be interrupted.”
“You’re leaving?”
“I am, Paradise.” Allison walked up to her and touched her cheek with a warm hand. Her words were as soft as her smile. “It’s okay, young woman. Not that you need it, but you have my permission to tell him whatever you want. He’s a good man. I think you can trust him, I really do.”
Paradise nodded slowly. “I do trust him.”
“Yes, but I think you can really trust him. And I think you can trust yourself. Don’t be afraid, child.”
Then she turned and walked toward the door. “I’ll be in the reception area if you need me. Oh, and I think the south lawn is the most private place on the grounds. At the pond behind the aspen grove. Paradise, you know the place.”
The pond. Why so far? It was near the fence, and Paradise avoided going so close to the fence at all costs.
“Paradise?”
“Yes. The pond, yes.”
“Good.”
And Allison was gone.
“Well.” Brad was smiling, a little red in the face himself. “That was a bit ridiculous.”
The comment eased her a bit. But she had to stay on point here. From the moment Allison had told her that Brad Raines was visiting CWI again, she’d been a complete mess. Within fifteen minutes she’d broken down and told Andrea, and the rest was history.
You would think that Romeo and Juliet had come back to life and were reuniting on these very grounds! The very fact that she’d allowed herself to entertain the most fleeting fantasies over these past few days was horribly embarrassing.
The fact that the mere sight of Brad made her palms wet now was downright shameful. She had to maintain control.
Brad cleared his throat. “Do you know why I’m here?”
“Because Nikki’s dead,” she said. Then added, thinking her delivery too crude, “I’m so sorry.”
“So am I. But you were right about the jack in the whole.”
“Allison showed us the last note. Roudy and Andrea spent a whole day on it, but they couldn’t come up with anything.”
“I think it was a note for me.”
“That’s what I told them.” She paused. “Did you love her?”
He blinked. “Nikki?”
What was she doing?
“Not like that, no,” he said. “But we were very close.”
Paradise almost asked him what he thought about her, but she caught the words in her throat before she made a fool of herself. The room was feeling stuffy and she was sweating, so when he said that maybe they should take Allison up on her suggestion to find some privacy near the pond, she jumped at it, fence or no fence.
She caught sight of Bartholomew’s Afro behind some bushes as they exited the women’s wing. Fortunately, they were headed away from him. They walked in silence, and her awkwardness grew. She became aware of every step she took. Her sandals, which she’d never worn until today, looked like something out of a bad Cleopatra movie. His leather shoes, on the other hand, looked like they might cost her full monthly allowance.
They were both wearing jeans, but hers were too short. Why were all her jeans too short? She’d never realized that until just these last few days.
Andrea had told her yesterday that her hair stank, so she’d washed it. Andrea always thought everyone’s hair stank. But now Paradise was thankful because she was walking just in front of him, and he was probably looking down on the top of her head at this very moment.
She couldn’t bear it any longer. So she stopped and let him pass her.
“What is it?”
“Nothing. I need to fix my shoe; just keep going.”
She made a show of fixing the strap on her sandal and then followed when he continued down the sidewalk. If she stood on her tiptoes, the top of her head might reach his underarms. He was built like a god, Andrea had said. She had to agree.
Her mind spun with an image of Cleopatra inviting the newest servant, the strong, bare-chested specimen from the south who’d only just joined her court, to demonstrate how he shot his bow. She wanted lessons in the garden. Just the two of them. She must know precisely how he held the bow, and she walked up behind him as he flexed, bowstring drawn back tight. She traced his back and his arms with her delicate fingers as she studied his posture. His muscles were like vines beneath his skin. Suddenly, from behind a tree on their right, came his lover, a witch from the north who had cast a spell on…
“Okay, stop.” Brad halted, holding up his hand.
She plowed into his back, then scrambled back. “Sorry. Excuse me, I didn’t realize you were going to stop. If you would have told me, I would have gone around. I didn’t mean to run you over.”
He didn’t seem to care. “I can’t do this,” he said.
Dread spread down her face. “Me neither.”
“I just don’t feel right about it.”
“Exactly. I never did feel right. And they’re not really Cleopatra sandals.”
That stalled him. “I’m sorry?”
“Nothing. What were you talking about?”
“Allison said I should just be honest.”
When he didn’t elaborate, she agreed. “As opposed to lying, yes, she would say that, she used to be a nun. I mean, I would, too, of course. Honesty is always best, particularly around someone like me who despises a fake.”
“Really?”
“You like fakes?”
“Then you know why I’m here?”
“Because Nikki is… you know…” She made a motion with her hand but quickly gave up, realizing she didn’t know how to say dead without saying it. “Dead.”
“I mean… why I’m here with you,” he said.
She had no clue, because she was purposefully controlling her own mind and forbidding it to wander. Well, yes, she did have a clue. They were here to try to shake loose the memory of what she’d seen in the kitchen. The ghost. “To get me to remember…”
“And the only way to do that is to get you to trust me,” he said. “You realize that?”
“I do. And I already do trust you.”
“Yes but… I mean…” His eyes shifted, and he used his large, strong hands absently. The ones with trimmed nails. Her nails were trimmed as well, but with her teeth, which Andrea said was a nasty habit. Had she bitten her nails while he was watching? She couldn’t remember!
“More than just trust,” he was saying.
“Like what?”
“Like become comfortable with me. Release your fears. Whatever’s blocking your memory.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“I think so. You want me to let go of my inhibitions so that my mind lets go, so to speak, and recalls what I saw.”
“Something like that. Yes.”
“But you’re afraid that we might get too emotionally involved,” she said.
His eyes widened slightly. She’d spoken too frankly, she knew that the moment the words had left her mouth, but seeing his reaction, she felt strengthened. She had some power over him. It was the first time she’d exercised this kind of power over a man like Brad, and she found it amazingly satisfying.
“You’re afraid I might fall in love with you,” she pressed. And now he blinked. Then blushed. Not much, but just enough to encourage her even more.
“Or that, however unlikely, you might fall in love with me.”
“No.”
“No?”
“Well…” Now his face was bright red.
Then Paradise thought about everything she’d just said, and she felt her own face turn hot.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Raines. I have no intention of falling in love with you.” She walked past him. “Now come on, let’s go to the pond and see if we can’t figure this out.”
“Brad,” he said. “Please call me Brad.”
And for a moment she felt like his queen.
THEY SPENT AN hour at the large fountain that Allison called a pond, doing nothing but talking and walking about the stained concrete patio and sitting at one of the four benches, twirling aspen leaves and flicking small stones into the pool, yet it felt to Paradise like five minutes.
She kept looking back to see if any spies were peeking around the building, and when none appeared she decided that Allison must have set things in order. To think of it, here she was, Paradise Founder of all people, meeting with a man alone by the pond, and the whole center knew about it. It made her feel quite special.
She’d never spent time with a man before, even if it was to talk about a killer. But they didn’t talk about the killer. They talked about the center a lot. He wanted to know about her daily routine. Everything about it. How one person could be so interested in the details of what she did every boring day was a surprise in itself.
How she got up at seven most mornings. Had two eggs for breakfast, sunny-side up on wheat toast with hot cocoa and a small glass of orange juice. Usually with Andrea.
How Andrea then followed her back to her room and insisted that she brush her teeth. She showed Brad her teeth and asked him what he thought. He laughed and told her they were surprisingly white and straight, then stumbled all over himself to explain that by surprisingly he didn’t mean he would have expected anything less from her. But straight teeth, especially without braces, were actually quite rare.
He wanted to know more, so she went on through the day, describing her card games with Roudy, who equated everything with codes and espionage and clues and such. She was friends with most of the residents who’d been around for more than a year, but not like she was with Cass, Roudy, and especially Andrea, whom she’d taken under her wing at Allison’s request.
They talked about her connection to the outside world. Yes, they had phones in their rooms and could receive or make calls anytime. And of course they had access to high-speed Internet.
He seemed surprised when she told him about the pictures of naked women that a resident named Carl kept taping to other residents’ doors before Allison removed his privileges. It hadn’t really bothered Paradise. After all a naked body was a naked body. But some of the residents were far too upset, like Andrea, or far too interested, like Cass. She didn’t quite get the way people reacted to nakedness, and Allison said this opinion was part of Paradise’s makeup, as was her general disregard for appearances in general.
She shrugged and he laughed. She had to admit, she liked him. She really did like Brad.
They talked about her family, or what she could remember of it, meaning she only talked about Angie, her half sister, whose real name was Angel. He seemed surprised by that.
She pulled out the old photograph she always kept in her back pocket. “See?”
He took the picture. Then looked at her and the photograph. “I can see the resemblance between you two.” He eyed them both again. “She’s beautiful.”
Paradise didn’t know what to do with that. Had he just called her beautiful? No, that wasn’t right. But he had said they were similar, and everyone said that Angie was beautiful.
His questions weren’t the general kind she got from most. He wanted to know, really know, the details. What does your room look like? Where do you buy your socks? You buy everything online? Which sites are your favorite? So she told him.
His visit had nothing to do with the killer and everything to do with her. Sure, he was doing it all to win her trust, but even knowing that, she still sensed genuine interest from him. He didn’t have the cold eyes of an investigator trying to trick her into answering, or the dead eyes of a psychiatrist listening because it was his job.
His eyes were filled with fascination and focus. They reached deep into her own, wanting to know more, what she was really like. On a few occasions she could swear he looked like he wanted to consume her with those eyes. And twice he touched her shoulder while he was talking.
“No, I didn’t mean it that way!” he said, reaching his hand out and touching her lightly on her shoulder. “I love Hell’s Kitchen, trust me. We all love watching a taskmaster whip a bunch of losers into shape. I just…” His eyes searched hers. She could think of little besides his hand on her shoulder, and when he removed it she missed it.
“You what, can’t imagine me in a kitchen?” she asked.
He grinned wide. “I can, actually.”
They talked and laughed and he touched her one more time.
Then he wanted to know about her writing. Her stories.
“Really? They’re just stories. I don’t tell them to anyone.”
“You’re kidding. They’re you! Now you have to tell me. And I want to know everything, not just the basic plot.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
“We don’t have time.”
“We have all day. Trust me, they know how to find us if they need either one of us. Tell me about your first novel. Who knows, maybe one of these days it will be published and I’ll have been the first person on earth to know the story. I insist!”
Paradise hopped to her feet. “Okay.” Her heart was pumping in her chest. “Okay, but you have to promise not to laugh.”
“I can’t help but laugh with you.”
“Okay, but not at the way my story goes or because you think it’s silly.”
“I promise,” he said, standing. “What’s it called?”
They started walking, and he stayed right by her side. “Horacus,” she said. “It’s about a world two thousand years from now called Horacus.” She told him the plot and he demanded to know more. What the people on Horacus did at night, what they wore, what were their wedding ceremonies like? What did their bedrooms look like, what kind of Internet did they use, what brand of toothpaste did they use?
Delighted beyond her wildest expectations, Paradise told him. Everything. She told him more than she’d ever told anyone about her stories.
By the time she’d finished with Horacus, another hour had passed and she felt embarrassed for hogging so much of the time. So she impulsively grabbed his hand, led him to the closest bench, and sat him down.
“Now,” she said, facing him on the bench. “Tell me about you.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. If you’re going to earn my trust completely, you have to share your secrets with me.”
He chuckled and shook his head.
“What?” But she was smiling wide, too.
“I can’t trick your mind into coughing up the goods, huh?”
“Well, yes you could try to trick it. It would have to believe, without doubt, that you trust me implicitly so that I, in turn, can trust you implicitly. For that I need secrets. Your deepest, darkest secrets. Maybe not darkest, but, yes… Something like that.”
He laughed and covered his face. “Boy, oh boy…”
“What?”
He just shook his head, still shaking with laughter. So she reached out and pulled his hands away from his face. “What?”
What she saw struck wonder in her mind. His face was red, grinning like a schoolboy’s, and his eyes were bright like the sun. She couldn’t help but chuckle with him. He was delighted.
Brad wasn’t laughing due to humor. He was actually delighted by her. And his face was red because he felt embarrassed by just how much she delighted him.
Could that be right?
They finally gathered themselves, and he leaned back and clasped his hands behind his head. “My, oh my, I haven’t laughed like that for a while.”
“It doesn’t get you off the hook, my stud.” Dear, what had she said? She began to blush. “I say that only as a means to perpetuate our attempt to trick my brain. You know. Make it think we’re close enough to use silly words like that.”
He just grinned like a kid and shook his head as if he couldn’t quite believe this was all happening.
“Tell me about yourself.”
Brad took a deep breath, settled into the bench, and told her.
He spoke about growing up in Austin, Texas, in a family with two sisters, no brothers. His father worked as a criminal defense attorney, which explained why he’d chosen to join the FBI, though on the other side of the case. He spoke about UT football, watching as a child going to the games, then as a student with a tennis scholarship. Drinking on 6th Street and making a fool of himself that first year.
He eventually moved to Miami, where he took his first job with the FBI. It was a strange story in so many ways, strange because Paradise knew it was absolutely normal.
Compared with her own childhood, something he hadn’t asked about, his young years had been a vacation. The cars, the parties, the friends, Sunday Mass, confession. He and some friends had once locked a priest in the back room, and he’d taken the stage in the priest’s robes. For half the service, the congregation assumed he was a visiting priest. He’d been an absolute rascal once. Oddly enough, the stunt endeared him to her. He wasn’t quite the clean-cut man he projected.
But Paradise couldn’t shake the stark difference between them, and it reminded her that she was the freak here. In the protected walls here, she was the sanest of the bunch, but one step past the gates and she was nothing but a basket case. How could she ever meet and love and marry someone, unless he lived here, at CWI?
“Are you okay?” he asked when she fell silent after a long string of questions.
An image of her and Brad walking down the aisle of the chapel on the other side of the campus hung in her mind. At the last minute he spun and faced the congregation. Just kidding! Ha, ha, ha!
Then to her, seeing her shock. What? Come on, Paradise, you didn’t really think I was serious, did you? I can’t live here, you know that.
Brad would never do that, of course. In fact, he would take any man who would do that and flush him down the toilet. Which was the real problem here: Brad was a beautiful, gorgeous, sensitive man and he was, forever, completely out of the reach of a piece of trash like her.
She should be running from this place for the sake of her sanity. Instead she was sitting here falling in love with him. Oh no, it was true, she thought with some alarm. She didn’t know what falling in love felt like because she’d never done it before. But the warm, thrilling, frightening emotions now bubbling up through her must be it.
She probably already had fallen for him!
“… me what you’re thinking?” he was asking.
She shook the thoughts free, realizing she must be staring, white-faced. “Sorry.” She swallowed. “Can you tell me about Ruby?”
He grew quiet and looked at the fountain. But she wasn’t ready for him to be silent on this topic. So she pressed him.
“You loved her…”
“Yes.” His voice was tight and he lowered his voice to hardly more than a whisper. “More than you can imagine.”
“I’m pretty good at that,” she said. “Was she beautiful?”
“Really, Paradise, I’m not sure we should—”
“Was she prettier than me?”
She knew of at least four or five responses that could ensue. The backpedaling, or the denial, or the out-and-out lie, or the clam-up.
He faced her, eyes searching her face, her body. “No,” he said. “Only in the way she dressed and the way she made herself up, but that’s the easy part. Inside, she was as messed up as you.” He looked at the trees. “And as me.”
What a beautiful answer, she thought. He meant it as a compliment. He was saying that she was on the same level as him rather than throw lies at her.
Everything about him was beautiful.
“She killed herself because she didn’t think she was beautiful,” he said.
A sudden and heavy silence settled over them. His eyes were locked on nothing, misted with emotion, and Paradise knew where he was going. But she didn’t want to stop him. A terrible empathy tugged at her heart.
“It wasn’t your fault, Brad.”
He sucked air in through his nose, closed his eyes. A tear leaked from one corner and she felt even worse for him. Tears flooded her own eyes. She knew nothing about love and tenderness, and even less about how to be a woman with a man, but he was here and he was crying and she had to help him.
“You’ve never loved another woman since?” she asked.
The words broke a dam in his soul. He set his elbows on his knees, lowered his face into his hands, and started to sob. What had she said?
What was she to do? She could only say what came to her mind. That was her gift, Allison said. She could look at a single leaf and see the whole tree. So she said what she saw now.
“You’re afraid that you can’t love another woman because in your mind no woman can measure up to Ruby. But that’s not why you haven’t been able to love another woman. It’s because you’re a kind man and you can’t bear the thought of hurting another woman by making her feel like she isn’t beautiful. Because that’s why Ruby took her life.”
Her words didn’t encourage him.
“But that was her choice, not yours. Life is worth living because of the risks, Allison always says, and I think she must be right. And I think it’s the same with love.”
Now he was sobbing quietly into his hands, elbows on his knees. He suddenly leaned closer to her, put one hand down and rested it on her knee, the other hand still covering his face.
The contact might as well have been a current of electricity through her bones. She sat perfectly still, head swimming through a thick sea of sorrow and elation and fear and wonder.
He was letting his pain go. Here. With her.
She wanted to throw her arms around his head and hold him close and tell him not to cry, not to feel sad, because she would love him. She would hold him and protect him and never let the monsters in the dark come up behind him and pull him back.
Paradise couldn’t do that. Not yet. She had to control herself. But she could and she must touch him. And so she did. She slowly lowered her hand onto his head and gently smoothed his short, wavy blond hair.
Then she hushed him, but her hushing was interrupted by her own sobs, not of sorrow, but of relief. Her control began to slip and rather than fight, she leaned over him, rested her head on his, and together they wept.
They sat like that for what must have been a long time, although Paradise lost track of time in this small envelope of hope and safety. Of love. Gradually they both quieted and Paradise thought she should sit up because she was holding him down. But she didn’t want to.
She was here because Allison wanted her to risk falling in love, and she was doing that. She was here because Brad thought she was beautiful, even though she needed help with her face and hair and clothes. She was here because she’d touched a dead body and seen the man with the dark hair who looked a little like Clark Kent without the glasses and who was leaning over Melissa telling her how beautiful…
Paradise gasped and jerked upright.
Brad sat up and stared at her. “Are you okay?”
She faced him. “I remember.”
He sniffed and wiped his eyes. “You remember what?”
“I remember what I saw. The man who killed Melissa!”
“You do?” It seemed to be the farthest thing from his mind.
“Yes!” Paradise jumped to her feet, ecstatic. “I do, I do. I can see him now, as clear as day.”
Brad stood up, stunned. “That’s… Are you sure? We have to get you down to the office immediately. We’ll need to reconstruct—”
“No, I can’t go. Of course I can’t go. But I can draw him. I told you, I’m a good artist. Or they can come here.”
“Of course. Yes, here. Do you know who it is?”
“No. Nobody that I can remember.”
She’d broken out! Allison would be thrilled. Paradise started to walk back toward the center. “I need to draw now, before I forget!”