Cast a Pale Shadow

chapter Nineteen

There had been no difficulty engaging the treatment room. As a staff psychiatrist with an affiliated hospital in Michigan, Fitapaldi had been accorded all courtesies and facilities to treat his patient here in St. Louis. Every step had been smoothly and efficiently handled, and he had let the ease and convenience of the arrangements lull him into burying his initial doubts.

It had only been when he drove around the circle drive to the front of this St. Vincent's, an almost identical twin to his hospital up north, that the misgivings overwhelmed him. The same black and white tiles paved the floor, the same green walls and over-waxed wood trim lined their path, the same marble statues with the same insipid smiles served as markers along the way. If Cole had not been so adamant and unyielding in his decision, he might have sensed Fitapaldi's foreboding or felt the same himself. How Fitapaldi regretted he hadn't followed his instincts and canceled the session.

It should have been so simple. He had used narcotherapy with dozens of patients, victims of traumatic neuroses, whose anxieties were lifted and who had experienced an almost immediate abatement of their symptoms. A slow injection of two to five tenths gram of sodium pentathol in a five to ten percent solution should have induced in Cole, as it had in those others he'd treated, the state of relaxation and serenity needed to bring to the surface his repressed memories and conflicts.

In this session, he had planned only to question Cole about his meeting with Bob Kirk, and he was so sure that Cole was not at fault in Kirk's subsequent death that he knew the facts uncovered would ease his anxieties about the matter. With that out of the way, there would be nothing to stop Trissa's effective, loving therapy from proceeding. He believed Trissa alone had the power to lead Cole out of the darkness and back into life. Fitapaldi had only to clear the path.

"I want to love her, Doctor. For the first time in my life, I want someone to love," Cole had said when he came to him with his plea for help. "When I'm with her, it is like I'm someone else. Not Cole. Not Nicholas either. But someone who's only whole when she's there to complete me. Is that love, do you think? I know so little about it."

"Yes. I think that is love."

"But you know how hopeless it is. I'm more than a little insane, and I remember only half a life, and I probably killed her father. A promising start for a young couple in love."

"You are no murderer, Cole. I am sure of that," he'd promised him.

And Fitapaldi had believed that so deeply that when the first jolt of the session struck him, he panicked and pulled back from his questions instead of pursuing them to resolution. As a doctor, he had broken the primary tenet of therapy and become too involved with his patient to be able to accept the revelation neutrally as he should have. Thus, he had failed Cole as dismally as all the others of his profession had ever failed him. How could he have been so wrong?

The tape spun to its end and Fitapaldi rewound and played it again, hoping he had somehow missed a key phrase that would make the nightmare stop. Cole's voice in flat, slowing cadence recited the numbers once more.

"Ninety-four, ninety-three, ninety, nine..."

"Are you feeling all right, Cole? Do you hear me?"

"I'm cold. See the goose bumps? I hear you."

"Will you answer my questions?"

"Fire away, Doc."

"What is your name?"

"Nicholas. Andrew. Brewer."

"Good. And when were you born?"

"July 28, 1937. A Depression baby. Another mouth to feed. Save a place in the soup line."

"Do you know where you were born?"

"Dayton, Ohio. Ohh-hii-ooo. It's very cold. My teeth are chattering. Is there a window open?"

"We'll get you a jacket." A pause, then, "There. Is that better?"

"A l-little."

"I want you to think back to just a short while ago, Nicholas, just two weeks ago. Can you remember back that far?"

"Far, far ago."

"Just two weeks. It was evening. Do you remember Bob Kirk?"

"The grave. Yes, the grave. Far, far ago. Once upon a time. The c-cold and l-lonely grave. So dark, forever dark."

"No, Nicholas, I want you to remember before that, before the cemetery. The night you--"

"The night there was no morning. And Cynthia is in the dark. As c-c-cold as I am. I'm sh-shivering. Is it right to b-be so c-cold?"

"Do you want to stop the session, Nicholas? Nurse, get me some blankets."

"No g-good. N-no good. I wrapped her in the quilt. B-but it was no good. Cynthia, my sleeping princess. Awake. Aw-wake t-to me. D-down, down in the d-deep, cold grave. Take me. G-god, Cy-cynthia, take me with you!"

"You can leave this memory now. Come back to just two weeks ago. There is no Cynthia in this memory of two weeks ago."

"No, there is no Cynthia an-anymore. 'Til death do us p-part, Cynthia. But it was not s-supposed to part us. Why couldn't you t-take me with you?"

"It's all right, Nicholas. We are stopping now. You don't have to remember anymore. Look, here are the blankets. We will let you sleep, now."

Fitapaldi snapped off the tape recorder and buried his face in his hands. Cynthia. He remembered Cynthia from the stack of pictures Cole had brought with him to the session, hoping they would stir a memory. Cynthia with the large, dark eyes, alert and luminous as a sparrow's in her thin, triangular face. Cynthia, smiling, with wisps of hair sticking out of the kerchief she had tied behind her head like a Russian peasant. "If we only had forever, Nicholas. Love, Cynthia," she had scrawled on the back of one of the photos.

When, with tortured effort, Fitapaldi succeeded in clearing his mind of Cynthia, the memory of Cole took her place, shivering violently in the jacket, under the blanket, mumbling about the grave, the dark and lonely grave until the second injection he had given him had finally taken effect and he had sunk into deep sleep. He slept still, on the bed in the treatment room next door, while Fitapaldi sat and pondered his mistakes and wondered what to do. He had been so sure Cole was not a murderer, that Nicholas could not do what Cole would not have done. How could he have been so wrong?

Several hours later, when he had yet to think of any solutions and Cole faced him expectantly across the desk, Fitapaldi fell back on his training to carry him through the second part of the therapy. Perhaps there was an explanation buried as deeply as the memory. Perhaps if he slashed deep enough he would find it.

"Do you remember these photographs, Cole?'

"Yes, Trissa showed them to me several times."

"But do you remember this girl?" he held out the doe-eyed girl with the scarf. "Do you know where she is now?"

"No. She is one of Nicholas's girls. He collected them."

"And you never met her yourself?"

"No."

"Did you ever meet any of Nicholas's girls?"

"Other than Trissa? Yes, one."

"Can you show me that one?"

Cole spread the photos in a fan on the desk. "This one."

"Jane Simmons?"

"That's what the back says."

"What happened to her? Do you know?"

Cole's face clouded. "Yes."

"Can you tell me?"

"What does this have to do with me now? What does it have to do with our session?"

"You don't want to tell me?"

"I'm not proud of it."

"Not proud?"

Cole shoved his hands in his pocket and stretched his legs out in front of him, pretending a casualness that was denied by the rigid lock on his knees and the grim line of his jaw. "I got rid of her."

"How do you mean?"

He shrugged, as if it meant nothing. "I was cruel to her."

"You hurt her?"

"Yes."

"How?"

"I screamed at her. I called her names. I called her a fat, stupid cow. I threw her clothes out into the street."

"I see."

Yanking his legs back, Cole sat upright, his hands out in the open again, gripping the arms of the chair. "Wait a minute. How did you think? Did you think I hit her? God, it was bad enough what I did. She cried. She pounded on the door, crying. She sat on the front steps, crying. I couldn't stand it. I went out to her and apologized. But I wouldn't let her back in. I gave her some money and took her to a motel. I told her she could have the apartment in the morning, that she was better off without me. I would be gone by then. And I was."

"Did you treat them all like that?"

"I told you. I don't remember them all."

"What about this one? Doreen?" The pictures of Doreen were more primitive, no more than blown-up snapshots, the kind a child might take with a point and click camera. They did not belong with the rest, strictly amateur.

"No."

"She was in the mental hospital with you."

"I was never in a mental hospital, except as a visitor. You know that."

"Cole, you spent five years of your life in mental hospitals. Even you know that."

Cole turned his face to the window. "That was Nicholas."

"Stop it, Cole."

The sunlight through the blinds cast a shadow of stripes across Cole's face, a shaft of it struck his eyes making them glint steely bright. "Stop what?"

"Assigning your bad memories to Nicholas. Do you remember Doreen?"

His voice lowered a register. "No."

"She killed herself."

"I don't remember."

"You were there when it happened. You screamed through the night when it happened."

"I don't remember." He turned his attention back to Fitapaldi, the crease between his eyebrows deep and hard, but his voice was dull and emotionless, resigned, defeated. "Why are you doing this? What did I say on that tape? I killed him, didn't I? You are just trying to get proof of my insanity, aren't you? You want to drive me over the edge, don't you? It's all right. It's what I want."

Only the slight tremble of his hand as he raised it to rub his temple betrayed him. "If -- If I can't have her... If I can't have Trissa, I'd just as soon be mad, stark, raving mad. Psychiatry created this monster you see before you. It is your duty to destroy it. Or -- or send me to Duncan. He'll do the job for you. He's so damned good at it."

"Doreen. Do you remember Doreen?"

"Yes! Yes, it is our memory, Nicholas's and mine."

"They're all your memories, the memories of both in the one."

Cole closed his eyes. "She loved me. She wouldn't call it that, but it was love just the same. And I should have -- I should have known. I should have saved her. She was like an angel in the snow, a shattered angel."

"You were fifteen, Cole. How could you have known?"

"I should have."

"You've had enough for today."

Startled by the abrupt end of the interview, Cole shook his head and leaned forward. "Did I kill him?"

"I don't know."

"Play the tape."

"I don't think it is a good idea."

"Play the tape. How much worse could it be?"

"Worse."

Cole held his hand out flat in front of him, and when, after a moment's concentration, it stopped shaking, he nodded. "I'm ready for it. See? May I smoke?" Without waiting for an answer and before it could start shaking again, he plunged his hand in his pocket to search for his pack of cigarettes.

"I've never seen you smoke before."

"He smokes. Nicholas. It's his bad habit, but it sometimes gets the best of me. It's not allowed in here, is it?"

"No."

Cole twisted the pack and tossed it in the waste can. "Play it."

Fitapaldi started the tape. As it played, Cole paced the floor. When it ended, he raked his hands through his hair then shoved them in his pockets. "Thank you for your effort, Doctor. I asked for cure or destroy. I can't quibble with the outcome. It's very clear what I must do now."

"Cole, stay here tonight. The effect of the drug could last up to seventy hours. Take the time to let your head clear before you make any unalterable decisions."

"The decisions were made long ago." Cole took the tape from the machine and shoved it in his pocket.

"Cole."

"Yes."

"Do you remember Cynthia?"

"Yes." Cole slumped in the chair, his fist clenched in the center of his chest. "When we were at the cemetery, it was Trissa's face I saw in the grave, not Cynthia's. I thought it was a hallucination. Not a memory. Do we call the police and have them come for me?"

"We should work this through first. It is only a partial memory at this point. The drugs, your emotional state, even my questions, I'm afraid I botched them badly -- all these things could have influenced your thought patterns."

"You can't blame the questions when you don't like the answers, Doctor." Cole took a deep breath and rose from the chair. "I believe it would be more dignified if I go to the station. Will you drive me?"

"Do you remember killing Bob Kirk?"

"They are looking for someone who buries his victims then forgets them." He tapped the pocket with the tape cassette. "I believe that is my pattern. Shall we go?"



*****



Cole saw Henry Chancellor in his office plucking index cards off a bulletin board labeled Person or Persons Unknown.

The detective who had admitted them to the outer office called out, "Hey, Chancellor, someone here for you."

Chancellor's head whipped round, then jerked back, a double take that would have put Ray Romano to shame. "Brewer! What the hell? And hand in hand with your psychiatrist? What goes here?"

"I've come to turn myself in."

"For what? Bizarre behavior at a funeral? Living in sin with your sweetie? Scoot along home and make your confessions to your shrink. I got more important things on my mind."

"Living in sin?" Brewer repeated, looking a bit muddled by the phrase. "No. No, I'm here about Bob Kirk's murder."

"Yeah? What about it? Have you dredged some memory from that fogbound brain of yours? Let's have it." He reached for a blank index card and his felt tip pen to record the information. "I'll add it to the stack."

"I did it. I killed him."

"What?" A blob of ink oozed onto the card. Chancellor ripped it in half and reached for another

"I murdered Bob Kirk."

"I see." Popping the top back on his pen and tossing it in the side drawer, he rooted for a sharpened pencil stub in the clutter. "And could you describe how the hell that happened? Was that before or after he beat you to a bloody pulp?" He abandoned his search for a functional pencil and stood. "Just a second, let me get a scribe over here. You sure you don't want to have a lawyer here with you, or does this shrink of yours double as a shyster?"

"I'm here because I drove Mr. Brewer here." The doctor drew himself to his full height, which brought him to about Chancellor's breast pocket. "I do not accept or condone what he is doing."

Chancellor motioned him over to the water fountain and leaned over to whisper loud enough for half the room to hear, "Yeah, well, that makes two of us. What's the matter, Doc, you got no better control of your patients than this? Why don't you take him home and work on him a little longer? He don't look like he belongs out in public yet."

Cole knew he looked more than a bit harried and wild-eyed, his face drained of all color except for the green, yellow, and purple rays that radiated across his jaw from the bruise behind his ear.

Chancellor studied him a moment. "Potts, get in here. Bring a pad."

When they were all settled around a table in an interrogation room, Chancellor leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs. "Okay, Brewer, 'fess up."

Brewer's voice was calmer and steadier than he had expected. "I killed Bob Kirk. We had an argument. We fought. I punched him. And he fell."

"That's it?"

"More or less."

"How about more? What did you hit him with?"

"My fists." Brewer had them clenched on the tabletop. Chancellor wasn't impressed.

"And?"

"And. And a brick from the alley."

"What did you do with this brick when you were done with it?"

"Threw it in a trash bin."

"Anything else?"

"I dragged his body to the cemetery and I buried it."

"How did you get into the cemetery?"

"Under the fence. The dogs must dig."

Chancellor nodded in agreement. "They must, I guess. It's in the nature of dogs. Can you show us this spot where the dogs dig."

"If I can find it again."

"You found it okay that night. In the dark. Beaten half dead. Dragging a body that must outweigh you -- by what -- forty pounds, at least. And the shovel, don't forget the shovel. Where did you get the shovel, by the way?"

"In the garage. It was in the garage."

"Kirk's garage?"

"The one behind his house, yes."

"Could you describe the shovel?"

"What? It was metal, with a wooden handle."

"Very apt. I know just the one you mean now. We'll mark it exhibit one. Go on."

"That's about it. I tried to get away but I didn't make it. I collapsed into the ditch where they found me."

"And did your wife -- did Teresa Kirk know anything about any of this? We know she's not your wife by the way, in case I forgot to mention it."

"Not my wife."

That cracked his eerie calm all right.

"So she can testify against you, if it goes that far. But go ahead, answer my question."

"Not my wife," Brewer repeated dully, like a stuck phonograph. "Trissa had nothing to do with this. I did it all on my own. I went to meet Bob Kirk. He deserved killing, so I killed him. Then I buried him. That's all there is to it."

"But what about your car?"

Brewer's placid face cracked in a frown. "I don't remember where I put the car. I intended to go back for it but I collapsed in the ditch. You know the rest."

"We found it."

"Good."

"Very good for you, actually. We found your car tucked, pretty as you please, in a vacant garage down the alley from Kirk's. Do you remember stashing it there? Was that before or after you killed Kirk?"

"After -- No, before"

"Fine. Now all we have to do is wait for the fingerprints and the final lab reports to apply for a warrant and arrest the -- oh, when was the last time you were in the trunk?"

"I don't know. I keep my cameras back there when I carry them. I put shopping bags back there, just like anybody else."

"And what about the blood?"

"Blood?"

"We found blood back there."

"Kirk's?"

"Don't you know?"

"I remember now." He knew he was starting to scramble. His voice had thinned and shook a little. "I put the body back there, at first, then I changed my mind."

"You changed your mind and decided to drag it to the cemetery under the fence where the dogs dig."

"Yes."

"And what if I said it was your blood?

"My...? Was it? I have no answer for that."

"How about this? You crawled into the trunk yourself, at first, then changed your mind. Kirk's blood was in the front seat. Yours was in the trunk. A whole pool of it, so don't try to say you cut yourself changing a tire or something equally stupid. That's it. Take your patient home, Doc."

"Home? Aren't you going to lock me up?"

"If anybody locks you up, it will have to be the doc. I ain't going to waste the time or the space." Chancellor flipped the scribe's pad shut in disgust and rose to leave.

"Wait." The doctor tried to hold Cole's hand back from taking something out of his pocket. Cole won the brief struggle and held the tape out to Chancellor. "You should listen to this first."

"What is it?"

"Listen to it."

"Detective, that tape was recorded during a privileged session between my patient and myself. During the procedure, he was under the influence of an injection of sodium amytal. None of it could be used in court."

"Is it about this murder?"

"No," Fitapaldi said.

"Then I ain't interested. Go home."

For a while after Chancellor left them, Cole just sat there staring dumbly at the rejected tape.

"Let's go, Cole."

"He didn't believe me. He wouldn't even listen."

"He obviously doesn't think you did it. Your answers were lame if you think about them."

"But he asked about Trissa. He can't think that--"

"No, he just said that to rattle you. His mind is set on somebody else. It wouldn't surprise me if it was the wife, Edie, I believe. Let's go." Fitapaldi touched his elbow and got him to rise.

"Go? Go where?"

"Home."

"I have no home. Didn't you hear him? She's not my wife."

"Let's give Trissa a chance to explain."

"No, keep her away from me. I'll take that hospital room you offered earlier. Lock me up. Chancellor said it's up to you, remember?"

"I think you'd be better off at home." Cole did not protest as he led him out the door.



*****



With no help from either of them, Chancellor or Fitapaldi, Cole locked himself away. The cell was his little room off the kitchen, locked from within and barricaded by a chair. He pulled the shade and sat on the edge of the bed and tried to seal his heart from the sounds of life all around him. If he pretended not to hear for long enough, they would become like the steady crash of the sea to someone living at the beach, easy to ignore, easy to dismiss. But it would take a while. Something in his soul refused to shut them out.

Ruth sang a badly off-key old song as she banged the pots and pans preparing dinner, "The wheel keeps turning, turning, turning, while my heart keeps yearning..."

"If I talk Augusta into giving you a raise, will you cease that caterwauling," Roger asked her sourly.

"Mizewell ask me to give up breathing," she answered and continued just slightly softer.

"But what will this do to Trissa?" he heard Augusta's hushed voice say a bit later during a momentary lull from Ruth. Fitapaldi's answer was low and Cole could not make out the words. It didn't matter. The question was enough.

Cole buried his head in his pillow and tried to shutter the world in sleep. Perhaps it was the lingering effects of the drugs that snuffed out consciousness so thoroughly that he did not hear the key turning in the lock, or the chair scraping out of the way, or Trissa tiptoeing in to sit in the dark at his side.

She must have been there when the first vague stirring of his dreaming began, when the dirt of the grave fell in on him and he panted with the effort to keep his heart beating in the heavy, smothering silence.

He awoke in the grayness of dawn to find her kneeling beside his bed, her head resting on his chest, and, God help him, he could not resist brushing her cheek with the back of his finger this one last time.

And he could not make his voice match his harsh and cruel words when, at last, he forced them out. "Get away from me." It sounded more like a prayer, an entreaty, than a rejection, even to him.

She slowly shook her head against his chest and when she knelt back to meet his eyes, she was still shaking it, her chin firm and her own eyes shining with defiance. "Never," she said.

"You're not my wife."

"Then marry me."

"You're as crazy as I am."

"Then we were made for each other."

"I'm poison. People die when they know me."

"People die anyway," she said.

"Doreen."

"Lonny," she countered.

"My mother," he said.

"My father."

"Danny, Jill," Cole recoiled from the hand she reached out to touch him, "Valerie."

"You remember who they are," she whispered.

"I remember their deaths." He stood and straightened the clothes he had slept in, turning his back on her where she still knelt on the floor. "I remember they left me. All of them."

"I won't."

Without a word, without taking the risk of looking at her, he pulled on his shoes, the knots still tied from the night before, and walked out. Jack was in the kitchen, dressed for work, drinking coffee, reading the newspaper.

"Jack, can I borrow your car? I won't be long." He wasn't lying. It shouldn't take long. Just enough time to build up speed and find a convenient bridge abutment or sturdy tree. It shouldn't take too long at all.

"Sure, Nick, you know me, I go in when I go in. Got no clock to punch." He unhooked the keys from his belt loop and tossed them across the table. "Have some coffee first."

From the corner of his eye, Cole saw Trissa in her ice blue nightgown like a ghost in the doorway. "No thanks. Gotta go."

Jack drove an ancient Dodge, one he could park in any part of the city without attracting notice or envious looks. Pity was the most he could expect. It would be no great loss to Jack to have to replace it. Cole turned the ignition and felt the car rumble to attention. For as old as it was, the car had spirit. It should do.

He saw Trissa in the rear view mirror, her bare arms reaching out to him. He shut his eyes and closed his ears to her calling his name, both names. When he opened them again, she was gone.

He headed west on Lindell, not knowing where he would go until he got there. To his left, the park beckoned, the rising sun glinting in the lake, blossoms showering from the trees like snow. Like snow. He remembered the silent snow as it collected him in its frigid peace so many lost months ago. He turned into the park and set the white blossoms to flurry and swirl up from the road as he passed, but there was no peace in them, no peace in a raucous spring shouting life from every treetop and green slope.

Damn, the park was a mistake. The car slowed as if it had a mind of its own, meandering through the looping labyrinth of the parkway. Cole patted his pockets for cigarettes. There was always one last smoke, he appeased himself for his malingering. It was tradition.

But his pockets were flat and empty. Surely, Jack would have some. Leaning forward, he popped open Jack's glove compartment. A black leather belt and holster coiled out like a snake waking from a nap. He took the gun from the holster and pushed it into his pocket. "Thank you, Jack," he whispered. "You can have your car back in one piece after all."

He slowly wound through the park until he found a place, a thick clump of trees beyond the zoo grounds. Maybe it would be a long time before they found him there, time enough to buffer the shock.

"But what will this do to Trissa?" Augusta's words resounded in his brain.

"It will save her. It will save her," was all his aching heart could reply. He parked his car in the zoo lot and hiked back to the woods.

His feet scuffed along through a carpet of dead leaves and uncurling ferns and Johnny-jump-ups like tiny pansies winking up at him. "I thought you said pansies always made you smile," he remembered saying to Trissa once and could almost feel her warm body crushed against him.

When? When had he said that to her? Did it really make any difference now? When he reached a spot where the tree trunks blocked all view of the open meadows or the road, he stopped and leaned against a tree, letting his knees crumple under him and his back slide down the scratchy bark.

"Well, Duncan, success at last." He held the gun in his hand, staring at its short black barrel. He hadn't thought to check that it was loaded. He snapped it open. Good old Jack, as reliable as a Boy Scout for being prepared.

Dabbles of sun filtered down on him through the feathery, new leaves. The God damned birds twittered with maddening good cheer. "What are you waiting for? You've dawdled with this business thirteen years already," he muttered to himself.

"God take you, Nicholas," he heard Duncan's voice command and he put the barrel in his mouth. Each breath he drew after that shout echoed through his brain and brought a flash of memory -- of Danny and Jill and his mother, crouched on the floor, whimpering until the shots split the air deafening him. Of Valerie, her body crushed and cooling next to his in the chill, dark of the trunk. Of the trial, his father standing, screaming his vile taunts. Of the night after, the leather belt around his neck, the buckle cutting his chin. Of Doreen, broken and bleeding in the snow. Of Cynthia, Janey, Beth.

Of himself trudging through the blinding snow then giving up and waiting.

Of Trissa, kneeling on the railroad tracks, waiting.

"You're as crazy as I am."

"Then we were made for each other."

"You are kindred spirits."

"But what will this do to Trissa?"

Her voice came to him in a clear and trembling whisper out of a memory he did not know he had. "I thought of the train and how it would hurt. But not so much. And not for so long. Then I thought of the after when it would be dark and painless and empty. And you would not be there."

"...dark and painless and empty. And you would not be there."

"You would not be there."

He took his finger from the trigger and pulled the barrel from his mouth. He snapped the gun open again and, one by one, he removed the bullets and tossed them away from him into the woods. "Sorry to disappoint you, Duncan. Again."

From far away he heard Trissa's voice calling, "Nicholas! Nicholas! Cole?"

But he didn't know if it was really her or his mind playing tricks on him again.



*****



They had fanned out in three directions from Jack's car when they found it, Augusta and Roger together, Jack, Fitapaldi, and Trissa. The doctor didn't want her to go alone, but she insisted. They had to cover as much ground as possible. She had seen the empty holster on Jack's front seat, though they had tried to shield it from her view. She knew what little time they had. She knew it might already be too late.

When she first saw him slumped against the tree, his golden head dipped almost to his knees, she thought it was too late. It seemed her heart grabbed her and choked her as she stumbled blindly over the tree roots toward him. He did not raise his eyes to her until she bent over him and timidly touched a curl of his hair.

"Trissa?" He lurched to his feet and into her embrace. "I'm sorry. I -- I was too weak."

She hugged him fiercely. "Oh, no. Oh, no, you're strong. You have experienced things that would have broken others."

"You don't think that I'm broken?" he asked with sad irony, backing away. "Shattered. Splintered. Split. Broken. Aren't they all the same? Would it have been suicide or murder, Trissa? Tell me that."

His eyes looked so dead to her with none of the spark she loved as Nicholas' and no trace of the intensity she now recognized as Cole's. The hollowness of his voice and the emptiness of his eyes tore at her heart. She feared she may lose them both, and she knew she could not survive that. She lay her hand on his as it gripped the gun so casually at his side and was alarmed that it felt so cold, as cold as the gunmetal itself. "Don't. Don't do this to me, please."

"For you. I was doing it for you, Trissa."

"Did you give me back my life to take it from me again?" She covered his gun hand with her own and moved closer to him.

"Stop, Trissa."

He tried to push her away, to release her, but she would not let him. She pressed her ear against his chest. For a moment, she held her breath, listening to his heart, wanting it to go on forever, fearing he would not let it. "Please, please, don't take yourself away from me. I don't want to live without you."

"I can't live without you," came Cynthia's voice, an echo of Trissa's, whispering across his mind, and he saw again Cynthia's cold, little body wrapped in the quilt, deep in her dark, lonely grave. "God, no. No, Trissa, you don't understand." The memory struck again and it was Trissa's face he saw. His legs buckled and he slumped through her embrace to his knees. He relinquished the gun to her grasp alone. "God, Trissa, help me. I can't go on like this. I can't."

She knelt with him, carefully sliding the gun away from them across the ground.

"It's empty," he said. "It's empty." But she did not understand.

With her hands on his temples, she searched his eyes and saw Nicholas there. "Remember. Remember, Nicholas, how you held me in the hospital? How you told me the world needed me, you needed me? I didn't believe it then. I didn't know how to believe it. But now..." She kissed his forehead and the corners of his eyes. "Now, I believe. You taught me. As Nicholas. As Cole. You taught me how to love and be loved. I need you. The world needs you. We need the magic. Your magic."



*****



Magic. It was the wrong word. It conjured up Doreen and Janey and Cynthia, and all the magic he had sought in them to sear away the memory of his childhood, to dispel the shadows and the darkness that waited to swallow him. He would spare Trissa that magic. He did not believe in it anymore. He did not want it anymore.

It was as if the illusion he'd chased for so long had cracked and shattered within him, falling away in slivers like a broken mirror. His arms circled her and he held her, so warm and real and solid, so much more than magic. From deep within him came the words she had whispered to him the first time they'd made love, "Keep me safe, Trissa. Never let me go."

"Never," she promised as he had then. "Never."