Flashback (6 page)

Her mother’s response was immediate and sincere. “Yes, I do. Your drawings have a sensitivity and a delicacy about them that is tremendously appealing. I think you have a great deal of promise.”

“Thanks.” Dana smiled slightly at the encouragement and praise from her mother, and Denise breathed an unconscious sigh of relief. It was the first real smile she’d seen from Dana in days.

But then the smile was fading and Dana’s eyes went unfocused as her head came up like a questing dog’s, sniffing the wind. She said briefly, “The front door. Would you get it, Mom? I don’t really feel like talking to anyone today.”

And Denise frowned, saying, “Sure, I’ll take care of whoever it is.” She noted the pallor in Dana’s cheeks and the way her fingers tightened on her drawing pad. “Is everything all right, dear?”

“Oh, yes,” she answered, too quickly. She tried to smile again, but it was the same facial movements that Denise had seen for the past three weeks. The older woman knew a sinking feeling. “What could possibly be wrong?”

After staring at her daughter hard, Denise shook her head slightly and left to answer the knock at the front door that had not yet come. Dana kept her face averted until her mother had left the kitchen, and then she blew out a shaky sigh. She would steal out the back way while her mother talked to David Raymond. She knew that his intention was to speak to her and not her mother, but she had no desire to have what she was sure would be an unpleasant encounter with him. Then her head jerked, and her hand slipped on her pictures, sending them scattering to the floor.

“Oh, no,” she said in a kind of moan, panic fluttering through her stomach. “He’s coming for the back door, instead!” She’d felt him change his mind just as she’d known his original intent. It sent her scrabbling on the floor in a frantic effort to pick up all of her pictures and get out before he actually looked. “Mom! He’s coming to the back door instead! Hurry and—oh, shoot!” That last was as a firm knock sounded not five feet away from where she was crouched. She straightened slowly, knowing she couldn’t escape now since the curtains across the window in the back door were pulled wide open and that his eyes were on her.

She went to the back door and pulled it open reluctantly, just as her mother hurried into the kitchen from the front of the house. Dana lifted her eyes as if her gaze were under a heavy weight, and she met the dark, blank eyes of the silent man in front of her. He was still. Then he moved, breaking out of that silent pose. “Hello, Dana,” David said quietly. “May I come in, please?”

If Dana had been by herself, she would have been rude and refused, but her mother was standing there and watching, and Denise never tolerated rudeness to a visitor. Dana dropped her eyes and stepped back. She searched frantically for some kind of clue as to why he was there, feeling the air before her delicately, with invisible antennae, but she could pick up nothing aside from a grim purpose and the intention to speak to her. That unsettled her more than most anything else would have; she always relied on her extra sense like most people rely on their sight or their hearing. It was a mistake to do so, she knew suddenly. Sometimes it just didn’t seem to work.

She had no inkling as to what to expect. She didn’t know if he was angry or sad, or if he had anything on his mind other than a purely social call. No, that wasn’t true. He wouldn’t be so determined—and that she could sense—if he was merely paying a social visit.

Unknown to her, Dana’s face had whitened considerably, and the skin under her eyes and around her fine nostrils was stretched tight from tension. David glanced at her assessingly and then looked across the room to her mother, who had stopped just inside of the kitchen doorway. “My name’s David Raymond,” he said smoothly, striding forward a few steps and holding out a browned, calloused hand. Denise shook it as he continued, “I’m your new neighbour renting the house from Grace Cessler. I met your daughter a few days ago—last week sometime, wasn’t it?” This was thrown over his shoulder to Dana’s silent figure. She didn’t bother to reply. “We saw each other again at Grace’s. I’m her cousin’s grandson.”

“Oh, I see. Well, it’s nice to meet you, Mr. Raymond,” Denise replied, with every sign of enthusiasm. Dana could feel her sharpening interest in the man before her, and she felt almost hysterically amused at that. If her mother knew what she’d done already to this man! One thing was certain: he was not entertaining the kind of thoughts that Denise suspected. He most definitely didn’t like her. She couldn’t blame the man. For all he knew, she was a prying gossip. “Would you like a cup of coffee, or perhaps some iced tea?”

Dana moved over quietly to the table and finished stacking her drawings together, fully aware of the quick, questioning glance her mother had thrown to her. They were always careful as to whom they invited into their house because of Dana’s sensitivity. Denise was asking her silently if everything was all right.

It was too late for that. The invitation had already been issued. Dana made a quick decision. She couldn’t explain her behaviour to David, and so they really had nothing to discuss. She waited to hear what he would say to her mother, hoping uselessly that he would refuse.

But of course he didn’t. He thanked her mother very courteously, accepting a glass of iced tea, and drinking the liquid with pleasure.

Dana said briefly, “If you would please excuse me. I have many things to do.” She gathered her papers together, nodded pleasantly but distantly to David, avoided her mother’s eyes and headed to the door.

She wasn’t to get away so easily. David asked her quietly, “May I have just a moment of your time? I won’t take long, I promise. I have something I’d like to talk to you about.”

She turned and stared into his eyes, and she saw that they weren’t quite as dark as they first appeared. The chocolate tone to his irises was highlighted by a lighter shade of honey towards the middle. She had to give him credit for tactfulness, she thought, nodding reluctantly. He’d managed to convey to Denise, very nicely, that he wanted a private talk. She was quick to take the hint, leaving after another quick, questioning glance to Dana.

When her mother’s footsteps had died down, Dana went jerkily to the coffee maker and went about the motions of starting the machine. She whisked down a cup, and when the brew was finished, she poured it quickly into her cup, all in a totally unnerving silence. Some spilled over on to the counter and she wiped it up, moving as jerkily as she’d poured. She couldn’t stay still under that steady gaze.

“I talked to Grace quite a bit after you’d left on Thursday,” David said suddenly, and she jumped so violently at the sound of his voice that she spilled her coffee, again, and made a small choking sound as she burned her hand. Her lower lip trembled and she sucked a throbbing knuckle as she heard him move, setting down his glass sharply and coming over to her. Her cup was taken and set down also on the table—he didn’t spill it—and the towel she’d used to mop up the mess was thrown on the floor to the spilled liquid there. Then he grabbed her hand and pushed it under the faucet, holding it there with his hand on her wrist. It was warm, encircling the thinness of her forearm completely, and a contrast to the cold wetness splashing on her hand.

She kept her face down, turned away from him as she started to shake. He had to feel it, she knew, because it wasn’t a mere inward trembling that sometimes accompanies nervousness or self-consciousness. It was a violent shaking that came from severe emotional upheaval. His hand tightened briefly on her arm and then left it to come around her shoulders as he muttered, “Oh, no. Don’t shake so. Please don’t shake.” Her hand had cooled under the water flow until it was almost numb, and she turned off the faucet and wiped her hands dry. Then he steered her to the table and pushed her into a chair, seating himself beside her. She took her coffee cup and stared into it, sipping from it and doing her level best to get steadier, but she didn’t seem to do any good. She trembled like a leaf caught in a strong wind, and he saw it.

It was odd that she wasn’t picking up those waves of dislike from him anymore. As she tried again to grope outwards for his mood, he asked her, “What’s wrong, Dana?”

“Nothing, I burnt my hand,” she replied expressionlessly. She wouldn’t look at him. She was so vulnerable, too vulnerable. Anyone could come along and rip her apart inside, a kind of mental rape, and she couldn’t do anything to stop it. She was wide open to any hurt David might inflict, all unknowingly. She was so full of her own emotional uncertainties that she didn’t even notice how strange it was that he would start an intimate conversation with a near stranger.

“Something’s wrong,” he said, still being gentle. “But I won’t push it. You’re all right, though?” She nodded, and wondered why he would care to ask. Then she wondered if she had lied or not. He continued, “I wanted to give you a bit of breathing space, so I put off coming over for a few days. I’ve wanted to come over and ask you a few questions, though. Grace told me quite a few things on Thursday.” He paused, seemingly to pick his words, and she felt the careful, hard control he exercised over his feelings. He was clamping down hard on them, keeping them firmly in rein. She caught the edge of something like a whiplash, though, and flinched away from him violently. The man had an incredible amount of strong emotion just waiting to burst from him like a geyser. He was the bomb she felt ticking away in her brain, and he was going to blow sky-high.

“What is wrong with you?” she whispered, and covered her mouth with trembling fingers, aghast at how she’d let herself slip in front of him, again. She pushed back her chair, abruptly, and it would have fallen except for his lightning swift grab. He righted it as she backed away, muttering, “Excuse me, I’m not feeling well…” And she would have turned to run but for another of his lightning swift movements. Suddenly he was right in front of her and he had a hold on her arms.

“You’re perfectly well,” he said in a quick, low voice. “You’re just upset. Why are you so upset, Dana?” The question had a hard urgency to it that she felt even in the midst of her turmoil, and she stared at him in surprise. “What are you feeling right now? What kind of thoughts are going through your mind?”

Her eyes widened on him as she felt thunderstruck.
He knew!
ripped through her mind, followed by an agonised,
How?
“Why do you want to know?” she asked, hopelessly dissimulating. “Who am I to you? Why should you care what in the world I’m feeling?”

He sighed, the movements heaving his chest, and she had a brief instant of wonder at the new sensation of being so close to a powerful male body. It felt warm and different, not at all like she remembered feeling when she was held or hugged by her father. It felt…strange, but then everything about this man was strange. She put it down to that and then shrugged it away. It was just another strange emotion, coming from him. It was certainly nothing she’d ever felt before.

“Dana, I don’t know how to say this,” he said deeply. “But when Grace and I talked, what we discussed was how you’d known when she was hurt without having any way of knowing it. We talked about your sensitivity to other people and what they were feeling. We talked about how you’d known just when your father was killed, without anyone ever telling you.”

She wasn’t sure what shocked her the most, the fact that Mrs. Cessler had known for years the secret she’d tried so hard to keep, or that she had told this man, of all people. She broke away from him, crying out in agitation, “I don’t know what you’re talking about! I didn’t know anything of the sort!” Even as she spoke the lie, she knew it was hopeless. And her lie was so pathetic.

“You do know what I’m talking about,” he replied quietly, and the contrast between his quietness and her agitation was revealing in itself. She backed up and jolted into the wall behind her. “And it does have to be talked about, so it won’t do any good to prevaricate. Look, are you all right?” This was as she turned so completely white, she looked as though she might faint.

“I think you’d better go, Mr. Raymond,” she said, and all her efforts to sound hard merely sounded quavering. She swallowed. “I don’t want to talk about this any longer. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve never heard of anything like that before—I think you’d better go—” She sidled along the wall until she came to the doorway, backing through the open space and nearly screaming as she came up against someone there. She’d been so intent on watching the man in front of her, she hadn’t even felt her mother’s presence.

Denise’s eyes were trained on David also, not her daughter. “So you talked to Grace,” she said quietly. “Why did you do that, Mr. Raymond? What had Dana done?”

“Mother!” Dana hissed, and it was all too late anyway, but she was still hopelessly trying to make him disbelieve, to make him go away, like a grief stricken mother trying to make her dead child live by holding him tight. “I—I think this conversation has gone far enough! Mr. Raymond, will you please leave now?” Hardly aware of what she did, she backed away from her mother also, and she found herself in a corner, leaning against the counter and the wall.

“Dana, sweetheart, it’s too late. He knows too much already—look, even I can see it in his eyes. And for some reason he needs to ask the questions. We can only hope that he’s a good enough man to keep quiet about this, for our sakes.”

Dana wrung out both hands, twisting and turning them, clasping them so tightly together that the knuckles turned white and red from the pressure. Both of them were looking at her and they both looked so concerned and worried that she nearly couldn’t stand it. Their feelings were hammering insistently at her now, for David was too emotionally aroused and involved to be able to hold on to his emotions well anymore, and Denise’s worry rose to the fore like a weary spectre. The thoughts and the doubts and the worries and the fears were all too much for one person to take. She couldn’t tell anymore what was her own and what was not. “I—I’m not prepared for this,” she managed to stammer out, crossing her arms in front of herself in the age-old defensive gesture to cover nakedness. She glanced at her mother and felt the pity and the love from her so strongly that she nearly moaned aloud. Was she then such a freak, to be pitied thus? “You haven’t prepared me for this,” she whispered “Sure, I was naked before, but nobody knew and now—now—” And at that incoherent, stammered statement, Dana did the only action left to her.