Wake to Dream(59)
12:36 p.m.
Gray walls.
Black table.
Plastic, fake red roses.
"Alice? ... Ms. Beaumont? ... Alice Beaumont?"
"Yes, doctor."
Taking her usual place on the couch, Alice didn’t feel the need to curl over herself for protection. The nightmares and confusion were slowly fading, the truth of the life she’d lived coming back in haunting pieces that slowly stitched themselves together to form the full picture she wished could be different than it was.
Guilt rode her shoulders with a weight that couldn’t be ignored or forgotten, her heart breaking with every new shadowed secret her mind brought into full light.
“Shall we simply jump into this, Alice? I think the formalities and pleasantries are long past us at this point.”
Nodding her head, she drew in a steadying breath, her eyes unable to meet the doctor’s stare because her shame was far too much for her to face.
“It’s all starting to come together for me, Doc, and I’m terrified to go further. I don’t understand the reasons why I didn’t remember any of this until now, why my mind seemed to wrap it all into another reality.”
His pen scribbled quietly over his notebook, his focus more on his written thoughts than on her. “The mind is an interesting place, Alice. You know that as well as me. When something tragic happens that we’re not ready to face or deal with, the mind has the unique ability to transform it into something else. For some, their personality fractures and, in their head, they’re two different people entirely. For others, they sink into themselves so deep that they become a shell of what they were before that tragedy struck. It appears that in your case, your mind conjured a storyline that contained elements of the truth, but disguised it in a way that you could accept. At least until you were ready to face what really happened.”
Wringing her hands over themselves in her lap, she stared at a ring on her finger that she’d neglected to notice until her memory had pieced itself back into place. Until that moment in the garden when reality had slammed against her like a runaway train.
“He never abducted me, did he? I wasn’t a prisoner to Max. I was his wife.”
Her eyes stung from the tears that seemed like they would never stop falling. She was so sick of crying, but it was the only way the wave of emotions inside her could find their release.
“He told me, Doc. Over and over again in the dreams, and I didn’t listen.”
…drip…
With a voice as quiet as it was solemn, Dr. Chance tapped his pen against the notebook once before letting out a gentle sigh and saying, “Perhaps it was easier for you to believe that you were forced to live that life instead of having chosen to stay there. Or, perhaps these dreams are a jumble of all the memories coming together, but not in the proper circumstance or order. Whatever the reason may be, the story doesn’t end there, Alice. And you can’t move past what happened until you face the entire truth.”
The ticking clock beat down the seconds of silence that fell between them, Alice huffing out a shaky breath because she knew the doctor was hurrying her forward.
Time was of the essence, it seemed, but she didn’t know what would occur when it finally ran out.
“Keep going, Alice. Walk me though the entirety of your life with him so that I can help you find all the pieces you need in order to put the broken parts back together.”
When Max had first brought Alice to his home, her response to the lovely Queen Anne where he lived had been full of wonderment and promise. The house sat on a large lot surrounded by woods, a secluded piece of the world where a person could hide away from society.
Her eyes had rounded to see the property, her lips parting on a soft sigh at the possibility of living in such beauty with a man who could see to her every desire and need.
Like a love struck teen, her heart had beat a soft patter beneath her ribs as he’d guided her up the front walkway and into the home.
And just like the outside of the house, the inside was elegant and painstakingly cared for. Clean and immaculate, the interior reminded her of something you’d see in a magazine, of a home that any normal person would love to own, but could never hope to afford.
Giving her a tour, Max had warned her that the basement had not been restored or remodeled like the other rooms, and as such, was dangerous due to aging wooden stairs and crumbling bits of foundation that were a hazard to anyone who attempted passing through in the dim light that was down there. He warned to her to stay out of the basement for her own safety, but assured her that the rest of the home was hers to travel as she pleased.
Alice hadn’t been surprised by his description of the basement. Older homes often required a lot of money and care to bring them back to the state they’d been when first built, so she’d ignored the warning and didn’t wonder if there was something down there Max didn’t want her to see.
Perhaps it had been the house itself that washed away every bit of logic and instinct that Alice had left in her, because almost as soon as they crossed the threshold, she found herself saying ‘yes’ to anything and everything Max would offer her.
Theirs was a whirlwind romance that was the stuff of dirty novels and sickly sweet movies. Almost as soon as Alice agreed to marriage, Max set to work to plan every detail of the ceremony.