Cast a Pale Shadow(46)

No, he did not want to hear that. He did not want to know that. He danced on a thin wire strung high above the abyss. He had balance for no one else. There was no one else.

"Brewer." The name barked out by the huge and surly looking doctor who filled the doorway, served as greeting and address. Unable to see his nametag, Cole was forced to simply nod and frown in return, which the doctor took as permission to enter.

"A hand grenade. I've been thinking of it all night and a hand grenade is the precisely right description for you. A hand grenade in that spit of time between the removal of the pin and the throwing and the blast. That's the borrowed time I figure you've got."

"As long as that? Whole lives can be lived in that instant," Cole said sullenly. This was the part he hated most, sorting out and disposing of the friends Nicholas had accumulated. Most times, he could avoid them all together, just leave town without a trace. But he was trapped this time. He had to be able to walk out.

"You should know. You're either incredibly lucky or the fates are trying to prove by you that only the good die young. Just do us a favor and see that Trissa is well out of the way when you really do blow." He was close enough now so that Cole could read his tag, Dr. Bryant Edmonds.

Without invitation, he sat in the chair by the window. His expression was more smirk than smile. "I assume, since she's been hanging around here, all love-struck and pining, that you have given your little wife the service we discussed at our last meeting."

The doctor's snide tone left no doubt that his comment was intended to be as crude as it sounded. Cole's distaste for the man was sudden and intense, like a kick in the teeth. Still, he curbed the impulse to lash back. The girl was nothing to him.

God, his head ached too much to be sparring like this. "Assume what you want. Though why the hell it is any of your business, I have a hard time knowing."

"It isn't," said a soft but assertive voice.

"Trissa," said Cole, and his pain seemed to fizzle away like beer foam in a salted glass.

"Good morning, Nicholas," she said as she gave him that kiss he'd expected. Better than he'd expected, actually. He hadn't imagined that her freshly washed hair would have the scent of roses as it fell forward to brush his cheek. Or that the tip of her tongue would tease the corners of his lips for a brief, sweet instant. Or that she would stop on her way up from his lips to kiss the tip of his nose and the very spot behind his ear where it hurt the most. She confused him mightily. She made it very hard to think of her as debris or nuisance.

The doctor cleared his throat impatiently, and when Cole looked up, his smirk had turned to scowl. "Excuse the intrusion, Mr. and Mrs. Brewer."

Trissa perched on the edge of the bed and fluttered her lashes at Cole saucily, then tossed her hair over her shoulder to glance back at the doctor. "Oh, Dr. Edmonds, I thought you'd gone."

"Shortly. I do have a bit of news, though perhaps you'd want to wait to hear it from Dr. Cummings."

The teasing smile melted from her face instantly. "What is it?"

"Good news, I guess. I was telling Brewer how lucky he was to have such a thick skull and a cast iron gut. The last tests came back. They're letting him go tomorrow."

Trissa yielded to the light push of Cole's fingertips on her forearm and slid off the bed away from him. It might have been the subtle but unmistakable distancing of himself away from her that tempered the enthusiasm of her response. "Thank you for telling us. I'm very pleased."

Edmonds studied her with a wry half-smile, his arms folded across his chest. "From the way the police have been hanging around here, it should be just in time for the arrest. I may be forced to admit, Brewer, that I was wrong when I assessed your various abilities. One of them, anyway. Fighting may be a strong suit after all. As to the other, well, some women settle for less than others, I suppose."

"Come out in the hall! I want a word with you, Doctor!" Trissa snapped and wheeled to stalk out. Edmonds chuckled and ambled after her. Cole could only hear the hissing anger of her whisper but not the words as she gave him the piece of her mind that nettled her. He could imagine her jabbing her tiny finger into his massive chest as she made her point.

His low rumble of a voice was clearly audible, however. "I never trusted Brewer. You're best rid of him. He's a killer." There was a slight pause in which neither spoke. "Unless, of course, that's what you wanted out of him all along. Tell me, what's the going rate for patricide? And what does he accept for legal tender?" There was a resounding crack which could only have been her palm connecting with his cheek.

Cole heaved himself painfully out of the bed to go to her aid, but she was in the door before he'd managed two steps. Her face was beet red with fury and her fists were tight, white-knuckled balls. "Ooh! What an arrogant, insufferable bastard!" She jammed a fist to her mouth as if to stifle a pending scream.

Awkwardly, Cole put an arm around her shoulder and patted her. "Really, I'm not worth the trouble. For all we know, he may be right. About me, I mean."

"No," she said adamantly. "Don't say that. Don't even think it. I talked to the police this morning. They don't have anything. It seems they suspect me as much as they do you. So for all his arrogance, Edmonds shares his perceptions with the cops." She shivered, then seemed to force the tension out of herself. "But, I don't want to worry about that now. I came here to get reacquainted with my multifaceted husband."

"Multifaceted? That's a rather benign term, don't you think? Did Fitapaldi give you that one? It sounds like him."

"No," she said, "I thought of it myself. Anyway, it fits." She stepped away from him, shrugged off her sweater and tossed it across the foot of the bed. "Wait here a second. I have a present for you. I left it out in the hall." She disappeared for a moment and returned with a package wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine.

"A present?"

"Sit down and I'll give it to you." She guided him to a chair and held his elbow as he eased himself into it. "It's not brand new. I mean, Jack found it for me. I told him what I had in mind, and he got this. I hope you like it."

He untied the string and folded back the paper slowly, prolonging the anticipation. He could not remember the last time anybody had given him a present. When the package lay open in his lap, he stroked his hand over the smooth, dark jacket of the book inside. "Ansel Adams."

"It's what he does with the light, the way the light shines through. I see that in your pictures. The ones at the lake. And the still lifes."

"My Camera in Yosemite Valley. You flatter me. Thank you. It's the nicest gift anybody ever gave me."

She smiled, then watched him as he turned the pages of the book. He glanced up now and again, enjoying her pleasure as much as the book, sorry he had pushed her away from him earlier, sorry he had caused her even that momentary pain. But, he reminded himself and forced his eyes down again, that must be his purpose with her, to push her away. He mustn't let himself get sidetracked from that.

"Nicholas," she said softly after a while. "You won't remember this, but not so long ago, you made me promise something. I want the same promise from you now."

"Don't, Trissa."

"It's not a very big promise, and I don't think the keeping of it will be too great a chore."

"I can't."

"All you have to say is that you promise you will never leave me. It's not so much to ask, is it?"

He looked past her to a spot on the wall, a chip in the green paint, trying to focus on it to shutter out the flashed afterimage of her sincere, eager hope. "The one you wish to bind with a promise like that is already gone. The promise is broken before it is made."

"No, the one I wish to bind is right here before me," she slipped to her knees on the floor by his chair.

"Trissa, please don't..."

"He's the one who took the pictures as magic with light as the ones in this book. He is you, Nicholas. You, Cole. One and the same."

"There will be no promises. I'm no good at promises."

"We'll see," she sighed, unknowingly echoing his words from yesterday. "Anyway, I have the law on my side. This morning, they cautioned me not to leave town. I suspect they'll expect the same from you. I will have you under house arrest."



*****



For the first few days of his return to the home he did not remember, Cole slept in the old cook's room off the kitchen. Augusta had thoughtfully made it up for him, thinking the stairs would be difficult for him to manage for a while. Cole was grateful for it. It had a narrow bed he was expected to share with no one, unlike the one he knew he'd find when wellness forced him back to his own room. It was close to the kitchen, the center of most of the activity in the house, and easy to escape to when the pressure of remembering faces and names became too much for him.