Cast a Pale Shadow(54)

"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."





Chapter Twenty





Bryant Edmonds called on Trissa the next day waving the newspaper account of the arrest of Edie Kirk for the murder of her husband. He was eager to point out the phrase that described Nicholas as the alleged common law husband of the daughter of the accused.

"So?" Trissa snapped. "Are you surprised? You've been alleging that all along, haven't you? One of the few parts of the story you got right, I might add."

"Nobody's been proven guilty or innocent yet," he growled.

"That being the case, you'd best run along, Dr. Edmonds. You wouldn't want to taint your reputation by associating with libertines and murderers, would you?"

Edmonds ignored the warning and returned to the article. "'Mrs. Kirk allegedly struck her husband several times with a shovel when he returned from disposing of the unconscious Nicholas Brewer who confessed he had fought with Mr. Kirk earlier that evening. In her statement to the police, Mrs. Kirk admits having witnessed the fight from an upstairs window of their home, and seeing her husband put Brewer's body in the trunk of his own car but says she has no memory of the events that followed when Kirk returned later on foot,'" Edmonds read from the paper. Through narrowed eyes, he peered at Trissa over the top. "You don't believe this, do you? Your mother? That little woman is capable of--"

With a quick and startling swipe, Trissa snatched the paper from him. "Believe it? I can take the 'alleged' right out of the story for you." As if reciting by heart from the article, Trissa closed her eyes, took a deep breath and began. "Mrs. Kirk claims that as a victim of years of abuse from her husband, Mrs. Kirk attacked him as he attempted to force his way into their home. She pushed him down the back porch then beat him about the head and shoulders with a garden shovel. Later she heaved his body into her late son's toy wagon and wheeled it to nearby Calvary Cemetery where she partially buried it in a grave where a recent interment had taken place."

As she finished, Trissa's voice shook and her eyes were open and sharp with anger. She smacked the rolled newspaper against her side for emphasis. Edmonds backed away from her to the door. "Are you convinced I believe it now? It may take us a long time to get riled, but we little Kirk women pack quite a wallop when we're angry. Care to try me?" Trissa steamed.

"I suggest you heed the warning, Edmonds," Cole said as the doctor backed into him in the doorway. "Trissa is the fighter of the family. But I promise you, it is the only one of her abilities you will ever have the occasion to know."

On the same day Edie Kirk won her second indefinite postponement of her trial pending the completion of more psychological tests, Cole Brewer and his now lawfully wedded wife and his doctor Lorenzo Fitapaldi left for Michigan. As Fitapaldi crammed the rest of the suitcases into his car, Augusta kissed Trissa goodbye and made her promise to write.

"Everyday. Or at least every other. I know how honeymooners are."

Beverly and May smiled as Maurice produced a silver envelope and pressed it into Trissa's hand when they hugged. "From all of us. Use it for something special." Ruth and Jack came out of the kitchen lugging a huge picnic basket between them.

"All this?" roared Fitapaldi, scratching his head. "I hope I can find a place to put it.