Cast a Pale Shadow(55)

"Well, it's a long road to Michigan."

Trissa, Cole, and Fitapaldi well knew how long a road it could prove to be. With Fitapaldi's help and Trissa's love and support, Cole had faced and begun to accept the horrible childhood memories that haunted him. Trissa's unyielding faith in him, proven by her insistence that they marry without delay despite his protests, gave Cole the strength to struggle forward instead of running away from his memories as he had in the past.

"How can you want to marry me? You would place your life in the hands of a man who for all we know could be a murderer?"

"For better or worse, my life is already in your hands."

From the portfolio of photographs, Nicholas's photo log, and Cole's scraps of recollection, they had pieced together a route into the still shadowy time since he'd left the state's guardianship at eighteen.

They would try to track down Janey first. She seemed safe enough to start. He no longer feared for her physical safety now that he had the memory of sending her away, but there was emotional damage to be repaired, if they could find her. For Beth, the ending was clearer. Beth had run off with Mitch.

Janey was not so easily found. He had been down these dead ends once before. Then Fitapaldi had the notion of contacting the high school she'd attended. They might have her listed in alumnae records even if she didn't graduate. The school was polite but firm. They could not share their information with anyone. Finally, Trissa sweet-talked them into forwarding a note to Jane's last known address. Three days later, Phyllis phoned from Dr. Fitapaldi's office with the news. Janey had called and if Nicholas was still interested in seeing her, she would wait in their park for him until four on Tuesday.

Trissa watched from the car as Cole approached the bench where Janey sat. She had noticed the bittersweet smile on his face when he first saw her there and had gently pushed him out the door without her tagging along. "Just remember " she reminded him, "No matter what she says, she can't have you back."

When Janey stood and turned to spread her arms out to him, Cole covered the last hundred feet or so running. They kissed and parted and kissed again. Janey lifted a chubby, bald infant out of the baby carriage she'd been jiggling when they drove up. Cole held the child up and beamed at him then jounced him on his knee when he and Janey sat down to talk. A half an hour later they hugged and parted and Cole returned to the car.

"She's happy. She says she understands," he said. Trissa kissed him and squeezed his hand. Now it was on to the hardest part, Cynthia.

Cole felt uneasy from the moment they drove into Flint. Nothing looked the same to him. What had been fields and farms and woods were now plats and rows of new houses. How could so much have changed in so little time? He thought he'd remember the woods where their cabin had been but when they reached that spot there was no woods. Instead a Zayre Department Store surrounded by an acre of cars filled the site.

"Stop the car. I have to get out." Fitapaldi pulled to the side of the road and Cole bolted out. He staggered a few feet away then doubled over and retched into the grass.

Trissa started after him, but Fitapaldi held her back. "Wait here. Let me talk to him." He wet a handkerchief in the melted ice in the cooler and went to Cole. Cole wiped his ghost white face, then squinted toward the store. "Maybe you are mistaken. Maybe we are in the wrong place."

"No. No, this is it. I know it. What have I done, Lorenzo? God, what have I done?"

Fitapaldi left the two of them in their hotel room, prescribing a mild sedative and a rest for Cole -- which Trissa promised she'd see that he took -- while he went to the morgue of the Flint newspaper. He returned to report that the clerk remembered the ground breaking for the shopping center and steered Fitapaldi to the right year. He could find no article about a body being unearthed. He searched the papers dating back from then to eight years before and found nothing.

"We have two choices," he told Trissa in hushed tones while Cole slept in the bed across the room. "We can go home and forget about it. Or we can try to seek out Cynthia's family."

"Will he ever live in peace if we give up?" she asked, knowing the answer before he gave it.

There were only eleven Dickensons in the Flint phone book. They had reached the seventh before they had any luck. "I had a cousin, Cynthia, but she died."

"I'm sorry, but that may be the one we are looking for. May I ask when?"

"Oh, I don't know. It has to be seven years ago now."

"Yes, I think, that may be the one. Would you mind answering a few more questions?"

"Who did you say this was again?"

"Trissa Kirk. I went to school with Cynthia."

"Well, I don't remember too much. I was only eleven when she left."

"Left?"

"Yes, she had leukemia, you know. They sent her to Ann Arbor for some experimental treatments. She was gone for more than a year. She was okay for a while when she came back, but she got sick again. I think they were going to send her away for more treatments, but they never had the chance."

"She died?"

"No, she ran away. With some guy. Her parents tried to hush it up, but I heard mine talking about it. It was supposed to be a scandal, but, you know, I think my aunt was relieved. Cynthia called and said that she was happy and not to try to find her. She didn't want to spend the last of her life in a hospital, and my aunt didn't want that for her either."

Silent tears began to sneak down Trissa's cheeks. "Did she ever hear from her again?"

"He called. It was very strange."

"Strange?"

"He said she had died and that he was sorry. He had promised Cynthia he wouldn't tell, but he had buried her in a place she had picked out, a place where she'd been happy. But after, he knew it wasn't right, that she should be where her family could take care of her, since he didn't think he'd be able to. He told my aunt exactly where to find her and then he hung up. They never even knew his name."

"Did they find Cynthia?"

"Yes, she's buried now at Resurrection Cemetery."

"Thank you. Thank you very much."

"You're welcome. You know him, don't you? The guy."

"Yes. Yes, I know him. I think this will allow Cynthia's ghost to rest in peace for him now, too. Thank you."

In a shady hollow in Resurrection Cemetery, Cole and Trissa found Cynthia's grave. Cole knelt and plucked the grass and caked dirt away from the flower cup that was embedded at the base of the marker. He placed the bunch of lilacs and columbine he had brought inside the vase. "There was a lilac bush outside the cabin. She never lived to see it bloom."

"She was happy, Cole. Her cousin said you made her last days happy."

"It is still hard for me to remember the happy part." He had painfully relived the lost memory of Cynthia's death when Trissa told him of the phone call. But he did not remember calling the family after. Fitapaldi said he had so conditioned himself to fragment his memory into survivable pieces that he might never know the whole of his past.

Before they left Michigan, Cole went to visit his father. Trissa and Fitapaldi went with him, but they waited in the lobby. "I told him I'd never be back," Cole shrugged. "I don't think he cared. I don't anymore either."

They used some of the money the boarders had given them to fly back to St. Louis. When Fitapaldi bid them goodbye at the airport, Trissa spent an extra moment in his affectionate embrace.

"In my dreams, I had a father just like you. We both owe our lives to you. There is no way to thank you enough."

"You are the healer, Trissa. There was no medicine I could have prescribed to perform the miracle Cole found in you."

"We found in each other," she said solemnly.

Fitapaldi turned to the man who waited next to her and held out a hand for a farewell handshake, a gesture that would have been all that the old Cole would have allowed. It was not enough. When their right hands touched, he clapped his left arm around the psychiatrist's shoulder and drew him into a hug.

"Thank you, Lorenzo, for never giving up on me. I promise I won't either." In his pocket was the name of a colleague in St. Louis that Fitapaldi had recommended. Though a long road still lay ahead of them, the doctor promised that the journey was well begun.

In the plane somewhere between Chicago and home, Trissa warned Cole not to be surprised if she sometimes called him Nicholas in the throes of passion. She admitted it was hard to tell the difference in the dark.

"I'm having that trouble myself sometimes," Cole answered. "I think that's called being whole."





The End