“I really appreciate you working me into your schedule like this,” I told Helen Storm as we both sidled up to the balcony railing of the outdoor smoking lounge. “I know you’re very busy.”
Felicity hadn’t objected in the least when I begged off from helping clean the house in order to attend a hastily scheduled visit with Doctor Storm. Had it been for any other reason, I doubt I would have made it as far as the front door before she started spouting Gaelic. I still hadn’t told my wife about my amnesia regarding our intimacy, and I wasn’t sure if I would. I wasn’t even positive that I was going to tell Helen about it just yet, even though it was the catalyst for the sudden appointment. Quite a bit was going to depend upon what conclusions were reached over the next hour.
“It was no problem, Rowan,” she answered.
“Well, I felt bad about calling you on such short notice.”
“You should not. That is what I am here for.”
“Even so,” I expressed, “I hate coming off as some sort of needy flake.”
“You need not worry about that. It was not my perception in the least. Really, Rowan, it was a light day for me anyway, and it was quite obvious that something was troubling you.”
I suspected that there had been more to rearranging her schedule than she let on. “Well, I still appreciate it.”
“I know you do, so stop beating yourself up about it. Truth is, I cannot really say that I was surprised to hear from you,” she offered gently. “Benjamin called me early this morning.”
“So is he really that worried about me?”
“Yes he is, but please do not get the impression that he is checking up on you or trying to interfere in your life. He was actually calling me about getting together on Christmas Eve. I could tell he had something else on his mind though, so I pried it out of him.”
“I’ve discovered over the years that’s not always an advisable task with Ben.”
“No,” she mused. “Not even for a friend who is as close to him as you are. But being the older sister who has acted as his confidant for more years than she cares to acknowledge, I can get away with it.”
“I see.” I nodded. “So what did he tell you?”
“Not much in the way of details really. Just that you had experienced one of your psychic episodes last night and that you were not displaying your usual clarity in that regard.”
“That’s an understatement.”
“He alluded that it was something very out of character for you,” she agreed with a nod.
“I’m not usually this befuddled, no.”
“That is what worries him most, I believe-your wife as well. They are concerned that this confusion might interfere with your judgment and, if so, your safety.”
I knew exactly what she meant and offered the unspoken evidence. “Just like it did when I chased Eldon Porter out onto that bridge. Yeah, we’ve been down that road a couple of times already.”
“Then you know that they are merely expressing concern for a loved one. You.”
“I know.” I nodded. “I know… But it still doesn’t make things any easier to deal with. Sometimes it just makes me feel…like…”
I struggled to find any word or phrase that could accurately describe my feelings, but none were forthcoming.
“Diminished?” Helen offered.
“Yes. Exactly. Like they feel as though I’m incapable of making my own decisions.”
“So what about those decisions?”
“What do you mean?”
“With everything we have discussed so far,” she explained, “it all seems to come back to Eldon Porter and the decisions you made then.”
“It was a bad situation,” I said.
“From what little both you and Benjamin have told me, it sounds like it was a royally fucked up situation.”
I was momentarily taken aback by the single spoken vulgarity coming from Helen Storm. Her soothing demeanor and calm voice made the expletive stand out even more against the backdrop of her words-effectively framing it and making it the succinct and perfect description of the situation. But it was perfect only as she said it. Had the same statement been made by anyone else, it would have simply been an observation punctuated by profanity.
I already liked her, but the stark humanness of the expression ingratiated her to me even more.
“Yes,” I agreed. “Yes it was.”
“What about the decisions you made during that case? Were they as well?”
“Depends on who you ask. Ben thinks I was lacking in my judgment, that’s for sure. And Felicity has it in for Ben and me both where that is concerned.”
“I am not asking them,” she submitted. “I am asking you.”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged and took a hit from my cigarette before crushing it out. I stripped the butt then discarded the filter and paper in a nearby trash receptacle before continuing. “I did what I thought I needed to do. In retrospect, I suppose chasing after a serial killer in the middle of the night, alone, probably wasn’t the brightest thing I’ve ever done.”
“Why do you think you felt you had to do it?”
“I didn’t want him to get away.” I gave her a statement of fact as I saw it.
“Are you certain that is why?”
I wasn’t sure where she was headed with this, but I feared I was soon going to find out.
“Fairly certain,” I answered. “You think I might have had another reason?”
“I am merely curious,” she returned. “Could you not have simply called the police and notified them? Surely they were better equipped to handle the situation than you.”
“Do you think I was grandstanding?” I asked her. “Attention seeking?”
“I did not say that.” She shook her head. “But in answer to your question, no. That is not what I think. I am simply asking why you did not call the police instead of going after him yourself.”
“I didn’t think there was enough time.”
“Again, are you certain? The Briarwood police station is not that far from your house, is it?”
“Done some research, have you?” I queried.
“A little,” she said.
“Well, I did tell Felicity to call Ben and have him call me on my cell phone.”
“But you still chased after Eldon Porter on your own.”
“Okay. Right now, given my current state, I might be a bit denser than normal, but I can see that you have a different idea about this. I just haven’t figured out what it is. Would you like to share?”
“No,” she shook her head again. “Not really.”
“Excuse me?”
“What I think is not the point, Rowan. What is the point is what your motivation for that decision actually was at the time. Only you know that answer, and me telling you my theory will not help, whether I am correct or not. You have to reach the conclusion on your own.”
“So, no offense, but I’m paying you so that I can reach my own conclusions?”
“No,” she smiled. “You are paying me to help you navigate unfamiliar terrain in order to work toward those conclusions. Just consider me a docent for your psyche.”
I let out a quiet chuckle. “So you’re basically an expensive tour guide.”
“Something like that, but I am not allowed to accept tips.”
“You know, you really aren’t what I expected from a shrink.”
“I should hope not,” she laughed musically.
The mood lightened for a moment as we stood there. Helen waited patiently for me to continue, without prompting, and allowed me to observe where she had taken us. Something in me wanted to rush along to the next exhibit buried deeper within my mind, seeking out the answer that would make everything right-the panacea that would return normalcy to my life. But, I knew deep down that no such cure existed. Obviously, so did she.
Still, she wasn’t about to budge and remained steadfast in her silence. I apparently hadn’t seen everything I was meant to see here.
“I know I wasn’t very grounded at the time I made that decision,” I finally said with a sigh. “And I really haven’t been ever since. That has certainly become a problem for me now.”
“Hence your lack of focus?”
“There’s another understatement,” I confessed. “I’m just this side of legally blind, I think.”
“I doubt you are as bad as that,” she said.
“I don’t know,” I contended. “I feel like I’m trapped on the inside looking out, and it’s midnight with a new moon, clouds, and a power outage.”
“That could be an important milestone.”
“What? Like I’m a prisoner of my own failings?”
“No, nothing so self-deprecating.”
“Okay, I give. How about a hint?”
“What happens when you place a piece of black paper behind a pane of glass, Rowan?” she asked.
“Well, if I remember my grade school physical science class correctly, you end up with a somewhat crude mirror,” I answered with a shrug.
“Exactly. Perhaps the darkness you see is doing just that for you, but instead, you are looking too hard for something else beyond that veil.”
“So you think I should just accept what I see?”
“I think you should take advantage of the opportunity to peer into your own reflection.”
“Now that really scares me,” I returned. “I’m afraid that’s where the real darkness is.”
“We all have darkness within us, Rowan,” she replied. “And when you encounter it, sometimes you have no choice but to light your own way.”
“I’m not so sure I’ve got enough of a candle to do that,” I sighed.
“Of course you do. You must simply find it first.”
“I think I’m running out of places to look, Helen.”
“Do not worry,” she grinned. “I guarantee that it will be in the last place you look.”
I couldn’t help but return a grin of my own in response to the cliche adage. Apparently I’d seen enough, and when she spoke again, we continued smoothly into a seemingly new subject.
“Something Benjamin neglected to tell me was that you had started smoking again.”
I looked down at the freshly burning cigarette in my hand and noticed that it was tucked between my two middle fingers. I didn’t even remember lighting it. It felt completely natural but looked foreign positioned in the middle of my hand as it was now, so I moved it up beneath my index finger.
Now that it looked normal to me, it felt extremely out of place.
I elected to ignore the sensation and took a puff.
“Yeah. Last night,” I acknowledged. “I’ve been fighting the craving for a while, but falling off the wagon was kind of sudden.”
“Stress can do that,” she offered. “We subconsciously return to places or habits that once gave us comfort. I certainly hope my smoking in front of you yesterday had nothing to do with it.”
“No, it didn’t,” I reassured her. “Nothing for you to worry about there.”
“Do you remember when you first started smoking?”
“You mean before last night?”
“Yes.”
“Oh,” I did a quick mental calculation, “sixteen, seventeen years ago.”
“And when did you quit?”
“Almost two years ago, except for a cigar now and then.”
“Do you remember why you originally started?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Something to do, I guess.”
“That is fairly thin reasoning, Rowan,” she said.
“Yes, it is.” I nodded.
“Had something particularly stressful happened to you around the time you started?”
“I don’t think so.” I shrugged again. “I don’t really recall.”
We both stood in silence for a long moment, alternately inhaling and exhaling clouds of smoke that dissipated on the cool breeze. The sky was an expanse of slate grey that stretched from jagged horizon to jagged horizon, even and unblemished. The temperature was hovering in the upper 40’s after having threatened to push fully into the low 50’s earlier in the day. It actually looked far colder than it really was, even with the breeze factored in.
“Rowan,” she finally began after flicking the ashes from her own smoke and gazing thoughtfully out at the skyline. “I realize we have only recently met but you truly do not strike me as the kind of person who is deliberately contrary. Am I correct in this assumption?”
I mulled over the comment, reading between the lines and deciphering the base meaning of her words.
“I’d like to think that I’m not a jackass, if that’s what you mean,” I answered.
“Touche,” she replied. “So much for tact.”
“Please,” I told her, “feel free to be tactful. It makes me feel appreciated. Anyway, you were saying?”
“My point was simply this: Why will you not tell me the reason you think you started smoking again,” she instructed. “Because I am going to go out on a limb here and say that you do not believe it is because of stress.”
“Am I that transparent?”
“Not really.” She shook her head and smiled. “I just have better sight than most.”
I gave the query some thought. Ben had already told her about some of the things he’d witnessed me do, and I’d spoken at length with her about it myself during our first session. I had nothing to lose by being honest.
“I think that I am physically manifesting the habit of a dead person.”
“Whom?” She asked the question without even blinking.
“A young woman named Debbie Schaeffer, or maybe another named Paige Lawson,” I told her. “Maybe even both. I don’t know.”
“Are you certain either of them were smokers?”
“I’m not actually sure. Ben is checking on it though.”
“Debbie Schaeffer is the murdered cheerleader to whose case Benjamin is assigned, correct?”
“That’s the one.”
“And Paige Lawson is?”
“Another case Ben is…was…is working,” I explained. “I’m not sure if it is still an open investigation or if they finally wrote it off as an accidental death. Something tells me it wasn’t an accident though.”
“What makes you think that?”
“I don’t know.” I shook my head. “Something just doesn’t feel right about it. I assumed Ben had told you about that particular incident.”
“By incident do you mean something involving you?”
“Exactly.”
“Ahhh, just a moment,” she nodded, “would this be the case where you recently showed up uninvited at the crime scene extremely disoriented and then passed out?”
“That would be the one.”
“Mmhmm, mmhmm.” She nodded again. “I do remember Benjamin telling me about that. I believe it is what actually triggered him calling me about you.”
“Yeah, I think you’re right. Although I’ve recently been informed that he and Felicity had been discussing my mental state for some time now.”
“I believe you are correct,” she agreed. “So what about this incident with Miz Lawson. It seems to be weighing on you somewhat.”
“Well, the big problem for me is that I have no memory of going there…to the crime scene… Not until I snapped out of whatever trance I was in anyway. And by then I just found myself handcuffed and sitting in the back of a squad car.”
“PTSD can manifest in various ways, Rowan. Selective amnesia is not beyond the realm of possibility for someone who has been subjected to the severity of emotional and physical trauma you have faced.”
“But I had sex with my wife last night…”
I simply blurted out the comment, appending it to the conversation whether it appeared to fit or not. The resulting silence lasted for enough heartbeats to tell me that I’d even managed to stun Helen with the seemingly misplaced announcement.
I don’t know that I consciously realized what I was saying until the words were out there for us both to hear, and by then it was too late. I could still make no real sense of it all, but pieces were falling into place to form a fuzzy image. The very subject that had been my impetus for this unscheduled visit was now revealed. In the process a subdued feeling was re-awakened, and the unnamed fear that had earlier made itself comfortable within me stood up and engaged in a formal introduction.
“Okay,” Helen finally answered, scrutinizing my face with her eyes. “Has there been a problem with intimacy between the two of you?”
It took a moment to dawn on me that I’d only spoken aloud the first half of the thought that kept replaying in my head. “No, I’m sorry, you don’t understand…” I sputtered. “What I mean is I had sex with my wife last night but I don’t remember it.”
“At all?”
“No. Not at all.”
“Then how do you know that this happened?”
“I got the message loud and clear from Felicity when we got up this morning.”
“You are certain then?”
“Oh yeah,” I nodded as I spoke. “No doubt in my mind.”
“I see,” she posed thoughtfully. “Did you tell her you had no recollection of it?”
“No.” I shook my head. “Not yet. I may be disturbed but I’m not insane. At least, I don’t think I am… I’m already walking a thin line with Felicity as it is. If I tell her something like that, she’ll have me committed.”
“I seriously doubt that,” she said with a shake of her head. “You know, this is very likely all part of the same post trauma stress.”
“I don’t know, Helen. Do you remember me telling you about the sleepwalking I’ve been doing over the past few months?” I asked, the viscid fear now running rampant through my veins and forcing the words out of my mouth as a confession.
“Of course.”
“And how I don’t remember any of it?”
“Here again, that is not unusual in cases of somnambulism, Rowan,” she offered. “And these nocturnal episodes are most likely due to the stress.”
“But I’m afraid that maybe all of it is tied together somehow. The sleepwalking, the blackouts, even Paige Lawson…”
“I agree with you,” she nodded. “Like I said, these things could be manifestations of PTSD.”
“I wish it were that simple,” I told her. “But I’m terribly afraid that there’s a different connection.”
“And that would be?”
“I’m starting to wonder if maybe I’m the one who killed Paige Lawson.”