Becker lay in bed, waiting for her to return. Karen had heard a sound and had gotten out of bed to check on her son. Jack slept now in the living room, just outside of their bedroom door, and Karen would be out of bed at the slightest noise. Often as not, she would find Jack lying awake. He would smile at her, seemingly untroubled, but his eyes looked as alert as if it were midday.
Sometimes Becker would be awakened in the middle of the night by their whispers as they lay in their separate beds, reaching out to each other for reassurance that the other was still there.
Karen came into the bedroom, limping with the walking cast on her leg. The scars on her head and hands were still red and angry, but healing. Becker had tried to assure Karen that they would not harm her appearance, that indeed, they merely added character to a face already beautiful. She had seemed a good deal less interested in the way she looked than he was, accepting the scars as a price she paid for the return of her son. He was certain she would have borne the loss of a limb with equal equanimity if it had brought Jack safely back to her.
She wriggled backwards into Becker, spooning against him. Since she got out of the hospital she had insisted on maintaining some physical contact with him throughout the night. Becker held her and drifted into sleep.
He was awakened by the shaking of her body. She was crying silently again, as she did every night. The first few nights in the hospital and at home she had been haunted with nightmares that shook her awake with dread. She dreamed of her battle with Dee, of Ash rising up from the back of the car like Satan himself, or suffocating in blood. But the nightmares had vanished with a speed that delighted the psychotherapists that the Bureau had assigned to her. The crying was a good sign, they told her. It was part of the mourning process, they said. Karen listened and nodded and said she was pleased they were pleased.
They told Becker that the nightmares were normal after such a trauma, the silent weeping was to be expected. She is suffering the natural reaction to having killed two people in the most grueling and gruesome of circumstances, they said. They advised him to be patient with her, to provide her with a sense of security, to continue to reassure her that such grief was part of the healing process. In time she would be back to herself, they promised. All in good time.
Becker kissed the back of her neck. “It’s all right,” he said, as he had said for nights. “Go ahead and get it out. You should feel bad, it’s natural, it will pass.”
She twitched her head away from him angrily.
“You know better than that,” she whispered.
“It will pass,” he said.
“That’s not what I mean.” She turned and took his face in her hands. In the light spilling in from the living room she could see him clearly. She looked straight into his eyes.
“What?” Becker asked
For a long time he thought she wasn’t going to answer as she continued to stare into his eyes, searching for reassurance of something.
“I don’t feel bad,” she said at last. “I liked it.” Her face contorted itself as if she had tasted her own bile.
She jerked away and turned her back to him once more. She said something that he did not hear.
“What?”
“I’m just like you,” she hissed and her body shuddered in his arms.