Beloved Wolf (6 page)

“Sit down, Louise,” Dr. Wilkes said, motioning to
a small, comfortable upholstered chair near the opposite side of the cozily furnished room. She watched as Louise ran a hand over her simply cut light brown hair, smoothed her hands down the sides of her neat cotton dress that skimmed a trim body that also belied Louise's fifty-two years.

“Let's recap, okay?” the doctor said, reaching for Louise's file, a file she knew almost by heart.

Louise sat very still, her spine erect, her hands neatly folded in her lap, her legs crossed at the ankles. Every inch the lady. “If you think it will help, Doctor, certainly. And again, I apologize for disturbing you at home. It's just that these past few days the dreams have become so vivid.”

“Yes, as you said.” Dr. Wilkes opened the file on the desk in front of her. “All right. You were born Patricia Portman, fifty-two years ago, in California.”

“At least we think so,” Louise inserted, sighing. “Isn't it odd? That we've never checked for a birth certificate, not in all these years?”

“Not odd, Louise. Frustrating. You wouldn't permit me to check any deeper, to consult anything more than the medical records that accompanied you upon your discharge from St. James Clinic.”

“
Both
of my discharges from St. James Clinic,” Louise corrected.

Dr. Wilkes shook her head, not in dissent, but because this had been the largest stumbling block she faced with Louise. The woman had first shown up in Jackson, then disappeared, and then reappeared a few years later, both times upon her discharge from St. James Clinic in California. The doctor knew Louise's
life for the past thirty years, but nothing of her life before she'd entered the California prison system.

And Louise refused to allow a search that probed any more deeply into her complicated past, a past Louise still swore not to remember.

“Why, Louise? Why won't you let me learn more about your background? We could locate your parents, possibly some siblings, relatives, who could help us understand—”

Louise's chin lifted. “Help us? You saw the records, Dr. Wilkes. I was in that asylum for years.
Years.
And never once a visitor, never a single contact or inquiry from anyone. If I have relatives, they're either dead or I'm dead to them. They believe I killed Ellis Mayfair.”

Dr. Wilkes pinched the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger. “Louise, you
did
kill Ellis Mayfair. You went to prison for killing him, and then to St. James Clinic because your deteriorating mental health made it impossible for you to continue living with the general prison population. You were released, supposedly cured, only to show up on the grounds again a few years later, injured, disoriented, completely out of your head. Six months later, you were back here, although how you traveled from Jackson to California, and
why,
remains a mystery.”

Louise shook her head, squeezed her eyes shut. “No. No, that's wrong. That's always been wrong. I didn't kill that man. I didn't know that man.”

Was this the right time to push Louise? How hard could she push her without sending the woman back to that dark place she had been hiding from for the
nine years since her second release from St. James, for all of the five years she'd been under her treatment?

“Louise, you had an illegitimate child with Ellis Mayfair, a child he took from you as you slept after giving birth in a motel room. A child he destroyed, or sold. We'll never know exactly what happened, because with Ellis there, and the child gone, you flew into a rage and you killed Ellis Mayfair.”

Louise bent forward, covering her head with her hands. “Oh, God. God, help me, please help me. My poor baby. I don't remember. I don't remember…”

Dr. Wilkes pressed her lips together and looked around her small study. Her gaze drifted to the wooden sculpture of an African mother and child. She'd never had a child, had chosen never to have a child, but she could see the love in the expression on that mother's face, and could hear in Louise's sobs the sorrow of a mother denied.

“When you phoned, you said something about a child, Louise. About a child who needed you.”

Louise lifted her head, withdrew a pristine white linen square from her pocket and wiped her eyes.

Dr. Wilkes hid a small smile. Louise was such a lady, from her head to her toes. Her movements were graceful, refined, her posture always perfect, her personal hygiene the best. A real lady.

Dr. Wilkes felt that same refinement, and knew some of it had grown from her environment, and that some of it was developed as her own special protection. It wasn't easy being woman in her specialized
professional field, and it was never easy being a black woman in any field.

So Dr. Wilkes saw a lot of herself in Louise Smith, even though they were two very different people from very different worlds. Louise was trying, desperately trying, to find herself, understand herself, help herself. Dr. Wilkes had slowly, painfully, carved out a professional niche, and then worked—perhaps too hard—to protect it.

Give it any name, dissect it any way, and the bottom line remained the same for both women. They had a lot to protect, a lot to fear. And fear was a common denominator.

“Louise,” Dr. Wilkes said after a few moments, “have I ever told you how much I admire you?”

Louise refolded her small handkerchief and slipped it back into her pocket. “Admire me? Why would you do that? I'm a murderer, remember?”

“You're a
survivor,
Louise,” Dr. Wilkes corrected. “You came back here a second time from St. James Clinic, confused and alone, and you made something of yourself. You worked, you worked hard, and you've risen into a responsible position at the university, own your own small home. Many people—most people—would consider yours a most remarkable success story.”

“Most people don't have my nightmares,” Louise said, sighing. She squeezed her hands into fists. “I just feel this
need
inside me. Someone needs me, and I need him.”

“Him? I thought you came here to talk about the
child? The records show that you'd said it was a girl child.”

“Yes, yes, a girl. There's a girl. Perhaps more than one. Children. So many children. Perhaps I worked as a teacher or in a nursery school? Why do I feel there are so many children who need me?”

“Overcompensation,” Dr. Wilkes said quietly. “Longing for the infant Mayfair stole from you, all the unborn children he took from your future. You would have made a wonderful mother, Louise, and you fill your empty arms with dreams of those children you never held, will never hold.”

“And the man? I dream of a man, Dr. Wilkes. A man who comes to me in this beautiful garden. I'm on my hands and knees, digging in the rich earth, listening to the sound of a fountain in the near distance. Warm sun on my head, the calming tinkle of falling water, the smell of saltwater in the breeze. I hear him approach, turn to see him, shielding my eyes against the glare of the sun. He's there. Tall, strong. But the sun obscures his face. I don't recognize him, and he turns away. I call after him. ‘Wait,' I call to him. ‘Please wait!'”

She pressed a hand to her mouth for a few moments, as if holding back a scream. “And then I wake up. The garden is gone, the man is gone, and all I hear is the pounding of my own heart. My broken, empty heart.”

Dr. Wilkes got up, poured a glass of water for each of them and handed one to Louise. “Hypnosis, Louise. I know you don't want it, have fought it for years, but we're running out of options here, my dear. I want
to see who else lives inside you. Because you're not in there alone, Louise. You know it, and I know it. You've changed your name, but you're still Patricia Portman. You have to find out who Patricia Portman was before you can truly close that door and let Louise get on with her life. You've changed your name, you've locked away another personality, perhaps more than one.”

Louise refused the glass, got up, and began pacing once more. “I can't believe that. I can't believe I'm some Sybil, hiding multiple personalities inside my head, letting one out at a time, becoming someone else. Someone evil.”

“You say you didn't kill Ellis Mayfair, Louise. That you couldn't have done such a thing. And yet the prison record that traveled here with you from St. James Clinic clearly shows that it was your fingerprints that were on the pieces of broken lamp you used to knock him unconscious. Your fingerprints were on the scissors stuck in his chest. His blood was on your hands when the police found you.”

“No. It wasn't me. It wasn't me.”

“Then who was it, Louise? Who else is inside your head? Who did this to you—got you locked up, had you committed to a mental institution, not once, but twice. Where did you disappear to after your first move to Jackson? How did you end up back in California, back at St. James? Fill in the blanks for me, Louise. Tell me what you know.”

Louise subsided into the chair once more. “I don't know anything. I'm what you tell me, what the prison and St. James records tell me. And if there's another
me inside my head—a horrible person, a murderer—I can't let her out again. I've accepted my past as much as I can, even as I don't remember it. But I can't let that other person, that evil me, be a part of my future. So, no, Dr. Wilkes. I'm sorry, but no. No hypnosis. No regression.”

“And no answers,” Dr. Wilkes said, sighing. “These nightmares, Louise, these headaches that bring you to your knees. They're not going away. They're becoming more frequent, more intense. Surely you see that something has to be done? Drastic measures yes, but in a controlled environment. I wouldn't do anything to hurt you, Louise. Haven't we come far enough for you to trust me?”

Louise looked up at the psychologist, her doctor, her friend. “Why couldn't the other me be a better me? I wouldn't mind meeting a better me.”

“You
are
that better you, Louise,” Dr. Wilkes said kindly, putting a hand on Louise's shoulder. “You've beaten down the disturbed, unhappy personality that destroyed your past. You don't even need any medication anymore. But, my dear, unless you can face that past, face
all
of it, come to grips with it, I'm afraid these nightmares of yours will never end. Please. At least consider hypnosis.”

Louise wet her dry lips, nodded. “I…I'll consider it.”

S
ophie woke slowly, a small smile playing about her mouth as she snuggled more deeply under the covers and did her best to hold on to a fantastic dream where she felt loved and desired. River was with her, her own Riv, the person she had loved as both a boy and a man.

He held her, he kissed her, he claimed her. He took her higher, higher, their mutual desire feeding on the flames of need, of want…until that blessed release, that mutual explosion that had been like nothing she'd ever experienced, ever dreamed she could experience. An awakening. A rocket trip to the moon, the stars. And all with Riv's arms around her, his body melded against hers, into hers; deeply inside her, filling her, exploding within her. It had been a stolen moment, a
dream in which her lone wolf had come to her, loved her…

Her eyes snapped open wide and she sat up in the bed, raked her fingers through her hair.

No. It hadn't been a dream. It had happened.

“Oh, God, what have I done?” Sophie groaned, falling back against the pillows. “Riv, what the hell have we done?”

She pressed her hands to her chest, willing her heartbeat to slow, marshaling her thoughts, attempting to think rationally about a truly irrational situation. An impulsive act, one she had goaded him into, dared him into.

“Because I'm out of my tiny mind,” she told herself in a hoarse whisper. “What in
hell
was I thinking?”

But that was the whole point. She hadn't thought, hadn't wanted to think. She'd been bruised and battered. She'd been marked, scarred. She needed to feel desirable, needed to have someone hold her, tell her she was beautiful, prove that she could still have a life, still have dreams.

She'd told herself she had gone down to the stables to see the horses, to get away from the family, to be alone.

She'd lied to herself.

She'd gone down to the stables to see River. To use him as a sort of whipping post, to pour out her fears and frustrations, her anger and her despair. Hadn't that been what she'd always done? Run to Riv. Dumped on Riv. Let Riv make it all better.

She'd
used
him. She used him so badly, goaded
him past all endurance. Wept on his shoulder, clung to him, used her body to tempt him, used their memories to draw him in, make him willing to do anything—anything—that would stop her tears, heal her hurt.

How he must hate her this morning. How justified he would be to hate her.

She hated herself.

“Now there's something not entirely new,” she told herself, shaking her head. “You've been your own worst enemy for some time now, haven't you? Poor Sophie. Poor, poor, stupid Sophie.”

A knock on the door broke into her self-pity, startling her. Blinking in surprise, Sophie turned and looked at the door to the hallway. She panicked. Could it be River? Her mother? She didn't want to face either of them. “Yes? Who is it?”

The doorknob turned and the door slowly opened, Emily Blair Colton's chestnut-red head peeked into the room. “It's okay to come in? I didn't want to wake you, but it is almost noon, you know.”

“I—I had a late night,” Sophie said, watching as her sister came fully into the room. Emily was eight years her junior, and had been adopted by Joe and Meredith as a toddler. A cute baby, with bright red curls and a happy, smiling face. A giggle that had delighted everyone. It had been an eleven-year-old Emily who had been in the automobile accident with Meredith, and it was Emily who seemed the most affected by that accident. Not physically. No, she'd come out of the accident with only minor injuries.
But something had happened that day. To Meredith. To Emily.

The same something that had happened to all of the Colton family in the weeks and months and years after that accident, as Meredith changed, became distant, strange…and life on the ranch built for “joy” had gone dark and cold.

Now Emily was all grown up, her fire-engine-red curls now a more subdued chestnut, thick and wavy as it fell down past her shoulders. She still had those same huge blue eyes, that same sweet and pretty face, those same dimples in her cheeks. But she was all grown up, and she had changed.

“Yes,” Emily said now, sitting down on the bottom of the bed, “I guess you did have a late night. I stopped by your room twice, and knocked, but you didn't answer. I missed you at dinner. We all did.”

“You
all
did, Em? Now why do I doubt that? Why do I very seriously doubt that?”

“Mom,” Emily said, bowing her head. “You mean Mom, don't you?”

“Congratulations, Em, you made it past the preliminary round and into the finals. Now, would you like to see what's behind door number two?” Sophie asked, then deliberately lifted her chin, pulled back her hair, and turned her left cheek toward Emily.

Emily was all grown up in many ways, but she was still young, only nineteen, and she still had this way of often saying exactly what came into her head. “Oh, wow. He really got you, didn't he?”

Sophie let her hair fall back into place, wishing it longer, so that it could become a shoulder-length cur
tain covering the entire side of her face. “Yeah, Em. He really got me.”

“Damn, Sophie, I'm
so
sorry,” Emily apologized quickly. “I didn't mean that. It's not bad, not bad at all. And Dad says you'll be having plastic surgery soon. It's just that I hadn't expected it to be so long. I mean, that's a big slice. You could have been killed. And you had to have been terrified.”

“To tell you the truth, Emily, I think I was too mad to be terrified. That took a little while, until after I was safe. Then, well, then I sort of fell apart. Into tiny, itty-bitty pieces, as a matter of fact.”

Emily nodded. “You broke up with Chet. Yes, I heard. And took a leave of absence from your company. Well, you know, I think those were good things, Sophie.”

Sophie smiled ruefully. “You're glad I broke up with Chet? Really?”

Emily was and always had been one of the most honest people Sophie had ever known, and she was sure she wouldn't disappoint her now by hedging or saying something silly and meaningless. “Yes, Sophie, really. You'll be much better off with River. Everyone knows that.”

Okay, so Emily hadn't disappointed her. She had, however, shocked her. “River?
Everyone
knows that?”

Nodding, Emily continued, “Oh, sure. You should have seen him after you and Chet left after announcing your engagement during the Christmas holiday. Stomping around, kicking things, taking off into the hills for a week without telling anyone if or when
he'd be back. Inez told me he'd been the same way when you first left for college. Mean and snarly and telling anyone who asked him what was wrong to just mind their own damn business.”

Sophie shifted slightly on the mattress, moving so that she sat cross-legged, her hands on her ankles. “River doesn't like to lose, that's all. I think he much preferred to have me following him around, mooning over him like some lovesick calf. That's all, and it's a far cry from the kind of love you're talking about, let me tell you.”

Emily shrugged. “If you say so, Soph,” she said, then changed the subject. “Have you heard about the party? Mom's throwing this big sixtieth-birthday bash for Dad. Dad's not happy about it, but Mom's over the moon, planning menus and motifs, hiring bands, stuff like that. All Dad keeps saying is that he thought he'd only have to wear a monkey suit again to marry off one of us kids.”

“Poor Dad.” Sophie shook her head. “How did he let her talk him into it? Wait, never mind. I already know. Dad just found it easier to give in, right?”

“The story of our lives, at least for almost the past decade,” Emily agreed.

“The good mommy and the bad mommy, huh, Sparrow,” Sophie said quietly, then sighed.

“Or, to be precise, the good mommy and the
evil
mommy. Yes, and I wish I'd never said that to anyone. But, hey, I was what—eleven? All I knew was that I woke up, saw two of her, and then pretty much spazzed out, went a little nuts. I wouldn't let Mom in my room, wouldn't let her touch me. Had those
screaming nightmares. You're right, Mom used to call me her little sparrow. But her little sparrow turned into a screeching hyena. I must have been a real treat. I still have nightmares, more now than I did when I was a kid. And she knows about them.”

“Still, Emily? Oh, I'm so sorry.” Sophie got out from under the covers and moved down the bed, to put a hand on Emily's arm. “But that didn't and doesn't mean that Mom should turn away from you, practically cut you off from her life the way she did. It wasn't you who pushed her away, not really. She pushed herself away, from all of us. When I came home after my first semester at college, it was as if I'd walked into a totally different house. Dad acting as distant as he had after Michael died, Mom always going off somewhere, shopping, then giving parties every night of the holidays. Everyone else just sort of walking around, going through the motions…and with the heart gone out of everyone. I'd never realized how important Mom was to all of us, to our happiness, until she went away.”

“Gone without being gone,” Emily agreed, then shook herself, took a deep breath. “Well, that's not why I'm in here, you know. I'm here to tell you that Inez is setting up a cold buffet lunch on the patio and expects everyone to be there with appetite in hand in—” she looked down at her watch “—about fifteen minutes. So chop, chop, Soph. This is one meal you aren't going to miss, because if you do, you'd better be ready for all of us to come knocking down this door. Brothers and sisters exploding into the room. It wouldn't be a pretty picture.”

“Okay, you've convinced me,” Sophie said, laughing as she left the bed, favoring her right leg slightly, and went over to her dresser for clean underwear in preparation of heading for the shower. “Who all is here?”

Emily held up one hand and began ticking off her fingers with her other hand. “We've got Drake, who finds any excuse to hang around Inez's Maya whenever he's home on leave, although nobody is supposed to notice that. Trust me, Inez has noticed, and she's not happy about it, not with Drake going off playing navy SEAL every time we think he'll be home for a while. We've also got Rand, who showed up with a briefcase bulging with legal papers for Dad to sign. We
had
Amber, who decided she'd rather spend the day helping out over at Hopechest Ranch, holding up Mom's end now that Mom is busy finding new ways to spend Dad's money. We've got— Nope, River rode out early this morning, to check out a mare on the next ranch. So that's it. Except for Liza. She's here for a short visit before she goes out on tour, which she doesn't want to do, by the way. Still, with that voice of hers, it would be a crime to hide so much talent under a bushel, right? Anyway we're heading into Prosperino after lunch, to the hairdresser. Want to come along? I'm sure they could fit you in.”

“No thanks, Em. I'm letting my hair grow,” Sophie said, reaching into her closet for a lime green skirt and blouse. “So, not quite a full house, huh? Is it just Liza, or are Uncle Graham and Aunt Cynthia here, too?”

“Man, you really don't come home often, do you?
Uncle Graham and Aunt Cynthia in the same room, at the same time? Hardly, Soph. Besides, although it used to be that they ignored Liza and Jackson, now it's the other way around, at least for Liza. She avoids her parents like the plague, both of them. Aunt Cynthia because she keeps trying to manage Liza's career, but most especially Uncle Graham. It's like he's…I don't know…
disappointed
her in some way. Not that she talks about it.”

“Dad's brother has never been very approachable, or fatherly. Still, that's too bad, all the way around. Isn't it enough that our branch of the Colton family is falling apart? I'm glad Liza has you, Em, and that you have her.”

“Yeah,” Emily said, hopping down from the bed and giving Sophie a kiss on the cheek. “She's like the older sister I never had.”

“Why, you—” Sophie countered, giving Emily a friendly swipe with her skirt and blouse. “You were my kid sister. I was honor bound to ignore you once you'd started to grow up and ceased to be cute and cuddly. Or am I to forget the times you got into my makeup, or the time you told River that I'd written ‘Mrs. River James' inside my diary fifty times?”

Emily laughed, then cupped a hand to her ear, pretended to be listening for something. “Did you hear that? I heard that. It's Inez, muttering under her breath that she doesn't cook for her health, she cooks because she expects people to eat. Gotta go. See you in a few?”

“See you in a few,” Sophie answered, heading for the bathroom attached to her room. Once in the
shower, she tipped back her head to keep the sting of the shower off her healing cut, let the water pour down over her body. The body River had touched. Kissed. Awakened.

She felt so alive, and yet so dead inside, where it really mattered. She reached for the liquid soap and the nylon net scrubbie, performing her ablutions quickly, impersonally, trying to forget that River's touch had branded her forever, changed her forever.

 

River's expert touch on the reins guided his mount down a narrow path running through a series of small cliffs and outcroppings, all the way to the beach below. He dismounted, found a rock large enough to hold down the reins so the horse wouldn't wander. Then he set off across the rocks, toward the waves crashing against them, sending up a white, wild spray that had been beating against this same beach since the beginning of time.

He sat down on the large boulder he'd claimed as his thinking place years ago, when he'd first come to the ranch. His back to the cliffs, he propped his outstretched arm on his bent knee, tipped back his cowboy hat and tried to stare down the waves.