Stitches in Time (17 page)

The only thing she wanted was to be alone. The soft mattress and warm blankets welcomed her exhausted body, but her thoughts raced wildly, running from one dead end to another, unable to find relief or resolution. The evidence was incontrovertible, all the explanations equally frightening. One word blocked all efforts at reason.
It
. How could one small word be so terrifying?
It
was ambiguous, undefined; it could be anything. Shapeless, crouching, a small huddled shadow…

He's the one to watch out for now. He knows. Be careful, don't let him in
.

She got out of bed. The sloping, uneven floorboards creaked underfoot.
Be careful, step softly. They mustn't hear
.

They were still in the living room. She heard voices but could not make out what they were saying. She crept cautiously down the stairs until the words became distinct, and leaned over the bannister, listening.

Adam hadn't left. The first complete sentence she heard came from him.

“I don't know what they're calling it these days. Split personality?”

“The jargon changes from year to year.” Pat's voice was rich with sarcasm. “Psychiatry is not an exact science, Adam, and in some ways it hasn't advanced past the time when Mesmer and Freud were playing around with hypnotic regression. With the right shrink and a lot of luck, Rachel could develop eight or nine more personalities. At least you are willing to admit that she is not consciously aware of what she has done?”

“I guess so. It's hard to believe she would deliberately try to harm anyone.”

“Then give me a chance to test my hypothesis before you condemn the girl to a lifetime of expensive misery.”

“How?” Adam demanded. “You can't set up scientific controls. You can't apply logic to a situation like this one.”

“Oh, yes, I can,” Pat said.

Ruth said something, her soft voice indistinct, Pat interrupted. “I said I was sorry. But that violent reaction was a clue in itself. Now think. Remember her exact words. Tony said ‘You're shivering, it's freezing in here,' and then he reached for…What?”

The sound that came from Adam might have been a laugh. The listener on the stair flinched, and Pat said irritably, “We knew what the end result was. Why should she balk at telling us what we already knew? Something happened before they embraced, and that's what she couldn't express. She was getting too close.
It
stopped her.”

“You can't ask her,” Ruth began.

“Good God, no. I don't have to. We can get at it another way. If you thought someone was cold, shivering with cold, what would you do? What did you do tonight after she passed out?”

“Put something around her,” Ruth said slowly. “A blanket, an afghan—”

“Something,” Pat agreed. “A chivalrous gent might take off his coat. But Tony was wearing a bathrobe, or so I assume, and even if he were inclined to make a romantic gesture, he couldn't get out of the damned thing gracefully, not with those crutches.”

“The haunted afghan,” Adam muttered. “Pat, if you could hear yourself—”

“I can hear myself perfectly well. You're the one who won't listen. Honest to God, your generation is so incredibly arrogant! You've got all the answers, haven't you? What the hell gives you the right—” He broke off in mid-roar, and the listener deduced Ruth must have remonstrated, verbally or by gesture. He went on, in a lower but equally intense voice. “I'm not asking for your cooperation, Adam, I'm demanding it. You have no authority over Rachel.”

“Neither do you.”

“Damn straight. If she chooses to walk away, from the situation and from us, there is no way we can stop her. Or were you planning to swear out a warrant for assault?”

“For God's sake, Pat!”

“I take it that means you weren't. Down, boy, don't lose your temper. I was only attempting to demonstrate that there is no reasonable course of action other than the one I've proposed. Even if we were brutal enough to do so we couldn't take legal action; there's not enough evidence. We can't force her to seek medical attention. If we persuaded her to leave her job and move out of the house, she could still be a threat to Tony and Cheryl—and herself. The only hope is to find out what brought this on and put a stop to it. I believe it can be done. At any rate I intend to give it a damn good try, and the chances of success are much greater if you'll go along with me. We need you. Well?”

The silence stretched out for a long time. Finally Adam
spoke in a voice so low the listener had to strain to hear it. “All right. I'll cooperate. What else can I say? You've got me over a barrel.”

“Not me,” Pat said smugly. “My inexorable, irrefutable logic.”

“Inexorable bullshit. What do you want me to do?”

“Check that house from cellar to attic,” Pat said promptly. “Make sure there aren't any other little surprises. Do it tonight.”

“And then?”

“We'll discuss the next step tomorrow, when I drive Rachel home. You'll have enough to do tonight, searching the house,” he added maliciously.

“I'd better go then.”

The listener tensed, prepared to beat a hasty retreat, but Pat wasn't finished.

“Yes, you had better. Be thorough and be careful. Concentrate on the rooms Rachel doesn't ordinarily enter.
It
wouldn't set up a trap she might stumble into.”

“I wish you'd stop saying
it
,” Adam protested.

“The feminine pronoun would be more accurate,” Pat said. “But that would lead to confusion. You wouldn't know which of them I was referring to.”

“Feminine,” Adam repeated blankly.

“It's female. Or to be more accurate—it
was
female.”

 

Rachel hadn't thought to bring sunglasses. She shielded her eyes against the dazzle of the white-blanketed fields. The snow was melting fast; the roads were already clear except for ridges of slush pushed to the shoulders by the plows. Pat had insisted on driving his pickup, despite Ruth's objections, and as they wended their way toward Leesburg she grumbled, “I told you the roads would be all right. We could have taken the car.”

“What's wrong with this?” Pat demanded. “Plenty of room.”

Ruth sighed. “It's a male fixation,” she explained to Rachel. “Makes them feel macho, one of the good old boys.”

Rachel smiled politely. They were being kind, trying to make her feel at ease. They must have sensed the nervous tension that filled her, increasing with every mile. How could she go back into that house, knowing what she now knew?

At least Adam was all right. He had called earlier to report that his search of the house had been without result. Rachel had come downstairs in time to hear Pat say, “Nothing? That's good. We'll see you in about an hour.”

He hung up and waved Rachel to a chair at the breakfast table. “Did you sleep well?”

She sensed that the question was more than a meaningless courtesy, and answered promptly and truthfully. “Very well. I was dead to the world, as the saying goes.”

Already seated, Ruth remarked, “That omelet is burning, Pat.”

“Just nicely browned,” was the complacent reply, accompanied by a sizzle and a spatter as he flipped the omelet.

After he had served it and filled the coffee cups he addressed Rachel. “We continued our conversation last night after you went to bed. Arrived at some interesting conclusions.”

“Oh?” She waited for him to go on, but he appeared to expect a response from her. His steady, unblinking regard made her uncomfortable, though she could not have said why. Her eyes fell, and she muttered, “You don't have to tell me if you think I shouldn't know. I appreciate what you're trying to do.”

“I don't want appreciation, I want your active, intelli
gent cooperation—insofar as you are able to give it. Feel free to make suggestions, disagree with me, argue—but only if you're comfortable doing so. Don't force it, as you did last night. I'm not going to question you. I'll try to get the information I need from other people.”

“What other people?” Rachel demanded. “I guess I have no right to ask that you refrain from mentioning to Cheryl that I tried to brain her, but I couldn't face her if she knew…If she knew any of this. I'll leave town, move away, rather than do that.”

“And spend the rest of your life wondering when it will happen again?”

Rachel abandoned any pretense of trying to eat. She pushed her plate away. “Last night you talked about broken, interrupted patterns. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that this is such a case, and that Tony and Cheryl are the other—well—the other strands in the web. If I stay away from them, never see either of them again…”

“It might work,” Pat admitted. “And it might not. Do you want to take the risk? The situation is more complex than you realize. In my considered opinion there's a good chance we can resolve it if you'll cooperate.”

“I'll cooperate. What else can I say? You've got me over a barrel.”

The words sounded familiar, as if she had heard them spoken in that same order quite recently. Pat glanced sharply at her, but said only, “All right. Let's get going, then.”

Traffic thickened as they approached the town. Most of it seemed to be headed for the shopping centers on Route 7, and Rachel had to interrupt Pat's diatribe on greed and meaningless consumerism in order to speak. There was one thing she hadn't said, one thing that had to be made clear.

“I will cooperate, Pat, as best I can. But I will leave the
house or turn myself in to—to a psychiatric hospital, if anything else happens. I won't risk danger to another person.”

“You mean to Tony or Cheryl.”

“Any person,” Rachel repeated. “You, Ruth, Adam…the children.”

She was watching Ruth and she knew, by the latter's expression, that the possibility had already occurred to her.

Pat let out a surprising whoop of laughter. “You do have guts, don't you? And brains. The same thing had occurred to me, of course—another instance of great minds thinking alike. Don't worry about me and Ruth. We're forewarned and hence forearmed. So is Adam. He's a big boy, he can take care of himself.”

“What about the others?”

Pat pulled into the driveway and brought the pickup to a stop. “They won't be back until the end of the week. Let's see what happens.”

“Whatever happens, I'm moving out,” Rachel declared. “Before they come back.”

Pat got out and came around to her side. She opened her own door and jumped down, ignoring the hand he offered. With a smile and a shrug he reached up to help his wife descend from the high seat, giving her a hearty hug before he set her on her feet.

“We'll see,” he said, and started up the walk.

“Dammit!” Rachel glared after him.

“He can be very exasperating at times,” Ruth said apologetically. “But don't be misled by his manner. He's enjoying the intellectual challenge, but this isn't just a game to him, he is genuinely concerned. He has a high opinion of you. He told me so.”

“He didn't say that.”

Ruth smiled. “What he actually said was, ‘If she'd
been one of my students I could have made something of her.'”

Adam had let the dogs out. Their challenging barks and howls changed to equally vociferous barks and whines when they recognized the newcomers. Pat shook his fist at the Labrador, who responded by grinning idiotically and trying to climb the fence.

Adam opened the door. “Good morning,” he said formally.

“So far,” Pat said, giving him a sardonic look. “Look, Adam, I know you're uncomfortable but try to relax. If Rachel can adjust to this, you can.”

“I'm trying.” Adam tugged his beard. A shower of crumbs drifted down. “I made muffins,” he explained, brushing ineffectually at the front of his sweater. “Want one? Or a cup of coffee?”

“Not that relaxed,” Pat said in disgust. “Let's get at it. I want to reconstruct the crime.”

“Which one?” Rachel asked, trying not to wince.

“The first one. The kiss, the clinch, the mad passionate embrace.”

“For Pete's sake, Pat.” It was Adam who protested; he carefully refrained from looking at Rachel. “Do you have to be so—”

“It's all right,” Rachel said steadily. “I prefer honest tactlessness to useless sympathy.”

Pat ignored the exchange. “Our terminus a quo is the Christmas party.” He turned slowly, surveying the room. “We were sitting around in various stages of collapse after the other guests had left. Then I asked about your burglar.”

“More honest tactlessness,” Adam grunted. “It may have been that discussion that “got Rachel so on edge she couldn't sleep.”

“We'll get to that in due course,” Pat said. “What happened next?”

Adam sighed. “I don't know. I wasn't here.”

Ruth said, “You were your usual aggressive, dogmatic self, darling. You started an argument with Tony about the proper method of investigating the case, and then you insisted on viewing the evidence.”

“It wasn't an argument, it was an amiable discussion. And I was right, too. So,” Pat went on, before his wife could comment, “we went into the shop and the girls dragged the things out of the cupboard. Right?”

“Right,” Ruth agreed. “What are you getting at?”

“Setting the stage,” Pat said. “Let's go to the shop.”

He led the way.

The shop had its own thermostat, which had been thriftily lowered; the temperature was fifteen degrees below that of the family room. Sunlight streaming through the high windows gave a false illusion of warmth.

“Is this the way it usually looks?” Pat asked.

It was the first time he had asked Rachel a direct question. She understood and appreciated his caution and she took her time about answering, half dreading a repetition of the vocal paralysis that had struck her the night before. But the words came easily, without restraint.