December's Thorn Read online

  “Dr. Nelson,” I began.

  “Ceri,” she insisted, “if I can call you Fever.”

  I sat back, beginning to see what was going on.

  “That depends,” I said, as much to Lucinda as to Dr. Nelson. “Are you here to help me with the troubled woman who came to my house last night, or are you here to help Nurse Foxe convince me that I was dreaming?”

  Dr. Nelson’s smile grew brighter. “Which would you prefer?”

  “Which would I prefer?” I snapped back.

  “How about this,” Dr. Nelson said, before I could get anything else out. “If the woman is real, I’ll help her. If she’s not, I’ll help you.”

  “Either way, Fever,” Lucinda said soothingly, “she’s here to help, all right?”

  I could tell that Lucinda was just indulging me, that she was certain the previous night’s visitor had been, in fact, a dream—a lingering result of my coma. But Dr. Nelson was less transparent. She seemed genuinely committed to the concept of objectivity. She might actually have been willing to entertain either reality.

  That notion calmed me down. I took a deep breath. The cobwebs in my cortex were clearing, and the day was, in fact, very beautiful outside. Lucinda had called Dr. Nelson out of love and concern. How could I object to that? And Dr. Nelson had come—why? Because she liked Lucinda? That wouldn’t be hard to imagine. Everyone liked Lucinda. Because I would make an interesting and possibly publishable case study? Likely. Because she actually wanted to help another human being? That remained to be seen.

  So I resolved to play along. After all, it would give me a chance to ascertain Dr. Nelson’s true motives, and if it became apparent that she actually could help the troubled woman who thought that she was my wife, then it would be a great service to all.

  “Thank you, Dr. Nelson,” I told her, attempting to sound a bit sheepish. “I know you’ll forgive my current state. I had something of a shock last night, and I’ve never slept so long in my life as I did after that. I’m a little at sea. But I’m very grateful for your help, really.”

  “All right, then.” The doctor’s smile remained. She sat back.

  It was clear that she was already on the job, and not at all willing to show me what was on her mind.

  “Good,” Lucinda said, patting my hand. “Now I have to go home, change, and go to work. You’ll be fine.”

  She stood.

  I looked up at her. “I really love you.”

  Her head twitched, ever so slightly. “Bold talk in front of a stranger,” she teased.

  “Lucinda Foxe has saved my life in several ways, Dr. Nelson,” I announced, “despite the fact that I am generally not as vocal about my feelings as I should be. You are currently witness to a somewhat sad attempt to rectify that deficiency in my character.”

  Lucinda put her hand on my cheek. “He’s just showing off in front of company,” she said, looking at me but speaking to Dr. Nelson. “I wonder why.”

  With that, Lucinda nodded to us both and was gone, in very short order, out of my front door.

  5

  I have no idea how long Dr. Nelson and I sat in my kitchen, silent, never achieving eye contact. It seemed like an hour.

  At last she spoke. “I don’t mind sitting here like this all afternoon,” she told me, and seemed quite genuine. “I have kind of a hectic life elsewhere, and it’s very nice for me to have to be still. Very nice. But eventually Lucinda is going to ask one of us what we did today, and I think it would be better if we had more to say than ‘nothing.’”

  I smiled. “Well, you’re right about that. And I’d get the worst of it. I think she actually likes you at the moment.”

  “Well,” Dr. Nelson said, “if you want her to like you again, you’re going to have to explain your wife. Aren’t you supposed to be marrying Lucinda this spring? How’s that going to work?”

  “That’s not funny.” I finally looked at her.

  “It’s a little funny.” She smiled.

  “Proving the adage that comedy is something that happens to someone else.”

  “That’s an adage?”

  “Actually I think it’s better than an adage,” I affirmed. “I’m pretty sure it’s in Aristotle’s Poetics.”

  “All right, so much for banter.” She sat up. “This woman you saw last night, is she real or not?”

  “What?” I found that my voice sounded shocked.

  She stared. “Good. You’re not sure. That’s actually good.”

  “I’m not sure?” I scowled. “Of course I’m sure. She sat in my living room. She drank my tea.”

  I pointed to the pair of teacups in my dish drainer.

  “Maybe.” Dr. Nelson sat back. “But your initial reaction to my blunt and sudden question was to be startled. Most people react with a bit of anger if they’re certain they’re right, or with a touch of fear if they know they’re wrong—or they’ve been lying.”

  I took the merest of seconds to reflect, and saw the merit of her gambit.

  “I’m not sure,” I admitted, staring at the top of the kitchen table.

  “Good,” she said again. “That’s a perfect place to start. Lucinda filled me in on the coma, the dreams, and the traumatic events of the first part of this year. What she couldn’t tell me is exactly how you’re feeling now. She thinks you deliberately obscure your emotions. And, to your credit, she thinks you do that to spare her any extra anxiety where you’re concerned.”

  “Extra anxiety?”

  Dr. Nelson’s smile grew bigger. Her face seemed to be filled with light. “My research in this case so far has revealed that everyone you know is worried about you.”

  “I—I’m a case?” I stammered. “You’ve been talking with people? About me?”

  “Yes.” That’s all she would say.

  “And they’re worried about me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who, exactly, is worried about me?” I leaned forward.

  “In no particular order,” she answered, “Lucinda and most of the people at the hospital where she works, Skidmore Needle and everyone in the sheriff’s office, your English professor friend Dr. Andrews…”

  “Stop,” I said, holding up my hand. “You’ve been asking all these people questions about me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Stop saying yes that way.”

  “Okay.”

  I cocked my head. “You’re exasperating.”

  “I don’t mean to be,” she said, but her voice sounded very amused.

  “Is this some sort of interview?” I guessed. “Are you deliberately trying to provoke me, hoping my subconscious might slip out and, I don’t know, explain everything?”

  “Gee, wouldn’t that be great.” She put her elbows on the table. “But I don’t see how I’m provoking you.”

  “Look,” I said, determined to change the tenor of the scene, “I fell asleep on the couch last night. There was a knock on the door. I woke up, got up, and there she was: a deranged woman in black, a stranger claiming to be my wife, and then wanting to kill her mother. She left quite angry with me, and threatened to be back.”

  “Wait,” she said, a little less amused than before. “She told you she’d be back?”

  “Yes,” I insisted, “I reported that to the sheriff last night. She said she’d come back and poison me.”

  “That’s kind of good news.” She looked out the window. “Either a real woman will come back to this house, or you’ll hallucinate again. Either way, this could be put to rest immediately. All we need is for someone to stay with you all the time until something happens. That person will confirm the truth of the matter.”

  “You think someone should stay with me around the clock until this woman comes back?”

  She nodded. “I do.”

  “Who might that be?” I asked.

  “Me. That’s what Lucinda asked me to do, in fact. I’m glad we’ve arrived at the same conclusion, you and I.”

  I pondered. Before we’d begun the peculiar d
ialogue, I might have been uncomfortable with the notion of spending too much time with Dr. Nelson because, if I were to be completely honest with myself, I’d found her attractive. But now that we’d had a chance to get to know one another a little better, any threat of further attraction seemed unlikely.

  In fact, Lucinda had too many responsibilities at the hospital, and Skidmore could hardly afford to assign a deputy to be my constant companion. And just like that, it seemed the best idea in the world to have Dr. Nelson stay with me until my phantom wife returned.

  “If you’d be willing to stay here with me,” I said, my voice a little softer, “I would, as it turns out, be very grateful.”

  “Interesting,” she said. “I could actually see your thinking process on your face while you were coming to that statement.”

  “You could?” I asked.

  “Most people are transparent,” she told me. “They don’t think they are, which is cause for a lot of entertainment. If you really watch someone, really engage with them, really look into their eyes, you can always tell when they’re telling the truth, when they’re lying, when they’re holding back, when they’re sad or angry or upset.”

  “You mean that you can,” I said. “You can tell all that.”

  “Anybody can do it,” she said with a rather grand wave of her hand. “They just don’t know they can do it.”

  “I don’t know if I agree,” I told her, “but I’m willing to investigate further. For example, the truth of all this—I mean your visiting me here today—is that Lucinda wanted you to come and observe me in my native habitat to see if I’d gone completely off my rocker.”

  She slapped the table lightly. “See? You can do it, too.”

  “I’m right.”

  “You’re partly right. Lucinda is afraid, after last night, that there may be lasting damage from your coma.”

  I tried not to let that sink in too deeply, and I spoke out loud before I’d thought it through.

  “If that’s the case,” I said softly, “Lucinda might want to call off the wedding.”

  Dr. Nelson blinked. “No. She’s afraid you might blame her, because she caused your coma, about which she feels guilty, and she’s afraid that you might call off the wedding.”

  I looked up. Dr. Nelson’s face was nearly beatific. I couldn’t help but smile.

  “Gee,” I said, “we really are a pair, Lucinda and I. Difficult to say, really, which one of us needs your help more.”

  She shook her head. “Oh, you need it much more. You’re lots more messed up.”

  Again, I cocked my head. “Is that the right thing for an analyst to say?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” she said happily. “I’m not exactly an analyst.”

  “All right, then.” I rolled my eyes. “What would you call yourself?”

  “I hardly ever call myself anything,” she shot back. “But that’s not really what you mean. You want to know what I think my job is here at the moment. Am I a babysitter, am I a psychiatrist, am I Lucinda’s friend—right?”

  “Right.”

  “Then I’d say that I am exactly like you, Dr. Devilin. I’m a well-educated oddity, someone who’s interested in finding something out. I’m investigating. I want to know what happened. I want to solve a riddle. I find the research interesting completely on its own merits, without regard for subsequent achievement or goal. Isn’t that about what you’ve been doing since you came back home to Blue Mountain however many years ago?”

  I had to admit that she seemed to be saying something very true. I just didn’t know how to respond, because her speech had set off a wildfire of personal reflection.

  So I said, “Let’s suppose that’s true. Then why do we do it, you and I? Why do we chase all around looking to answer these inexplicable phenomena? What are we actually looking for?”

  “Ah,” she agreed, “that’s really the question, isn’t it?”

  And then we sat in silence once more.

  6

  Dr. Nelson stood up eventually and went to the espresso machine. She tapped it and pushed a few buttons. Nothing happened. She exhaled, exasperated, and looked as if she might hit it before I got up to help her.

  “I can get it,” she said, a bit defensively.

  “Had we but world enough, and time,” I told her, “but you want espresso now, I think.”

  “All right.” She sighed. “How does this thing work?”

  “Simplicity itself,” I told her.

  I pushed a certain button and the machine began to growl. I took the cup from her hand and put it under the spigots. Almost instantly the cup began to fill.

  “Voila,” I said. “It’s easy when you know how.”

  Before I could say anything else to taunt her, my kitchen window exploded and a bullet flew past our heads.

  We both ducked, and neither of us made a sound. I noticed, with no small admiration, that Dr. Nelson had kept hold of her espresso cup. She hadn’t spilled a drop.

  “What was that?” she demanded to know.

  “I think someone’s fired a rifle into my kitchen,” I said.

  A second shot rang out, blasting a hole the size of a baseball in the tiles above my sink.

  “I think we should keep down, don’t you?” I whispered.

  She tossed back her espresso and set the cup on the counter beside the machine.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “I’m going into the living room to have a look out the front door window. It’s shielded by the porch awning and harder to see into from the yard.”

  Without waiting for her to respond, I dashed for the front door. It had been replaced several times since I’d moved back home, and this particular door was a style that was sometimes called “craftsman”—strong oak in panels, a triptych of windows. I waited for more shooting, but silence ensued.

  I rose slowly and took a quick peek out the window. I half-expected to see my ghostly bride—I may even have been hoping to see her, just so that I could prove to everyone, including myself, that she was real.

  What I did see was, if possible, more unnerving. Standing in my yard was a boy of ten or twelve years, dressed in white snow camouflage, reloading his rifle.

  I thought for a second that I might be seeing things—again.

  “Dr. Nelson?” I said softly.

  “What?”

  “Could you come in here, please?” I moved away from the window for the moment.

  “Why?”

  “I want to see if you see what I see,” I told her.

  “Is it her?” she asked excitedly. “Is it your ghost?”

  I could hear her moving quickly, and then she appeared, crouching low, right next to me.

  “No,” I answered. “It’s a young boy.”

  “What?” She stood up.

  I moved away from the window. “Be careful when you look out. I saw him reloading. He has a hunting rifle. I think it’s a Remington 700 but there’s no sight on it. He was reloading when I looked out just now.”

  She took my place beside the door and, lightning fast, looked out.

  “There’s a boy with a gun out there,” she said, as if she’d discovered him.

  “Yes.”

  “He’s pointing the gun at the kitchen window again,” she said in a stage whisper.

  “All right.”

  I moved in a manner much more decisive than I felt, grabbed the door handle, and tore out onto the front porch before I could think better of it.

  “Hey!” I yelled as loudly as I could. “What the hell are you doing?”

  The boy was so startled that he took several steps backward, lost his footing in the snow, and fell down. I had been hoping for something like that effect.

  I stomped down the steps, attempting to appear hulking.

  “I said, ‘What the hell are you doing?’” I snarled, bearing down on him.

  I was only several steps off the porch, perhaps thirty feet away from him. He scrambled up, backing away. There was a mixture of rage
and terror on his clear and rosy-cheeked face—Satan’s cherub.

  “Is that your new girlfriend?” he sneered. “If I see her here again, I won’t miss. I’ll shoot her in the head!”

  With that he turned, jumped a little like a rabbit, and sprinted away faster than I could possibly have followed.

  “That was impressive” were the words that came from behind me.

  I turned around. Dr. Nelson was standing in the front doorway.

  “Not my first bullets,” I assured her. “I’ve been shot at lots of times. By grown men. You always hear that you should rush a gun and run from a knife. Especially if the gun is being wielded by a child of ten.”

  “Who was he?”

  I headed up the steps. “So, you saw him.”

  “Of course I saw him.” Her arms were folded in front of her and she was shivering.

  The day was clear and cold; the snow made everything so bright that it was hard not to squint. The sky was blue and cloudless. There was no wind. For some reason I had the sensation, for a very brief moment, that the world had stopped turning, a kind of psychic vertigo. I closed my eyes and tried not to pass out.

  “Fever?” Dr. Nelson said immediately.

  I brushed past her through the doorway and into the house.

  “I’m fine,” I mumbled. “I’m a little dizzy.”

  “Oh, well, adrenaline is a weird drug,” she told me. “I’m a little dizzy. Plus, I can’t stop shaking.”

  I looked more closely. She was shivering from head to toe.

  I smiled. “I’ve been shot at so many times in the past couple of years, I forget what it feels like for amateurs.”

  “I need to get warmer,” she said calmly.

  I went to the fireplace instantly, tossed on three more logs, poked the coals, and almost at once there was, if not a blaze, at least a warmer hearth.

  “Lucinda made this fire,” I guessed. “She always banks the coals this way. Makes it easier to get it going when you need to.”

  She nodded and sat down on the floor right in front of the fire.