I saw Angela, because I’m feeling afraid again? My fear conjured her up?”
“Not her, Rachel. A woman who looked like her—” Victoria broke off. “Not even like her, for that matter, since you don’t know what Angela looks like now. Perhaps just some of the same qualities you remember from childhood. Rachel, what does that sound like to you?”
Rachel closed her eyes. “Like I imagined the whole thing. It wasn’t Angela, and she hasn’t come back to try to kill me again. There. Is that better?”
“You tell me.”
“I don’t know!” Rachel’s eyes flashed, and the mutinous glare came back. “Why do I have to do all the work? You’re the one getting paid for this!”
Victoria shook her head and smiled. “You may be a beautiful, grown-up twenty-one-year-old, Rachel. You may be smart, intelligent, all those good things. But I’m still seeing shades of that little girl in front of me. The one who stuck her chin out and told me to go to hell when she was ten.”
Rachel hesitated, then laughed. “I did do that, didn’t I? God, I must have been a handful.”
“Still are, apparently,” Victoria said with a smile. She picked up her appointment book and a pen. “Okay, now. Do you want us to work together while you’re home on vacation, or not? Shall I put you down for the day after tomorrow?”
“Mom likes to hit the stores the day after Christmas,” Rachel said. “How about the day after that?”
“Right.” Victoria wrote it in.
“Uh…can I have that cookie back?”
Victoria had picked up the plate and was putting it on the file cabinet. She swung back and laughed. “Sure. Maybe it’ll sweeten your mood.”
Rachel stood and gathered up her coat, slipping it on with the cookie between her teeth. Then, taking it in her hand, she said, “Vicky…I know we’re making light of this right now. And to tell the truth, I’m kind of relieved that we are. But I still feel, down deep, that something bad is going to happen.”
Victoria got up and came around the desk, wrapping an arm around Rachel’s shoulders and walking her to the door. “You could be right, of course. But let’s not jump the gun. Let’s look at all sides of it first. Okay?”
Rachel nodded, drawing her pink scarf tighter as Victoria opened the door into the hallway. “God, it’s raining again,” she said, looking back toward the office window. “Now that I’m living in California most of the time, I get so depressed up here when it rains.”
“Espresso,” Victoria said, patting her shoulder. “Get yourself some espresso. Better yet, a mocha. The chocolate will do you good.”
“I don’t know,” Rachel said. “Maybe I need some Prozac or something.”
Victoria studied her, meeting her eyes. “Maybe you do. But let’s start slowly. We can talk about that later, after we meet some more.”
Rachel sighed. “Okay. See you in a few days, then.”
“Right.” Victoria touched her cheek lightly with a pale, slender hand. “Rachel…try to have a happy Christmas.”
“You, too,” Rachel said, stepping away.
Going down the long, carpeted hallway to the elevator, she felt awkward, as if she were stumbling. As if the hallway had shrunk, and there wasn’t room now to put her feet anywhere. Or the way it felt during the occasional California earthquakes, even when they were only small tremors. It seemed for days afterward that the ground kept moving—but only slightly, so that it was hard to know whether what she felt was real or not.
She hadn’t told Vicky about these “spells,” which had come and gone several times over the past few weeks. She didn’t want anyone to know. It was probably irrational, but the old fear was back: If I tell them too much, they might send me away, too.
4
Sacred Heart, the Queen Anne Hill church that Paul and Gina had been married in, was wall-to-wall with parishioners. Seats were always in demand for Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, and ten minutes after they’d arrived it was standing room only. Gina had insisted on arriving early to assure their getting a seat, hurrying everyone along. They had made it with half an hour to spare before Mass began, and had landed a pew two rows from the front.
It was hot in the crowded church, and Gina fanned her face with the printed pamphlet containing words to the carols they would sing throughout the service. The beads of perspiration on her forehead reminded her of her wedding day and the heat wave that had come tearing through Seattle that July. She had been sure her gown would melt before the long ceremony was over. As it was, the white satin stuck to her skin when she tried to peel it off that night.
The heat hadn’t dimmed her passion or Paul’s, however. Gina almost blushed now, just thinking of how wanton they were on that honeymoon night.
She sighed. Where had it all gone, that passion? Had it simply dissipated with so many years of familiarity? Was that the natural order of things? Perhaps. Paul’s mother and father didn’t seem all that passionate about each other any longer, yet after some rocky years when Paul was a child, they seemed contented enough. Right now they were on a cruise through the Caribbean, and after that they were flying to Paris, then Rome—an anniversary gift from her and Paul.
As for Roberta, her own mother, who knew? At times, Gina thought Roberta might still be dating. Certainly that wouldn’t be unusual at her age. She was only sixty, and there had been mysterious evenings lately when Roberta wasn’t at home and wouldn’t tell anyone the next day where she’d been. Why she’d be shy about telling anyone she was dating, Gina didn’t know.
For that matter, as she looked around, Gina didn’t see her mother in any of the front pews. Roberta had never, so far as she knew, missed Midnight Mass. Of course, she might have arrived late and had to settle for sitting somewhere in the back. That wasn’t like her, but sometimes the traffic coming over from Gig Harbor was unusually heavy.
Roberta and Gina’s father, Tony, had grown up in this Seattle parish. They had lived their lives in the old-world Catholic way, following the exhortations of the priests in those days to sacrifice and suffer. There would be stars in their crowns in heaven, they were told. Tony had suffered, all right, living for several months through a siege of cancer when he was fifty. Gina wondered if he were somewhere “up there,” and if the stars in his crown were worth it.
She knew that what had happened with the twins had taken its toll on Paul’s parents as well as her own. She was glad all three remaining parents were thinking of themselves now, rather than focusing on that time when nothing made much sense and everything around them seemed to be falling apart.
When Gina met Paul, who was raised Baptist but no longer attended church, he had agreed to marry her in the Catholic church. They were both very young then, in their early twenties. Following a particular faith didn’t seem to matter as much as the fact that they believed in each other. It mattered to Gina’s parents, however, who insisted that being married outside the church was no marriage at all. Paul, to keep the peace, had gone along with their request.
Even so, Gina’s mother had spoken of misgivings. “A man who will leave his faith behind will
