dog?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Phyllis said softly. “Her mind’s been protecting her for a long time. She’s lived inside a place that exists only in her own head, and she’s afraid to come out. She’s going to need constant reassurance that when she does, there’s a safe, protected environment waiting for her.”
“And you can provide that in weekly visits?”
“Of course not.” Kicking off her shoes, Phyllis pulled her feet onto the sofa, tucking them beneath her. “We’re just the door through which she’s going to travel. The environment is right there waiting for her. She has a team of counselors working with her. People who’ve been around her, speaking with her, for months. At least one of them is with her twenty-four hours a day.”
“What about her family? Do they come to see her?”
“Her sister does. Everyday. The two of them lived together before Ella was raped.”
“Isn’t it hard sometimes? Dealing with stuff like this?” He asked a question Phyllis rarely allowed herself to ask. “Seems like it could be…painful.”
“It is,” Phyllis said, remembering the year before, when she’d had Tory Sanders living with her. Under her guidance, Tory had been coming to terms with her abusive past, as well as grieving for her dead sister—Phyllis’s best friend, Christine. “But then the light goes on in someone’s eyes and suddenly I have all the energy in the world,” she continued. “I’ve learned that when I’m feeling discouraged about a patient’s recovery, I need to focus on the eventual appearance of that light, to look for it in the tiniest of signs, and I find myself getting little bursts of energy.”
“Like tonight.”
“Right.”
“You’re amazing.” There was wonderment in his tone, and Phyllis felt an impulse, irrational but overpowering, to dismiss Matt’s approval.
“I also spend most of my working hours in a classroom lecturing to healthy students,” she reminded him. “Cases like this happen much less frequently.”
“So what did the doctor have to say?”
She stiffened. He’d caught her off guard. Again.
“To take my vitamins.”
“Everything’s okay?”
He wasn’t supposed to ask. Or care.
“Yes.”
“I don’t think I saw a bill. An insurance deductible, maybe? Vitamins?”
They both knew he hadn’t.
Sitting up, Phyllis slipped back into her shoes and walked to her bedroom. She was tired. Needed a long soak in a hot tub. Just as soon as she got him off the phone.
“I’m a psychologist, Matt. I know about emotions and relationships, and I’m very sure that this will be much healthier for both of us if we agree to let this situation be mine.”
“I—”
“I don’t need your help. Not financially or in any other way,” she interrupted, lining up her shoes in her closet. She’d been doing this ever since she’d seen her friend Randi do it. Now her shoes were much easier to find. Besides, she found the effect visually pleasing—and any activity that created a sense of order was a good thing, in her view. “As a matter-of-fact, if you want to help me, then rest assured that what would help the most is if you’d just let me get on with my life. There’s no point including you when neither of us want you to be part of either my life or this child’s.”
“But—”
“I promise to call you if anything changes,” she said. “If I get into trouble or have any problems, I won’t hesitate to let you know.”
“You’d better mean that,” he said, his voice rougher then usual.
“I do.”
“Then I guess I’ll be seeing you.”
Not if she could avoid it.
The man confounded her. He jumbled her thoughts—and that was something Phyllis just could not tolerate. Her emotions she couldn’t always dictate, but her mind was the one thing she had to be able to count on. And Matt Sheffield threatened her mental clarity, her ability to analyze, to make rational, informed decisions. She hung up the phone with finality.
“Okay, baby,” she said, her voice several notches higher—and happier—as she bent to run her bath. “Let’s go play in the tub and then I’ll give you a nice long rubdown with the oil the doctor gave us. How does that sound?”
It was still far too early in her pregnancy for any response from the tiny fetus growing inside her, but Phyllis knew that somehow the baby heard her and was learning to recognize his mother’s voice.
That might not be a rational belief—more of an intuitive conviction—but Phyllis didn’t question it for a second.
MATT HAD NO REASON to be at the faculty meeting. He rarely attended them, preferring to have pressing business at the theater whenever Will Parsons called a meeting with his faculty and staff.
Will had never given him any crap about his inclination to steer clear of large groups—a bit of leftover discomfort from the claustrophobia he’d developed in prison. But he’d always made certain that Matt received whatever information he needed.
Matt suspected that the older man understood the more urgent reason he chose to keep his distance from his colleagues. The more time Matt spent in their company, the more chance they’d ask the kinds of personal questions he didn’t want to answer.
He caught Will’s raised eyebrow when he slipped into the back of the large lecture hall, where the university president was giving his mid-November faculty address.
If Matt wasn’t careful, he was going to be raising other questions he wasn’t prepared to answer.
He noticed Phyllis Langford sitting between an English professor and the head of the Psych Department, up near the front of the hall, and slid into the back corner seat. She was the reason he was there, the person he needed to speak to. He had no concrete ideas of what he was going to say to her, no suggestions to present. He only knew that, through her, he had to find some degree of absolution. He had to reach an understanding of his role in this whole baby thing, otherwise he’d never get rid of the guilt.
Will announced all the shows scheduled at the Performing Arts Center during the holidays. Mentally planning his crews, Matt felt a twinge of unease as Sophie Curtis topped the list on every show that mattered. As stage manager of the most recent show she’d worked, the girl had missed several cues, failed to get the props onstage in time, pulled the curtain too soon and left the house lights lowered for the first five minutes of intermission.
Matt couldn’t remember when he’d last seen her smile. She barely resembled the vivacious blonde of a year ago.
Will Parsons was speaking about a new promotional video the college was making. Matt would help with the shooting of some of the inside segments—and probably have a hand in the
