“That is what I’ve always believed.”

“Is there a reason you’d want to protect him?”

She looked away, closed her eyes. “I’m afraid there may be,” she said very softly.

Michael waited for her to continue, but instead she got up and walked over to the window to stare down at the dead garden. “The camellias are still blooming,” she murmured. “It’s amazing how hardy they are. They look so fragile. Such a delicate shade of pink.” She turned and smiled. “But I’ve gotten off track, haven’t I?”

“It happens.”

She leaned back against the window frame. “Did I ever tell you that I had an imaginary friend when I was little? Her name was Fay.”

“Did Fay have a last name?”

“No, just Fay. I was maybe four or five at the time and I was alone a lot. Rachel was already in school, but even when she was home during the summer, she never paid much attention to me. It was more than the three-year age difference. There was just never much affection between us. At best, she tolerated me. Kind of like my father. Although looking back, I don’t think he tolerated me at all. I think he despised me. Or maybe he despised himself for producing such a plain, mediocre child after the perfection of Rachel.”

“What about your mother?”

Sarah was silent for a long time. “My mother loved me, but there was a distance in our relationship. Like her mind was always somewhere else when we were together. I never felt as if I really belonged in that house, to those people. That’s how I thought of them. They were strangers and I was just someone who lived on the fringes of their lives. I guess that’s why I needed Fay.”

“You were lonely.”

“Desperately so, I think.” She came back over and sat down in the chair. “Am I boring you yet?”

“Why? Do I look bored?”

“No, you have too much of a poker face for that.” She cocked her head, studying him. “It’s a rather nice face, though.”

Her moments of mild flirtation always took Michael aback. Not because he hadn’t experienced it before, but because with Sarah, even a beguiling smile was never quite what it seemed.

“Where were we?” she asked.

“You were lonely as a child.”

“I’m sure that’s why I acted out. I wanted attention.”

“How did you act out?”

She drew her feet up to the chair and wrapped her arms around her knees. “I broke things. My mother’s antique vase. My father’s new fishing rod. Rachel’s favorite doll. And when someone confronted me, I always blamed it on Fay. Fay did it. It was Fay. Very convenient, wouldn’t you say? The strange thing is, after a while I think I actually began to believe it.”

“What happened to Fay?”

“She went away when I started school. I guess my subconscious decided I didn’t need her anymore. But school was hell for me. Worse than home. I had a learning disability, a mild form of dyslexia, that wasn’t detected until I was in the third grade. I wrote certain numbers and letters, even words, backwards. Mirror writing, they called it. By the time I finally caught up to my level, it was too late. I was already branded.”

“Were you bullied in school?”

She rested her chin on her knees. “I was teased, but I never considered myself a victim. I was tough,” she said with a faint smile. “I fought back.”

“Good for you.”

“But by the time I got to junior high school, I was in full-blown rebellion.”

“How did you rebel?”

“Let’s just say, I embraced my weirdness.”

He smiled. “Meaning?”

“I liked being different. We had these Goth kids at our school. Ghost-white makeup, black clothes, satanic jewelry. The whole nine yards. I’m pretty sure that look was already passé in most parts of the country, but trends came late to us. I thought they were cool. I used to follow them around, hoping they’d notice me, but the ironic thing was, even the outcasts didn’t want me. And then I met Ashe.”

Michael saw her shiver and she reached down to pick up her jacket. Then she let it fall back to the floor as if realizing that her chill had nothing to do with being cold.

“Ashe was Goth, too,” she said. “But he didn’t dress that way to shock or get attention like the others did. He wore the black clothing and the white makeup because that’s the way he felt inside. He was dark and troubled and lonely, just like me. And without the clothing and makeup, he couldn’t be himself. He needed the trappings in order to be Ashe Cain. Does that make sense?”

“We all wear masks,” Michael said.

She shook her head, as if impatient that he wasn’t getting it. “It wasn’t a mask. It was who he was.”

“You never saw him without the makeup and dark clothing?”

“If I did, I didn’t recognize him. He was older than me, and he wasn’t from Adamant. At least that’s what he told me. All I knew was that he was my friend. He understood me in a way no one else ever had. We understood each other. He told me once that our souls were like mirror images.” She leaned forward, her gaze clinging to Michael’s. “Maybe they were. Maybe the reason he understood me so well was because...I created him. He was a figment of my imagination.”

“Like Fay, you mean.”

“Are you shocked?” She sat back with a satisfied smile, but her eyes looked bleak and haunted. “Have you ever seen a movie called The Crow?”

“The Brandon Lee film? I’ve caught parts of it on television,” Michael said.

“Then you probably know the gist of the plot. A tormented soul rises from the grave to avenge the brutal rape and murder of his girlfriend. When I was thirteen, I was obsessed with that movie. I can’t even tell you how many times I watched it. I had the sound track, the poster, everything. I was completely in love with the notion of this dark avenger who couldn’t be stopped even in death.” She paused, her gaze meeting his. “You see where I’m going with this, don’t you?”

“Why don’t you tell me?”

“After I met Ashe Cain, things started happening to the kids who teased me and called me names.”

“What kind of things?”

“Nothing really terrible. Not until—” She glanced away. “Flat tires. Stolen wallets and keys. Stuff like that.”

“And you think Ashe was responsible?”

“I know he was. He showed me the things he took.”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing, because I told myself those kids deserved it. And that’s my whole point. Ashe did what I secretly wanted to do.” Her eyes challenged him. “Now do you get it? If I’d wanted to create the perfect avenger, he would have looked exactly like Ashe Cain.”

“That doesn’t mean he wasn’t real,” Michael said.

“Then how do you explain why no one else ever saw him? Why no one else ever heard of him?”

“Maybe that’s the way he wanted it.”

“Maybe.” She twirled another strand of hair around her finger. Distracted. Agitated. “Do you believe that we all have the capacity for evil?”

Sharing a personal opinion or philosophical conjecture with a patient was never a good idea, but Sarah’s question was one Michael had wrestled with for years. “Yes,” he finally said. “I do believe that. But I also believe that in most of us, there is the ability and the desire to vanquish that side of our nature.”

“What if suppressing the memories of what happened to Rachel is my way of vanquishing the evil inside me? What if recovering those memories unleashes something I can’t control?”

Michael took a long time before he answered. “You can’t fight evil in the dark, Sarah. The only way you can truly defeat it is to bring it into the light.”

“You mean by remembering?”

“If that’s possible. But also by making peace with your past. It’s the only way you’ll ever be able to move on with your life.”

She gathered her jacket and purse and stood. “Something to think about,” she said in a tone that was deceptively lighthearted.

“We’ve still got some time,” Michael said. “Why don’t we finish the session?”

“No, I really have to go. I have a client coming in soon. We’re doing a dragon on his back—a custom design and very elaborate. Did I ever tell you what an honor it is to be allowed to tattoo the back? It’s the largest canvas on the human body.”

Michael got up to walk her to the door.

“You didn’t ask about my father,” she said.

“I’m sorry. How’s he doing?”

“Not well. The doctors say it’s only a matter of time. Weeks, maybe.” In the outer office, she tugged on her jacket before going outside. “Admit it. You think my father is somehow the key to all this, don’t you? You think the way he treated me as a child has turned me into a neurotic. And here I thought it was always the mother’s fault.”

Michael opened the door and they walked down the steps together. He watched her disappear through the gate, and a few moments later, he heard her car drive away.

Turning, he surveyed his ravished garden. Sarah was right. Everything was a mess now, but in another month or so, when the weather heated up, the color would come back. The banana trees would shed their brown leaves like a snake sloughing off dead skin, and wisteria would hang like a heavy curtain over the garden walls, perfuming the evening air with a nostalgic scent that always took him back to his days in the seminary.

But that had been a long time ago. Before Elise. Before his fall from grace.

Chapter 13

As soon as she let herself into the house that night, Sarah had the strangest sensation that something was wrong. Her purse in one hand and a bag of groceries in the other, she used her shoulder to flip the light switch, then glanced around.

The house was so still that even normal sounds—the furnace, the clock, even the whisper of her own breath—unnerved her.

Sarah was so attuned to every nuance of her home that she was sure she would have sensed if someone had been inside while she was out. It wasn’t that, but she couldn’t explain the disquiet nor could she make it go away. And as certain as she was that no one had broken in, she also knew that, for her own peace of mind, she would have to make the rounds through her house, a tense investigation she always dreaded.

Setting her purse and groceries on a kitchen counter, she walked through every room, checking all the doors and windows, looking inside closets and the shower, underneath the bed and behind every chair. Except for the two years with Sean, she’d lived alone for a long time, and a search through all the dark places was nothing new for her. By now, she knew herself well enough to accept that she wouldn’t be able to relax until she made a thorough sweep.

Everything was exactly as she’d left it that morning. No one had been inside. She was sure of it. But even after the search, that nagging unease persisted, and the sound of a car engine in her drive caused her to jump. She hurried to the window and glanced out. Headlight beams swung across her tiny front yard as the car backed out and headed down the street.

Just someone turning around. Nothing to worry about.

But Sarah was still jittery as she walked back into the kitchen, her palms unaccountably moist as she put away the groceries. For the first time in a long time, she wanted to call Sean, and the urge caught her completely off guard.

A storm of emotions ripped through her. Even after all these months, after everything he’d done, there were times like this when Sarah keenly missed having him in the house. The sight of him seated at the kitchen table going through a stack of files would have been especially reassuring on a night when her nerves were so frayed. When the last thing she wanted was to be alone.

He would have glanced up when she came through the door, taken one look at her face and got up from the table to give her a hug. “Rough session?” he’d ask.

Sarah would bury her face in his shoulder and tangle her fingers in his shirt as she breathed in the subtle, spicy scent of his cologne. That was the thing about Sean. For someone who spent most of his day dealing with death, he always smelled good. It was one of the things she missed most about him. The lingering scent of his aftershave in the bathroom, on his pillow. On her hands.

She stood in the middle of the kitchen, remembering his fingers in her hair, his voice in her ear, the comforting feel of his body pressed against hers.

“Better?” he’d say.

“Hmm, yes.”

Sarah opened her eyes and the phantom voice vanished.

Sean was gone and it did no good to look back. Besides, she was a grown woman. She didn’t need a man’s presence to help her feel safe in her own home. The little house on North Rampart had always been her sanctuary, and she had Esme to thank for that. Without her sage advice, Sarah would have blown through the inheritance from her mother within six months of her twenty-first birthday. But Esme had sat her down one day and given her a piece of her mind.