False Security (3 page)

After Rachel
closed the front door and replaced the locks, Danielle ambushed her. “There was
a man in our house.” The words gushed out of her like an excited child on
Christmas morning.

“I’m aware of that,” Rachel
said. She moved around Danielle and down the hall.

“You had a man in our house,”
Danielle said.

Rachel entered the living room
and walked toward the kitchen, with Danielle on her heels. “And you keep
repeating this because?” she asked.

“Because there was a man. In
this house. You have to tell me everything.”

“There’s not a whole lot to
tell. He asked me to go for coffee when I was at the bookstore earlier. I
turned him down at first, but then I changed my mind.”

“Come on,” Danielle said. “I
want to hear every little detail.”

“We talked and drank coffee.”
Rachel placed the coffee mugs in the sink and filled them with hot water.

“And?”

“And nothing.”

“Don’t give me that. You’re
blushing and you can’t stop smiling. You look like a teenager who was asked to
prom by the captain of the football team.”

Rachel turned around and leaned
against the counter. “And you’re acting like we’re in the eighth grade. We
talked, nothing more. No big deal.”

“You like him, don’t you? Are
you going to see him again?”

“I doubt it.”

“Why not? He’s really cute and
he seems nice enough.”

“Then you can date him,” Rachel
said. “I’m not in the mood for an inquisition.”

Danielle scowled. “In all the
time I’ve known you, you’ve not had a single date. I’m entitled to at least
fifty million questions.”

“Okay, but I’m going to keep
count.”

“Besides, if you weren’t going
to see him again, why’d you kiss him?”

Rachel’s eyes widened and her
mouth dropped. “You were spying on me!”

“I wasn’t spying,” Danielle
said. “I was checking to make sure the windows were locked.”

“I can’t believe you spied on
me.”

Danielle pointed a finger at
her. “Don’t you dare turn this around on me. You’re the one who kissed him and
you’re the one who went on a date with him.”

“It wasn’t a date. We had coffee
and conversation. We didn’t go out to a coffee shop, so it wasn’t technically a
date.”

“No, it qualifies as a date.”

Rachel clenched her jaw. “It was
not a date.”

“And I suppose it wasn’t a kiss,
either.”

Rachel crossed her arms.

“You can deny it all you want,
but it doesn’t change the facts. You went on a date with him and you kissed
him. You may not like it, but that’s what happened.”

“It was a mistake.”

“That was one hell of a mistake.
I think you enjoyed yourself and twenty bucks says you do it again.” She
reached for her purse and pulled out a twenty-dollar bill. She laid the money
on the kitchen table.

Rachel stormed over to the
counter and took a twenty out of her purse. She threw it on the table next to
Danielle’s money. “You never win our bets,” she said. She whirled around and
headed toward her bedroom.

“Oh, I think I’ll win this
time,” Danielle called from the hallway. “As much as you try, you can’t control
your life every single second. You’ll buckle the next time you see him.”

“Then I’ll have to find another
bookstore to go to,” she yelled down the hall. She slammed the door shut before
Danielle could respond.

Leaning against the door, Rachel
closed her eyes and tasted Mark on her lips. The butterflies resumed their
fluttering. Taking deep breaths, she counted backwards from ten, opening her
eyes when she reached one. It was time to forget him. Her life had no room for
Mark Jacobson.

The woods were always beautiful this time of
year. Spring gave way to summer, and the plush trees welcomed the change of
season. Green leaves in different stages of growth filled their limbs, and
sunlight filtered through small openings in the branches above her. She stepped
through the patches of light, enjoying the warmth on her skin.

The damp grass cooled her bare feet and the scent of rain moved along a
mild breeze. A gust of wind rushed through her black dress and she looked down
at the rippling silken material. Rustling leaves danced on the ground around
her ankles in a celebration of nature.

The radiance of the sun dimmed as if setting, leaving the woods around
her in hues of pinks, oranges, and blues. A soft glow in the distance drew her
attention, and she moved in the direction of the light. After she took a few
steps, an invisible pianist played a song for her. Tinkling notes clung to the
air, each one caressing the next like lovers in the night. Even though she
could hum every note of the hypnotic melody, she couldn’t remember from where
she knew the song.

A cardinal flew into view and circled her head, as if trying to catch
her attention. It landed on her outstretched palm, and she giggled. The bird
opened its beak. “Every fairy tale has a Prince Charming,” it said, with a soft
tone. “Go to him.”

The bird flew away, and she glided toward the light. The sheer, black
scarf around her neck floated behind her, as if trying to pull her in the
opposite direction.

Halfway to her destination, she realized the light shined from behind a
door. Without warning, the sun succumbed to the night. The warmth disappeared
with the rest of the sun’s rays. White clouds of breath formed in front of her
mouth, and her nose tingled from the cold. She rubbed the goosebumps on her
arms, but couldn’t seem to get warm.

The light beckoned her forward, promising her safety and warmth. She
ran over the now frozen ground, catching herself from falling several times.
When she reached the door, light emerged from every side. She ran her fingers
over letters carved deep into the wood. “Prince Charming,” she read aloud. The
piano’s siren song became louder, despite no piano in sight. Why did the music
sound so familiar?

She wrapped her fingers around the doorknob. The woods behind her
disappeared, and she glanced back to see a windowless hallway with a black wall
and cold, black marble tiles. The doorknob twisted beneath her fingers. She
pushed open the creaking door, and the piano ceased playing. She lifted her
hand to shield her eyes from the brilliant light.

As she stepped through the doorway, the light dimmed around her. In the
middle of the otherwise empty room, a man sat in a chair with a snake coiled on
his lap. The cardinal flew down and landed on the man’s shoulder. “Don’t worry,
Rachel,” it said. “It will be over soon.”

The door slammed shut behind her.

Rachel turned
around at the sound of the screen door opening. Danielle emerged wearing pink
pajama bottoms and a white cotton shirt, her hair twisted and clipped to the
back of her head. “I tried not to wake you,” Rachel said.

Danielle shrugged. “I’m used to
it.” She rubbed her arms through the long sleeves of her shirt, and looked
around the small backyard. “This can’t be healthy. You wake up from a nightmare
and you come out here, only to let paranoia sink in.”

“It wasn’t a nightmare,” Rachel
said. “It was one of those falling dreams.”

Danielle sat down on the chilled
concrete step next to Rachel. “Don’t lie to me. You were in the woods again,
weren’t you?”

“Yeah,” she said. Rachel rubbed
at the tiredness in her eyes, and wished the drowsiness away. She did not want
to fall asleep again into the arms of the same dream.

“I hate to see you like this.
You never sleep anymore.” Danielle pointed at the handgun in Rachel’s lap. “You
sit out here all night with your gun, as if that’s going to make the dream go
away. When’s the last time you slept the whole night through?” She didn’t wait
for an answer. “I know it’s been at least two months, since you started seeing
Mark. Isn’t that when the dreams started?”

Rachel ignored Danielle’s
rhetorical question and stared at the gun. They both knew dating Mark was the
cause of the dreams. The dream had never come before two months ago, the same
night she invited Mark to her house for coffee. The dream started with menacing
images, but nothing she could grasp onto after waking. There was only the
memory of something sinister happening while she slept.

Over the last two months of
seeing Mark, the dream had evolved into what it was now. As if Rachel did not
have enough demons, the dream had become a monster in itself, bent on torment
and destruction.

Despite knowing her relationship
with Mark was the cause of the dream, Rachel could not bring herself to stop
seeing him. He drew her to him in a way she could not explain or control. Even
though she knew the time would come when she must leave him, she couldn’t
entertain the thought of her life without him.

“Well, whatever the cause,”
Danielle said, “you can’t keep this up forever. Maybe you should take a
sleeping pill or something to help.”

“I would,” Rachel said, “but I’m
scared if I do, I won’t be able to wake up.”

“Maybe you should try anyway,”
Danielle said. “Sometimes when I have a nightmare, I realize it’s only a dream
and I’m able to control it. You can learn to do that, too.”

“That’d be nice, but I don’t
know when I’m dreaming. Every part of it feels so real.”

“You never realize you’re
dreaming?”

“Not until I wake up and come
out here,” Rachel said.

“But it’s the same dream every
time.”

“It doesn’t seem to matter. I
still don’t recognize it as a dream. Besides, I wouldn’t even know what to do
if I could control my dreams.”

“For starters, you could shoot
the bird.”

Rachel arched her eyebrows.
“Shooting a bird? That’s pleasant.”

“Sure,” Danielle said. “Whip out
a rocket launcher or something.”

“A rocket launcher for a bird?”

A large grin crossed her face.
“It’s a dream so you can do whatever you want.”

Rachel laughed. “I’d hate to be
an innocent little bird in your dreams.”

“But your bird isn’t so
innocent.”

Rachel’s laugh faded and her
face sobered. She looked down at the gun. Comfort. Rachel expected the gun to
bring it and Danielle tried to provide it, but she never truly found comfort.
Danielle did what she felt she had to do, shouldering the responsibility of
attempting to comfort Rachel, the same as Rachel had done for her from the
moment they met.

Fourteen months earlier, when
Danielle walked into her self-defense class at a women’s shelter in Dallas,
Rachel knew her life would never be the same. The timid girl that walked
through the door was nothing like the Danielle she knew today. Eyes glued on
her feet, Danielle shuffled across the room grasping her bandaged right hand
close to her chest. Under the wrappings of the bandages, splints pressed
against three of her fingers.

Danielle remained silent during
the class and kept her head low, her hair covering up some of the healing
bruises on her face. Rachel decided not to encourage Danielle to participate
her first day at class. She never pushed any of the women if they weren’t
ready. The other women left after the class ended, but Danielle stayed behind
and stared at the mat beneath her crossed legs.

Rachel sat beside her, but
didn’t speak. The silence continued for several minutes before Danielle said,
“When I went to the emergency room, I told them I broke my fingers playing the
piano. Damn Beethoven.”

Hysterical, morbid laughter
grabbed them both and refused to let go until tears rolled down their cheeks.
“Maybe they would have believed you if you had told them it was Chopin,” Rachel
said. She wiped her moist eyes.

Fear soon replaced the laughter,
and Danielle turned to Rachel. “I get scared moving from one room to the next.
I keep thinking he’s waiting for me in the hallway. Am I crazy?”

“Not at all,” Rachel said. She
took Danielle’s good hand in hers.

“Can I sit here for a little bit?”
Danielle asked.

“You can sit here forever if you
want, as long as you don’t mind me sitting here with you.”

Danielle eventually relayed the
true story of her bandaged fingers. Steve, her live-in boyfriend of a year,
prone to the occasional knock-you-down-and-kick-you-in-the-ribs, had come home
drunk from the bar. He accused Danielle of stealing fifty dollars from his
wallet and giving it to a secret boyfriend who didn’t exist.

Steve decided to exact his own
brand of warped justice. After he beat her, he broke three of her fingers, one
at a time. She went to the emergency room, and he went to jail, where the
police found the money in the front pocket of his jeans when they searched him.

Rachel shuddered as she thought
of the abuse Steve had heaped on Danielle. One month later, however, justice
found its way to Steve. While out on bail waiting for his court date, his
temper flared during a drunken moment at a bar, and he started a fight with
someone who retaliated with a knife.

With her tormentor no longer
alive, Danielle’s recovery quickened. By then, her friendship with Rachel had
grown to heights neither expected, but both welcomed. Piece by shattered piece,
Danielle wrangled the truth out of Rachel about her own life.

When the time came for Rachel to
move on, she made the mistake of going to see Danielle one last time, unable to
leave her without a goodbye. But Danielle refused to accept her goodbye, and
insisted on going with Rachel. Ever since, Rachel regretted telling Danielle
the truth, always fearful of the possible consequences of Danielle’s knowledge.

Danielle’s hand landed on
Rachel’s shoulder. “Are you going to be okay?” Danielle asked. “I mean, really
okay?”

“Of course I am. It’ll go away
in time, I’m sure.” Rachel yawned. “Against my better judgment, I think I’m
going to try to get some sleep.” She stood up and opened the screen door.

“Rachel.”

She turned around and looked at
her friend.

“It’s going to get better. I
promise you that.”

Rachel glanced at the gun, and
her grip tightened on the handle. “Some people say it has to get worse before
it can get better.”