***
Still elated from the previous day, Frank bounded out of bed, washed and dressed, wolfed down the cheese and bread Alvin had left for him, and hurried out of the cottage. Automatically, he headed for the stream.
He couldn't wait to see Carrie again. His step was lighter than it had been in ages, and his heartbeat quickened with the anticipation of another day with her. For the first time in a very long time, Frank Donovan felt utterly and completely alive, and happy to be so. He was looking forward to life, to tomorrow, to all the tomorrows spread out before him.
Puffy clouds scuttled across a sky so blue it defied description. Birds sang in the trees, and insects moved busily among the flowers bordering the path. The trees swayed gracefully in the soft breeze. His skin felt deliciously warm from the hot sun beating down on him. Life was good again. Determinedly, he set the guilt aside—just for today. He would not let it consume him. Just for a while…
He rounded the hedgerow that shielded Clara's garden from the rest of the village. There, gazing silently over the stream, was Carrie. His heart skipped several beats. He stopped and drank in her beauty.
The sunlight turned her hair to fire. The breeze swept it back away from her face in burning waves. He had never seen anything quite as beautiful as Carrie. She took his breath away.
"Good morning," he said softly.
She started, as if she'd been deep in thought and he'd surprised her, and turned to face him. "Good morning."
Frank took a step toward her, but she backed away. Puzzled, he halted. She was wringing her hands, and her eyes were red and swollen from crying. Her whole body seemed to be on edge, ready to bolt at the least provocation. What had happened between last night and this morning? Worse yet, he knew that his presence was the cause of her edginess.
"Carrie?"
"No." She sobbed and shook her head. Holding up her hand, she backed still farther away from him. "Please don't touch me."
Totally confused, Frank took a step toward her, but stopped when he saw that, along with her tears, something else filled her eyes. Lurking in their green depths was stark fear.
"Carrie, what is it? What's wrong?"
She took a deep breath, as though trying to pull herself together, and then sat on the rock, her eyes averted from him.
Something was terribly wrong. His earlier elation was replaced by a very sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.
"Carrie? Please tell me what's wrong. What's happened?"
"I… I can't be with you anymore."
As if a fist had slammed into his gut, Frank fought for breath. Of everything she could have said, this was the last thing he'd expected.
"Why?"
She raised an anguished face to his. "Because I know who the faceless man is. I had another dream last night, and I still don't know what he looks like, but I'm certain of who he is."
Frank squatted on the grass at her feet. He didn't try to touch her, and he kept enough distance between them so as not to spook her.
Though he didn't really want to know, as if not speaking it would make it not so, he had to ask her. "Who is he?"
For the first time, she met his gaze head-on. More tears gathered in her eyes and then spilled over onto her pale cheeks. "He's… He's my husband." She blurted the last words as if to get them past her lips before she lost her nerve.
Frank rocked back on his heels, completely stunned by her words. "Your—"
He couldn't say it. He couldn't allow himself to believe that this woman, who had become so special to him, belonged to someone else. It just wasn't possible. But deep down he knew it
was
possible and that he'd subconsciously been hoping all along that, when she regained her memory, this would not be the case.
As though someone had pulled the plug from a sink filled with water, the happiness he'd felt upon waking drained away. In the space of time it took her to speak those few words, Frank's world had crumbled at his feet.
But this was not about him. Carrie was terrified, and the look on her face was one that mirrored the desolation lying in the pit of his stomach. He was not the only one hurting.
"So your memory came back." His voice sounded as dead as he felt inside.
"Not all of it. Only a few more bits and pieces."
Hope rose in him. He grabbed her shoulders. "Then maybe he's not your husband. Maybe it was just a crazy dream. Maybe he is someone else."
She didn't say anything. But she didn't have to. He could tell by her expression that she had already gone down the list of maybes and had rejected them all.
The weight of despair on his shoulders made him drop to the grass. "So what happens now? Will you be leaving the village?"
Carrie shook her head. "Clara said when it was time for me to leave, the mist would gather around Renaissance again." She waved her hand. "As you can see, the day is crystal clear. There must be more I need to know. Maybe when I finally see his face… "
Although Frank's brain had accepted what she'd been telling him, his heart refused. He couldn't lose her, too. Not now. Not when everything was turning around for them. Not after yesterday. He had to do something to stop the sharp pain ripping through him and blinding him to reason.
"Tell me about the dream. Maybe you're wrong, Carrie."
She knew she wasn't wrong. She'd thought about it all night until the sun rose over the trees. Nevertheless, leaving nothing out, she told him about the dream. When she got to the part about the man wanting her life, she saw the blood drain from Frank's face and heard his sharp intake of breath, followed by a string of subdued curses.
"So, what do you think?" she asked when she'd finished her recounting.
He shook his head. "I don't know. But what I do know is that the wedding gown proves nothing, and as long as that bastard has no face, you can't be sure who he is or how he's connected to you, if at all."
She wanted so much to believe him, but down deep, she knew he was wrong. This dream and what it had disclosed to her meant the end of them.
Chapter 13
Three weeks later, Alvin sat next to Emanuel on a fallen tree situated near the cliff above the village. The Elder was making Alvin uncomfortable. He just sat there, silent and waiting. Alvin knew what Emanuel was waiting for. He wanted Alvin to tell him why he hadn't talked to Frank about his demons. Not that Alvin had tried all that hard to get Frank to talk, but he didn't seem eager to talk to Alvin about demons or anything else. Frank was too busy with other pursuits. Namely, the woman Carrie.
"I wish they could find a way to be happy," Alvin finally said.
He didn't look at the Elder. He didn't want to see the condemnation on his face. He didn't want to be reminded that he'd failed in his task. He'd never failed Emanuel before and now that he had, he found it unbearable. And he knew why. If he made Frank confront his problems, Alvin feared he would have to confront his own.
After he'd left Ellie that day, he'd felt good. His burden seemed lighter, his determination to help Frank firmly planted in his mind. But as the days passed and he'd made no effort to talk with Frank, Alvin knew deep in his gut that he had not found total forgiveness for himself. He could not get past the idea that if he'd only come home when he should have… To do that, he would have to walk methodically through that horrible day again, as well as the aftermath of Alice's death.
The selfishness of his failure ate a hole in his heart.
"Happiness is a fleeting thing, Alvin. A man can be happy on the outside and dying on the inside." Alvin had to think for a moment before he realized Emanuel was referring to his prior statement about wishing Frank and Carrie could be happy.
There was no condemnation in Emanuel's voice, which made it all the more painful for Alvin. If only he would get mad at him instead of this calm acceptance of Alvin's failure. But that wasn't Emanuel's way.
"Right now, Frank has his problem buried behind a thin veil. Soon, very soon, that veil will rip wide open."
"I know," Alvin said quietly. "But how can I help him when I haven't been able to help myself?"
Emanuel turned his wise gaze on Alvin. "Haven't you?"
Alvin rose and walked to the edge of the precipice on which they sat. He looked down into the glen without seeing it. The scenario he'd found in his apartment played through his mind. Blood. All that blood. Alice's still body cradled in his arms. And the self-hatred rising up and consuming him. The hatred that would send him running from all he'd once thought so important.
"Why?" he asked the Elder. He swung on him like an enraged beast. His voice hissed from between his teeth. "Why did this happen to me, to Alice?"
Emanuel rose. His long robes stirred languidly around his robust body. "Why does anything happen, my friend? When you know the answer to that question, you will also find the answer to helping Frank. Look into your heart, Alvin. Faith and trust."
Alvin looked away, unable to stand the compassion he saw reflected in the Elder's kind face. "Just this once, why can't you give me a straight answer?" He made no effort to temper the harshness of his tone.
When Emanuel didn't reply, Alvin looked up to confront him. But the Elder had vanished. The only things that affirmed he'd even been there at all were the footprints and the drag marks from his long robe in the soft earth.
Left to himself, Alvin sank back on the fallen tree and buried his face in his hands. God, how he hated himself. If only he'd come home. If only the burglars had gone to the apartment next door or down the hall or down the street. If only…
Alvin brought his thoughts to a halt. He'd just wished his excruciating pain on someone else. What had become of him that he could have such terrible thoughts? When had his heart hardened into the stone that lay beneath his breast? When had he begun drowning himself in so much self-pity that he could actually wish his pain and suffering on some other innocent person?
When you blinded yourself to your fellow man, Alvin. When your pain became the center of your existence and the pain of those around you ceased to matter
.
The voice came from inside his head, but he recognized it immediately as Ellie's. Was she right? Had he become so absorbed in self-pity that he'd stopped seeing the pain that others suffered? Was that why he couldn't help Frank, didn't want to help Frank? Was he enjoying Frank's pain in some twisted way?
No. You've just become so fixated on your own suffering that you don't see the suffering of others. You took some positive steps toward that end. Don't stop now. Don't go backward. Open your heart, Alvin. Just forgiving yourself isn't enough. Learn to love yourself again, and you'll be able to empathize with others
.
Love himself
? How could he love a man who put more value on his business than on the woman he loved?
Open his heart
? He wasn't even sure he had a heart anymore.
As if checking to make sure, he placed his hand over the left side of his chest. A strong, steady beat pulsated against his palm. Okay, so he did have a heart. So what? All that proved was that he was alive. If that's what he could call this half existence he mimed from day to day.
He buried his face in his hands.
"Life has a way of stomping on a body's neck and holding their head to the ground until they can't breathe."
The familiar voice drew Alvin's head up sharply. Sitting beside him on the tree trunk was a woman, although it was hard to tell that she was a woman beneath the many layers of grimy rags she wore. Her rheumy, blue eyes twinkled merrily through a fringe of graying hair that had escaped the moth-eaten cap she'd jammed on her head. In her hand she held a sunflower. A smaller bunch of the same bright yellow flowers protruded from a packed grocery cart parked close beside her.
The last time he'd seen her or heard those words had been…
He looked around. He was no longer in the woods above the village. He was sitting on a bench in Central Park. The very bench where he'd first met…
"Irma?"
Her gap-toothed grin lit up her face. "One and the same," the Guide announced. "Good to see you again."
He blinked. "But we… "
The wrinkles in her brow deepened. She waved a hand encased in a fingerless glove as grimy as her clothes through the air. "That's not important. What's important is what has you looking so down and out."
Again, those were the same words she'd spoken the last time they'd met. Then it hit him. Irma had been sent to talk to him.
"Life," he told her.
"Ah. Life. Yup." She nodded and the gray hair flopped back and forth against her forehead. "It sure has a way of takin' all the damned fun outta livin' it, don't it?" She slapped Alvin on the shoulder with a strength that was unexpected, coming from a woman as frail looking as Irma, and then laughed at her own joke.
Despite his gloomy mood, Alvin smiled. This Irma was so different from the Irma he knew now as Meghan's mother, a woman who had taken over the duties of librarian in Tarrytown. The librarian Irma was well dressed, well spoken, and wouldn't have uttered a curse word if someone held a knife to her throat.
"Ah, we always think our life is the worst. But when you look around, there's those that have a hell of a lot less to be happy about than we do." She pointed a dirt-encrusted finger toward a group of people on the far side of the park. "See that elderly couple over there?"
Alvin followed the direction of Irma's finger. "The two sitting on the park bench beneath the tree?"
"Yup," he said distractedly.
She shifted her position so she was looking directly at Alvin. "Do you recognize them?"
Alvin had expected a repetition of their initial conversation years ago when he'd first met Irma, before Alvin had come to Renaissance. But this was not what he and Irma had talked about that day. That day they'd talked about his aching soul and his need to retreat from the world. Today, she seemed bent on a new form of attack.