“You don’t have to go on my account,” Mark said. “I was getting ready to leave.”
“I’m sorry,” Danielle said, her energetic voice deflated. “I didn’t mean to make you leave.”
“You didn’t, don’t worry,” Mark said.
“Oh good. Then I guess I’ll see you around soon,” she said. She raised her eyebrows and directed her last words at Rachel. “At least I hope I do.”
After Danielle walked into the living room, Rachel smiled at Mark, as if the simple gesture could explain her best friend to him. She turned and led him outside into the night air, which had chilled even more while they stayed warm inside. She wrapped her arms around herself and stepped down from the porch.
“I’m sorry about Danielle,” she said when they reached his truck. “She gets paranoid at the littlest things. She must have gotten scared because she didn’t recognize your truck and didn’t know you were coming over tonight.”
“I’d be a little paranoid myself if my house had a recent break-in.”
Rachel bit down on her bottom lip and wrung her hands in front of her waist. “You know, earlier, I didn’t...” She took a deep breath and tried again. “Well, I didn’t mean, you know—”
“You are so damn cute when you’re nervous,” Mark said.
She pursed her lips and dropped her hands to her sides. “I’m not nervous. I...I don’t know what happened earlier, and I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“Yes, you did.”
Embarrassed, Rachel laughed and looked away from him. He laid his hand on her face, and she lifted her eyes. His thumb traced her lips. She didn’t want this, didn’t need this, but she couldn’t help herself. Mark lowered his head, and she smiled when his lips touched hers.
Chapter Four
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.
Chapter Five
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 th
e 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.
Chapter Six
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.”
Chapter Seven
The dream haunted Rachel the rest of the night. After going back to bed, she laid awake and stared at the ceiling with tears spillin
g onto her pillow. For two months, night after night the dream visited her, and with it, pain that rubbed her soul raw.
Rachel spent the next morning contemplating the dream and rolling its images around in her mind. Danielle noticed her struggle to stop the nightmare from ruling her days, and offered sympathetic support. But if Danielle saw her downward spiral, Mark would soon recognize it as well.
During her afternoon class at the shelter, she contemplated leaving Mark. An inevitable outcome to their relationship, they had maybe another week together. Until then, she would make sure he remained ignorant to keep their relationship intact while it lasted. The thought of leaving him still scared her almost as much as what would happen if she stayed. If she had a choice, she would stay with him forever.
Rachel walked from the back exit of the women’s shelter to her car. She slid into the seat and turned on the ignition, ignoring the pain in her screaming muscles. She had pushed herself too hard at the gym before class, and she made a mental note not to do it again. The class had also been tough, and one of the women took her down while practicing self-defense techniques. Even though the progress of all the women made Rachel happy, the bruises forming beneath her skin told her she needed to take it easy.
The new girl, and miracle at the shelter, came to class, having recovered from her husband’s final attack. Her husband had stabbed her eight times in her abdomen with a slender paring knife. The random impalements missed all major organs, but caused her to lose their unborn child.
As the others often did, she came up to Rachel after class and asked a timid question. Twirling the ends of her unruly red hair, she asked Rachel how she could defend herself against a knife attack.
Though the question never bothered her in the past, Rachel faltered with her words, and a thin scar on the front of her neck burned with phantom pain.
I’d love the chance to use this knife on you.
She had thrown the voice out of her mind and told the girl they would discuss her question in the next class. Rachel’s neck continued to throb all the way home.