Public Secrets by Nora Roberts
“Thanks. It’s a beautiful morning.”
“Mmmm. I couldn’t sleep through it.” She chose a chair beside Emma. “Are we the only ones up?”
“Yes.” She sipped at the coffee.
“Traveling makes me restless. I imagine you find a lot here to photograph.”
Emma hadn’t picked up a camera in more than a year, and was sure Katherine was aware of it. “It’s a beautiful spot.”
“A change from New York.”
“Yes.”
“Would you rather I went away?”
“No, I’m sorry.” Emma’s fingers began to tap against her mug. “I didn’t mean to be rude.”
“But I make you uncomfortable.”
“Your profession does.”
Katherine stretched out her legs to rest her ankles against the bottom rail. “I’m here as a friend, not as a doctor.” She waited, watching a gull soar out to the water. “But I wouldn’t be a good friend, or a good doctor, if I didn’t try to help.”
“I’m fine.”
“You look fine. Not all wounds show though, do they?”
Emma looked at her then, calm and passionless. “Perhaps not, but they say time takes care of that.”
“If that were true, I’d be out of business. Your parents are concerned, Emma.”
“They needn’t be. I don’t want them to be.”
“They love you.”
“Drew’s dead,” Emma said. “He can’t hurt me anymore.”
“He can’t beat you anymore,” Katherine agreed. “But he can still hurt you.” She lapsed into silence, sipping her coffee and watching the waves. “You’re too polite to tell me to go to hell.”
“I’m thinking about it.”
With a light laugh, Katherine turned her head. “One day I’ll tell you about all the rude and revolting things Stevie pulled on me. You might come close, but I doubt you could match him.”
“Do you love him?”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to marry him?”
Thrown a bit off stride, Katherine lifted one shoulder. “Ask me again in six months. Bev tells me you’re seeing someone named Michael.”
“He’s a friend.”
I love you, Emma.
“A friend,” she repeated as she set the coffee aside.
“A detective, isn’t he? The son of the man who investigated your brother’s murdér.” Taking Emma’s silence in stride, Katherine continued. “It’s strange how life runs in circles, isn’t it? Makes us feel a bit like a puppy chasing his own tail. I’d just finished a miserable divorce when I met Stevie. My ego was belly-down, and my opinion of men…Well, let’s just say I found certain varieties of slugs more attractive. I detested Stevie on sight. That was personal. Professionally I was determined to help him, and get him out of my hair. Now here we are.”
Though she no longer wanted it, Emma picked up the mug again and sipped the cooling coffee. “Did you feel as though you’d failed?”
“With my marriage?” Katherine kept her tone easy. It was a question she’d wondered if Emma would ask. “Yes. And I had. But then people fail all the time. The hard part isn’t even admitting it, it’s accepting it.”
“I failed with Drew, I accept that. Is that what you want me to say?”
“No. I don’t want you to say anything unless you need to.”
“I failed myself.” She sprang up, slamming her mug on the little redwood table. “All those months, I failed myself. Is that the right answer?”
“Is it?”
On an oath, Emma turned to the rail. “I don’t want to do this. If I’d wanted a psychiatrist, I could have had a dozen by now.”
“You know, you made quite an impression on me the first time I saw you. You were about to storm out of Stcvie’s hospital room after giving him the dressing-down I’d been dying to give him. He didn’t want help, either.”
“I’m not Stevie.”
“No, you’re not.” Katherine rose then. She wasn’t as tall as Emma, but when her voice grew crisp, she projected total authority. “Would you like me to quote you statistics on how many women are abused every year? I believe it runs about one every eighteen seconds in this country. Surprised?” she asked when Emma stared at her. “Did you want to feel as if you were the only member of an exclusive club? How about how many of them stay with their abusers? It isn’t always because they don’t have friends or family who would help them. It isn’t always because they’re poor or uneducated. They’re afraid, their self-respect has been shattered. They’re ashamed, they’re confused. For every one who finds help, there are a dozen more who don’t. You’re alive, Emma, but you haven’t survived it. Not yet.”
“No, I haven’t.” Emma spun around. Her eyes were damp, but there was fury behind them. “I have to live with it every day. Do you think talking about it helps, finding excuses, choosing reasons? What difference does it make why it happened? It happened. I’m going for a walk.” She raced down the steps and headed toward the surf.
KATHERINE WAS A patient woman. For two days she said nothing, made no reference to the talk she and Emma had had. She waited, while Emma kept a polite distance.
The days were anything but uneventful. Because it was her first trip to the States, Stevie wanted to show Katherine everything. They spent hours sightseeing, taking in all the tourist spots from the walk of the stars to Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm. There were clubs in the evening. Sometimes they went alone, sometimes as a group. She liked best the nights they spent at home, with Stevie sitting for hours making love to his guitar.
But she thought incessantly about Emma. Stevie understood —perhaps that was why Katherine had fallen in love with him—that she had to help, even when help was rejected.
She took her chances when she heard Emma go downstairs before dawn one morning. Following her down, Katherine found all the lights shining. Emma was in the kitchen, sitting at the breakfast bar and staring out the dark window.
“I wanted some tea,” Katherine said easily and walked to the stove. “I always find it comforting when I wake this early.” She didn’t comment on the tears drying on Emma’s cheeks, but busied herself with cups and saucers. “I admire your mother. The way she adds a few touches and makes the kitchen the coziest room in the house. With mine, I always feel as though I’m standing in someone else’s closet.”
She measured out tea in a painted pot shaped like a cow.
“Stevie took me through the Universal Studios tour yesterday afternoon. Have you ever been?” She waited only a beat for Emma’s response, then continued. “I got a close-up look at Jaws and wondered why the film had terrified me. But then it’s all image and illusion.” She poured the boiling water into the pot and let the tea steep. “The little tram rode by Norman Bates’s house—you know, from Psycho. It looks exactly the same, just what you’d expect, but without the terror. It seems when you lift something out of context, even something frightening, it loses power. It becomes just an odd little house or a mechanical fish.”
“Life isn’t the same as films.”
“No, but I’ve always thought there were interesting parallels. Would you like cream?”
“No. No, thank you.” She was silent while Katherine poured the tea. Then the words came out before she could stop them. “Sometimes it’s as though the time I spent with Drew was a film. Something I can look at, detached. And then, on mornings like this when I wake up before the light, I think I’m back in New York, in the apartment, and he’s sleeping beside me. I can almost hear him breathing in the dark. Then the rest, these last months, are the film. Docs that make me crazy?”
“No. It makes you a woman who lived through a terrible ordeal.”
“But he’s gone. I know he’s gone. Why should I still be afraid?”
“Are you?”
She couldn’t keep her hands still. She poked and pushed at items on the counter. A wine glass that hadn’t been put away from the night before, a bowl of fresh fruit, the sugar bowl that
“He used to play tricks. After I’d told him about Darren, everything I remembered, everything I felt. He would get out of bed after I was asleep.” It was all rushing out now, unstoppable. “He’d put on that song, the one that was playing the night Darren was killed. Then he’d call me, whispering my name over and over so that I’d wake in the dark hearing it. I’d always try to turn on the light, but he would have pulled out the plug so I would just sit there in bed, begging it to stop. Once I started screaming, he would come back. He would tell me it was all a dream. Now when I have the nightmares, I lie there in bed, frozen, terrified he’s going to open the door and tell me it was all a dream.”
“You had a nightmare tonight?”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell me about it?”
“They’re always basically the same. It’s the night Darren was killed. I wake up just as I did. The hallway’s dark, the music playing, and I’m afraid. I can hear him crying. Sometimes I get to the door, and Drew’s there. Sometimes it’s someone else, but I don’t know who.”
“Do you want to know?”
“Now I do, when I’m awake and I feel safe. But during the dream I don’t. I feel as though I’ll die if I do, if he touches me.”
“You feel threatened by this man?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know it’s a man?”
“I…” She hesitated. The dark was lightening to gray. Because the window was open she could hear the early gulls, like children crying. “I don’t know, but I’m sure it is.”
“Are you threatened by men, Emma, because of what Drew did to you?”
“I’m not afraid of Da, or Stevie. I’ve never been afraid of Johnno or P.M. I couldn’t be.”
“And Michael?”
She picked up her tea for the first time, drinking it cold. “I’m not afraid he’d hurt me.”
“But you are afraid?”
“That I wouldn’t be able to—” She broke off, shaking her head. “This doesn’t have anything to do with Michael. It’s me.”
“It’s natural to be wary of a physical relationship, Emma, when your last experience brought only pain and humiliation. Intellectually you know that those aren’t the purposes, or the usual result, of intimacy, but intellect and emotion run on different tracks.”
Emma nearly smiled. “Are you saying the nightmares are a result of sexual repression?”
“I’m sure Freud would,” Katherine said mildly. “But then I’m half convinced the man was a lunatic. I’m just exploring possibilities.”
“I think we can rule Michael out. He’s never asked me to have sex with him.”
Not make love with, Katherine noted, but have sex with. She would file that for later. “Do you want him to?”
Now she did smile. Dawn had come, and with it, the safety of morning. “I’ve often wondered if psychiatrists are just gossips.”
“Okay, we’ll pass on that one. Can I make a suggestion?”
“All right.”
“Get your camera, go out and take pictures today. Drew took a number of things from you. Why don’t you prove to yourself that he didn’t take everything?”
EMMA WASN’T SURE why she took Katherine’s advice. She could think of nothing she wanted to photograph. People had always been her favorite subject, but she’d shied away from them for so long. Still she had to admit it felt good to have the camera in her hand, to toy with lenses, to plan a particular shot.
She spent the morning focusing on palm trees and buildings. The shots wouldn’t win any prizes, she knew, but the mechanics of photography were relaxing. By noon she’d used up two rolls and wondered why she’d waited so long to enjoy something she loved.
She wasn’t sure why she pointed the car in the direction of Michael’s house. It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon, too pretty to spend alone. She hadn’t taken a picture of him since that first one years before. Conroy would make an interesting subject. Those were all easy excuses. She settled on them as she pulled up in front of his house.
Though his car was there, he didn’t answer for so long she thought she’d missed him. The dog had begun to bark on her first knock and now could be heard howling and scratching on the other side of the door. She heard Michael swear at him and grinned.
The moment he opened the door she knew she’d awakened him. It was past noon, but his eyes were heavy and unfocused. He wore only a pair of jeans, obviously tugged on hastily and still half zipped. He dragged a hand over his face and back into his hair.
“Emma?”
“Yes. I’m sorry, Michael. I should have called.”
He blinked against the sunlight. “Is something wrong?”
“No. Listen, I’ll go on. I was just out riding around.”
“No, come on in.” He reached for her hand as he glanced over his shoulder. “Shit.”
“Michael, really, it’s a bad time. I can just—” She’d stepped over the threshold. The dim light had her narrowing her eyes, “Oh my.” She couldn’t think of anything else. The living room looked as though it had been run over by a group of particularly vicious elves. “Have you been robbed?”
“No.” He was too groggy to worry about appearances and took her arm to drag her back to the kitchen. The dog continued to bark and leap in circles around them.
“You must have had a party,” she decided and felt a bit miffed that he hadn’t asked her to come.
“No. Please God, let there be coffee,” he muttered, pushing through the cupboards.
“Here.” She found the can of Maxwell House in the sink with a bag of potato chips. “Would you like me to—”
“No.” He brushed her aside. “I can make the damn coffee. Conroy, if you don’t shut up I’m going to tie your tongue around your neck.” In defense, he took the chips and set the bag on the floor for the dog to enjoy. “What time is it?”
Emma cleared her throat. She decided it would be unwise to point out that there was a clock on the coffee maker. “About twelve-thirty.”
He was scowling at the coffee scoop in his hand. Obviously, he’d lost track. As he began to add more, Emma lifted her camera and shot. “I’m sorry,” she said when he glared at her. “It’s reflex.”
He said nothing, but turned to root through the cupboards again. His mouth felt as though he’d dined on chalk. There was a jazz combo jamming gleefully in his head. He was sure his eyes had swollen to the size of golf balls, and, he discovered, he was out of fucking cereal.
“Michael…” Emma trod carefully, not because she was intimidated, but because she was deathly afraid she would laugh. “Would you like me to fix you some breakfast?”
“I can’t find any.”
“Sit down.” She had to clear her throat again as she pushed him to a chair. “We’ll start with coffee. Where are your cups?”
“In the kitchen.”
“Okay.” After a search, she found a package of Styrofoam cups, jumbo size. She poured the coffee. It looked as thick as mud and just as appetizing, but he guzzled it. As the caffeine kicked in, he saw her with her head in his refrigerator.
She looked great, absolutely great, with a little cropped blouse and breezy summer pants in pale blue. Her hair was loose. He liked it best loose so he could imagine running his hands through it. But what was she doing with her head in his refrigerator?
“What are you doing?”
“Fixing you breakfast. You have one egg. How would you like it?”
“Cooked.” He drained the cup and hobbled back for another dose.
“Your bologna’s green, and there’s something in here that might be alive.” She took out the egg, a hunk of cheese, and a heel of bread. “I’ve never seen things move in a refrigerator before. Got a skillet?”
“I think so. Why?”
“Never mind.” She found it eventually and with a little invention managed to fix him an open-face egg-and-cheese sandwich. She settled on a flat ginger ale and sat across from him as he ate. “Michael