Scott Nicholson - Disintegration

"How could he force you? What sort of power did he hold over you?"

Jacob shrugged. "He was a Wells."

"Did your brother ever have counseling?"

"No, but I did. Because of the blanking out. They even ran brain scans. Dad thought it was for something else. Adjustment problems, or whatever the guidance counselor at school called it. Like he'd ever notice a difference."

"Ah," Rheinsfeldt said, with a knowing smile, confident her profession had successfully addressed Jacob's earlier problems. "So which fugue bothered you?"

"The one where I came awake in the barn. Joshua was standing there holding a bloody hatchet. There were six hens scattered around the floor of the barn. Joshua said I'd gone crazy and chopped their heads off. My hands were coated with blood. One of the hens wasn't dead yet, and it scratched its way across the dirty hay, one wing drooping to the ground. Its head lay at my feet, the eyes blinking at me as I watched the light fade out of them. And I can't understand why I'd ever do such a thing." Jacob looked at his hands as if the chicken blood was still slick on his fingers.

"Repressed memory," the doctor said. "People often block out traumatic events. It's the brain's way of protecting itself. Protecting us from ourselves, one might say."

"Anyway, once I got away from Dad and Joshua, everything was wonderful. I met Renee and she allowed me to be myself. I know it sounds corny, but once I got some distance, I began to miss Kingsboro."

"Did your father approve of Renee?"

"Once he figured out she would set me on the path to success. His idea of success. Real estate development, civic pride, big shot dreams, and money. Lots of money."

"Yet you don't resent your wife? After all, it sounds like she had the same kind of power over you that Joshua had, and your father had, only she used it in a more constructive manner."

Renee didn't like the doctor's shrewd lick of the lips. Her power over Jacob was unreliable. Love could only work so much magic. After that, all she had was words.

And the threat of secrets.

But Jacob didn't follow the doctor down that path of reasoning. "I would be nothing without Renee. After Christine-after that first tragedy-we really pulled together. We decided to dedicate the rest of our lives to making Mattie happy. Like maybe if we loved her twice as much, somehow Christine's short life wouldn't have been completely wasted."

Renee pulled a tissue from the box on the table. She was glad it was unscented, though some of the room's smell had settled into the fibers. She wiped her eyes and nose, determined not to break down. This was for Jake. She didn't need to add drama.

"And after Mattie died?" the doctor said, visibly taking measure of the dampness in Jacob's eyes. "After our session?"

"I lost it," Jacob said. "The drinking, avoiding Renee, shirking my business responsibilities. Pretty much everything I worked for and believed in was gone."

"And you were angry?"

"Damned right."

"And you needed someone to blame?"

"Sure."

"He blamed me," Renee said. "And it was partly my fault. If I had gone to Mattie's room with him, maybe together we could have saved her."

"No," Jacob said. "We have to move past that. It was just an awful, terrible accident. I'm sorry."

She wanted to trust him, wanted to believe he was back to his regular self. The Jacob he'd promised to be, the one who would remake Kingsboro in his image. But she had to know where his loyalty really lay, and who had the most power over him.

"Joshua's back in town," she said to Rheinsfeldt. "And I'm afraid Jacob's fugue states are coming back, too."

Rheinsfeldt's mouth opened in either surprise or pleasure. She stood on her thick legs and crossed to the telephone, pressed a button and spoke toward it. "Judy, cancel my next appointment. Thank you."

Then the doctor returned to the couch, plucked the unlit cigarette, and puffed on it as if frustrated by the lack of smoke. She faced Renee. "Tell us all about it."

Jacob chose the Dodge Ram pickup truck over the Mercedes. The truck projected a blue-collar, hands-on attitude. He'd tried to talk Renee into getting a new car, but she said they should be frugal for a while. Otherwise, people might talk.

He'd had some money left over even after replacing what he'd embezzled from the M amp; W accounts. He'd had to concoct a few receipts by creating dummy subcontracting firms, landscapers and plumbers and excavators, the same companies he'd used to drain off most of Donald Meekins' money in the first place. And then there was the payoff to Joshua…

But now he was out of the red and ready to unleash the bulldozers on a sleepy Kingsboro.

It was September, a prime month for groundbreaking in the mountains. He leaned against his truck, which had a fine sprinkling of red dust on its black hood. This side of the hill overlooking the old part of town would yield maybe a dozen houses, and the view would add tens of thousands of dollars to the asking prices. One of the homes was already under construction, log cabin kits with lots of glass to catch the southern exposure. The subdivision road was cut and graveled, and chain saws ripped the air as workers cleared the adjoining lots. The well hadn't been drilled yet, so no water lines were connected. Two fifty-five gallon drums of water stood by the housing site for use by the block masons. The work crew was Mexican, dark-faced and solemn, shouting to one another over the noise of their machines. Jacob appreciated the Wells tradition he'd carried on, employing immigrant workers who were there on temporary visas. He didn't care if their papers were in order. They worked under the table, for cash, with none of the onerous paperwork.

He looked over the sprawling valley below. Kingsboro's western end consisted of flat and low buildings. The hospital rose above the urban skyline to the east, along with the Holiday Inn that Jacob thought of as his own creation. A new strip mall was being built along the main thoroughfare, the work of some outfit from Texas. Jacob wasn't threatened by it, though. Four thousand square feet of floor space, four storefronts, nothing major. Probably end up as a craft shop, a Christian bookstore, a laundromat, and an investment agency. Besides, they were building out, not up, and Jacob knew his real mark would be made by adjusting the skyline. Right now, the First Baptist Church was the highest structure in Kingsboro, eighty feet if you counted the steeple. Warren Wells had won the contract by becoming a member of the congregation the instant he'd heard the church was collecting tithes for a building fund.

"What do you think, Jacob?" Donald asked. Donald rarely visited the field sites, preferring the controlled environment of his office. He'd been pleased to have his partner back, because they both knew that Donald would never survive if he had to deal with real people, those who had to work with their hands and lived from paycheck to paycheck. He enjoyed the suit crowd, the financiers and bankers and attorneys. But lately he'd taken a much greater interest in the company's enterprises on the ground level.

"We should get this subdivision wrapped up by October," Jacob said.

"I've already got some people lined up to buy."

"Good, because we can use that capital to get some other things rolling. I feel a hot streak coming on."

"Hope it lasts the winter, but I'm ready to get back to the air-conditioned office." Donald wiped at his brow. The sun was glaring, though the seasonal humidity had yet to settle in the Southern Appalachians. Donald's jacket and tie were out of place on the scarred stretch of earth.

"There," Jacob said, pointing to a mixed stand of evergreens and hardwoods across the valley. A two-lane ribbon of asphalt wound up the slope and few roofs were visible through the canopy, but most of the mountain was undeveloped.