Nora Roberts - The Hollow

“I did? I did,” he remembered. “Wait.” He crossed to the doors, slid them closed. “Do you want anything?”

“No.”

“Okay.” His juggling-clear head was fogged up again thanks to her legs, so he went to his minifridge and took out a Coke. “I thought, since there’s some time this morning, we should compare notes about the dream. Let’s sit down.”

She took one of the visitors’ chairs, and Fox took the other. “You go first,” she told him.

When he’d finished, he got up, opened his little fridge, and took out a bottle of Diet Pepsi. When he put it into her hand and she just stared at it, he sat again. “That’s what you drink, right? That’s what’s stocked in the fridge at your place.”

“Yes. Thanks.”

“Do you want a glass?”

She shook her head. The simple consideration shouldn’t have surprised her, and yet it did. “Do you keep Diet Sprite in there for Alice?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“Why not,” she murmured, then drank. “I was in the woods, too,” Layla began. “But it wasn’t just me. She was in my head, or I was in hers. It’s hard to tell. I felt her despair, her fear, like they were mine. I… I’ve never been pregnant, never had a child, but my body felt different.” She hesitated, then told herself she’d been able to give Cybil the details. She could give them to Fox. “My breasts were heavy, and I understood, I knew , I’d nursed. In the same way I’d experienced her rape. It was that same kind of awareness. I knew where I was going.”

She paused again, shifted so she could look at his face. He had a way of listening, she thought, so that she knew he not only heard every word, but also understood what came behind them. “I don’t know those woods, have only been in them that one time, but I knew where I was, and I knew I was going to the pond. I knew why. I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to go there, but I couldn’t stop myself. I couldn’t stop her. I was screaming inside because I didn’t want to die, but she did. She couldn’t stand it anymore.”

“Couldn’t stand what?”

“She remembered. She remembered the rape, how it felt, what was in her. She remembered, Fox, the night in the clearing. He-it-controlled her so that she accused Giles Dent of her rape, denounced him and Ann Hawkins as witches, and she assumed they were dead. She couldn’t live with the guilt. He told her to run.”

“Who?”

“Dent. In the clearing, just before the fire, he looked at her-he pitied her, he forgave her. He told her to run. She ran. She was only sixteen. Everyone thought the child was Dent’s, and pitied her for that. She knew, but was afraid to recant. Afraid to speak.”

It pierced her as she spoke of it. That fear, that horror and despair. “She was afraid all the time, Fox, and mad with that fear, that guilt, those memories by the time she delivered the child. I felt it all, it was all swimming inside her-and me. She wanted to end it. She wanted to take the child with her, and end that, too, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it.”

Those alert and compassionate eyes narrowed on Layla’s face. “She thought about killing the baby?”

As she nodded, Layla drew air in slowly. “She feared it, and hated it, and still she loved it. It, not she. I mean-”

“Hester thought of the baby as ‘it.’ ”

“Yes. Yes. But still, she couldn’t kill the baby. If she had-I thought, when I understood that, if she had, I wouldn’t be here. She gave me life by sparing the child, and now she was going to kill me because I was trapped with her. We walked, and if she heard me she must’ve thought I was one of the voices driving her mad. I couldn’t make her listen, couldn’t make her understand. Then I saw you.”

She paused to drink again, to steady herself. “I saw you, and I thought, Thank God. Thank God, he’s here. I could feel the stones in my hand when she picked them up, feel the weight of them dragging down the pockets of the dress we wore. There was nothing I could do, but I thought-”

“You thought I’d stop her.” So had he, Fox mused. Save the girl.

“You were calling out, telling her it wasn’t her fault. You ran to her-to me. And for an instant, I think she heard you. I think, I felt, she wanted to believe you. Then we were in the water, going down. I couldn’t tell if she fell or jumped, but we were under the water. I told myself not to panic. Don’t panic. I’m a good swimmer.”

“Captain of the swim team.”

“I told you that?” She managed a small laugh, wet her throat again. “I told myself I could get to the surface, even with the weight, I’m a strong swimmer. But I couldn’t. Worse, I couldn’t even try. It wasn’t just the stones weighing me down.”

“It was Hester.”

“Yes. I saw you in the water, diving down, and then…” She closed her eyes, pressed her lips hard together.

“It’s okay.” Reaching over, he closed a hand over hers. “We’re okay.”

“Fox, I don’t know if it was her, or if I… I don’t know. We grabbed on to you.”

“You kissed me.”

“We killed you.”

“We all came to a bad end, but it didn’t actually happen. However vivid and sensory, it wasn’t real. It was a hard way for you to get inside Hester Deale’s head, but now we know more about her.”

“Why were you there?”

“Best guess? We’ve got this link, you and me. I’ve shared dreams with Cal and Gage before. Same thing. But there was more this time, another level of connection. In the dream, I saw you, Layla. Not Hester. I heard you. That’s interesting. Something to think about.”

“When you juggle.”

He grinned. “Couldn’t hurt. We need to-”

His intercom buzzed. “Mr. Edwards is here.”

Fox rose, flipped the switch on his desk. “Okay, give me a minute.” He turned back to Layla as she rose. “We need some more time on this. My last appointment today’s at-”

“Four. Mrs. Halliday.”

“Right. You’re good. If you’re not booked, we could go upstairs after my last appointment, do some work on this.”

It was time, Layla thought, to suit up. “All right.”

He walked to the doors with her, slid them open. “We could have some dinner,” he began.

“I don’t want you to go to any trouble.”

“I have every delivery place within a five-mile radius on speed dial.”

She smiled a little. “Good plan.”

He walked out with her to where two hundred and twenty pounds of Edwards filled a chair in reception. His belly, covered in a white T-shirt, pillowed over the waistband of his jeans. His scrubby gray hair was topped by a John Deere gimme cap. He pushed to his feet, held out a hand to clasp the one Fox offered.

“How you doing?” Fox asked.

“You tell me.”

“Come on back, Mr. Edwards. We’ll talk about it.”

Works outside, Layla decided as Fox led his client back. A farmer maybe, or a builder, a landscaper. A couple clicks over sixty, and discouraged.

“What’s his story, Alice? Can you tell me?”

“Property dispute,” Alice said as she gathered up envelopes. “Tim Edwards has a farm a few miles south of town. Developers bought some of the land that runs with it. Survey puts some eight acres of Tim’s land over the line. Developer wants it, so does Tim. I’m going to run to the post office.”

“I can do that.”

Alice wagged a finger. “Then I wouldn’t get the walk or the gossip. I’ve got notes here on a trust Fox is putting together. Why don’t you draft that out while I’m gone?”

Alone, Layla sat, got to work. Within ten minutes, she wondered why people needed such complicated, convoluted language to say the straightforward. She picked her way through it, answered the phone, made appointments. When Alice came back, she had questions. She noted that Edwards walked out looking considerably less discouraged.