Elane Osborn - A Season To Believe

“Ms. Zeffarelli,” he said, taking her hand into his as she reached out. “It’s good to see you again.”

“Call me Zoe, please,” she said with a smile and just the faintest hint of a French accent. “I am sorry you and I did not get to know each other better last year. But I am happy to see that you have recovered so nicely from your horrible ordeal. And now, according to our little friend here, it seems we will finally have a chance to work together.”

Matt nodded, then glanced at Jane. Her eyes no longer looked haunted. Instead her eyebrows dipped beneath the uneven fringe of her bangs in an expression he recognized as pure determination. Her eyes locked with his briefly before she turned to Zoe.

“Well,” Jane said, “I guess we’d better get down to it.”

Zoe lifted thick black eyebrows. “You are suddenly excited now, after months of insisting you want nothing to do with your past?”

Jane shook her head tightly. “Hardly. I just want to get this over with. And I assumed you’d want to work with this memory, if you can really call it that, while it’s still fresh in my mind.”

“True.” The woman nodded. “But I would prefer that you be at least a leetle bit relaxed when we attempt this thing. I suggest we all sit down and have a cup of tea, a cookie or two, and a tiny chat before we get down to business.”

A half hour later, Jane sat in the center of the overstuffed sofa, with Zoe in the delicate chair the woman had proudly rescued from a thrift shop years before, and Matt looking right at home in the leather wing chair.

Although Jane had suspected that the combination of Zoe’s strong tea and a sugar-laden sweet—make that several sugar-laden sweets—would render her even more keyed up, she was surprised to find that she was actually feeling calm. Maybe all that stomach-churning angst she’d experienced upon arriving at the house hadn’t been due to dread. Perhaps she’d simply been hungry. After all, she’d actually only ingested a bite or two of that cookie in Maxwell’s cellar, along with a few tiny sips of that eggnog coffee.

“The tea too strong, ma petite?”

Jane turned to Zoe with a smile. “It’s always too strong. But loaded with milk and sugar, it is just perfect.”

To prove her point and clear her palate of the remembered eggnog, Jane lifted her teacup and drained it of the bittersweet, milky contents. She then returned the cup to its delicate saucer and said, “In fact, I think I’d like a second cup.”

Zoe’s smile was gentle and she slowly shook her head. “I think not. I think it is now time for you to tell me what happened to you at Maxwell’s. But first, get yourself comfortable. Take a deep breath.”

As Jane leaned into the sofa cushions at her back, she glanced from Zoe to Matt. His expression was encouraging. Zoe wore a similar expression as she spoke again.

“Draw the breath deep into your belly, hold it, then release it very slowly.”

Jane nodded. She knew the routine, had followed it each time Zoe worked with her in the hospital. All to no avail. Not one hypnosis session had brought forth even the tiniest scrap of memory.

“Jane.”

Zoe’s sharp tone broke into Jane’s errant thoughts. She looked over to see that her friend was frowning.

“You are not listening to me, are you.”

Jane shook her head. “I’m sorry. Let’s try again.”

This time Jane focused carefully on every word Zoe said, followed each direction carefully. After breathing deeply several more times, she closed her eyes as she was bidden and pictured herself back in Maxwell’s Department Store. As instructed, she let herself recall the slightly perfumed air, the weight of her purse on her shoulder, the hard floor beneath the thin soles of her shoes. Then, when Zoe asked her to, Jane let her imagination put the image into motion, reaching toward the brightly colored strips of fabric draped from a metal rack sitting atop a glass counter.

“I’m examining a burgundy-and-tan plaid scarf,” she reported.

“How does it feel?”

“Soft,” Jane replied. “Cold and silky at the same time. Like the ocean.”

The moment Jane uttered that last word, the image on her closed eyelids changed. The fluorescent-lit department store was replaced by the sight of a wave curling toward her. No longer did hard flooring punish her feet. Instead, moist sand supported every arch and curve, and icy water slipped over her toes.

“I’m at the beach,” she said.

“And what do you see?”

“White foam at my feet, pale green waves breaking farther out. Beyond that, sunbeams dancing on the dark blue sea. A cloudless blue sky above. The beach.”

“Hold that image,” Zoe urged. “Relax, then see what you can make out in your peripheral vision.”

Jane did as she was asked. To her left there seemed to be nothing but foam sliding onto the damp sand. But— “I see cliffs, on my right.”

“Close, or far?”

“Far, I think. I can only see the part where the cliff juts into the sea, not where it meets the shore.”

“Do you know the name of this beach?”

Jane waited, feeling again the cold water over her toes. Nothing about the image changed. The same wave broke in exactly the same way it had a moment before, like some instant replay. No knowledge accompanied either the sensation of silky salt water or the image of curling, foaming green-blue water.

“No. I don’t,” Jane replied.

“All right,” Zoe said. “Focus on your other senses.”

As if by magic, Jane found she could suddenly smell salt—the briny scent that she knew, somehow, belonged to seaweed drying on the sand. “I smell the sea,” she said. “And I hear birds—gulls crying and screeching and…”

Jane frowned as another sound intruded. “I hear music. It’s too soft to identify the tune. It might be coming from a radio playing on the beach behind me. No. It’s coming from above me, louder now. I can almost make out the melody. It’s—”

Jane jerked straight up, her eyes flew open. Gone was the sun-sparkled water, the crashing waves, the cloudless blue sky. What she saw now was Zoe, regarding her with an expression that blended excitement with concern. The woman leaned forward in her chair.

“The song I heard was ‘Silver Bells,’” Jane said woodenly. “That was the tune playing on the department store sound system just before I harassed that salesgirl for rushing the Christmas season.”

“And that was the tune that pulled you out of that moment from the past,” Zoe said.

Every muscle in Jane’s body had constricted. Her heart was racing, her breath was shallow as she stared at Zoe. Focusing on the woman’s strong, angular features, she managed a stiff nod.

Zoe’s black eyebrows formed a worried frown. “Jane, you understand, do you not, that it was this memory that confused you so, made you think that it was not November, but May?”

“Yes.”

Jane wanted to say more, but at the moment it was all she could do keep from leaping to her feet, dashing up two flights of stairs to her attic apartment and shutting the door behind her.

“Why May?”

Matt’s question brought Jane’s attention back to him.

“Why did you think this particular sunny day was May?” he went on. “Why not July, or August? Or any other month, for that matter? This is, after all, California. Even up here in the northern regions, we have pockets of warmth all year long that draw people to the beach.”

Jane couldn’t answer. She knew only that her first thought upon hearing that music was that May was too early for Christmas tunes. She would have given that reply, if it weren’t for the strange, insidious panic now clamping her jaws shut, holding her body prisoner. She could only stare into Matt’s eyes, watch them darken as he moved from the chair to the floor next to her. Resting on one knee, he took her hands in his.