The Edge of Recall Read online

  She shouldn’t have let her thoughts go there. Time was supposed to dull the memories, but the smell of the hospital room, the sad smiles of the nurses, the sounds of the machines still came back so vividly. Her mother’s bald head, nestled against the hospital pillow, her brown eyes luminous in her pale face. Tessa could almost feel her mother’s skeletal arms as she’d crawled onto the hospital bed beside her, an awkward teen and the woman she could not bear to lose.

  She made her way through the sparser woods surrounding the trailer and forced her thoughts onto a more positive course. Her mother had instilled the strength to be alone and the ability to value life—however long it lasted and whatever trials it held. Vanessa Young had taught her that death could be peaceful for a wounded creature buried in the backyard or a person who had lived as fully as she could in the time given her.

  But that didn’t help the person left behind.

  Her mother had delighted in the beauty of nature—delicate shells left behind when baby birds had flown, wild onions and herbs pulled straight from the earth. Tessa blinked back her tears. To block the painful connection to her mother, she had learned to create man-made structures: wood, steel, and concrete—Smith’s delight, but never really hers. Once she’d switched to landscape architecture, the fractured pieces of her life had come together—as much as they could.

  Her focus on labyrinths had concerned both Smith and Dr. Brenner for completely different reasons, but she knew there was something essentially healing in that for her. Never had she suspected Smith would react the way he had when she’d told him her plan, calling it a waste of her abilities. She’d had no way to explain how deeply she needed to reconnect with elements she might not understand, but that mattered nonetheless.

  She remembered so clearly his earnestly dissuading her, their arguments, and finally, the day she had approached the classroom door and heard him laughing with his friends. She didn’t have to hear to know the tone he’d used to express her vision, and the way they had looked away, clearing throats and waxing silent. She knew.

  She shoved the hurt down as she approached Smith gazing through the level toward the rod Bair held. She drove the emotion from her voice. “Don’t you already have a plot plan?” It was not ordinarily the architect’s responsibility.

  He drew back from the eyepiece. “Either this property had none, or the record’s been lost.”

  “And you’re not having a surveyor—”

  “Gaston wants me to do it.”

  “Isn’t that strange?”

  “Unusual. But I’m qualified.”

  “I just wonder why it all has to be so secret.”

  Smith planted his hands on his hips. “Tessa . . .”

  She raised a hand. “I know. They’re paying for privacy.” She looked across the field. “Will I be in your way if I walk the labyrinth?”

  “Can you give me one day?” He marked something on his clipboard. “I need Bair to concentrate.”

  She folded her arms at his offhand compliment. As though she’d actually distract either one of them. “You have one day. And then the grounds are mine.”

  Smith watched her go. She had developed a confident façade he found heartbreaking. With her natural assets it should have come easily; instead she worked inordinately hard to create the illusion. What had happened to make her so brittle? Other people had lost loved ones and not shattered.

  Bair cleared his throat, having left his post and come over. “Want to break for lunch?”

  Smith shook his head. “I told her we’d finish this up today.”

  “Sure you don’t want to . . .” He nodded his head the direction Tessa had gone.

  “To what?”

  “I don’t know, smooth things over.”

  “There’s nothing to smooth.”

  “And I’ve three eyes.”

  Smith frowned. “I allowed Tessa the last word and stroked her self-esteem. That was a successful exchange.” He would not let Bair guilt him into thinking otherwise.

  “Sooner or later you’ll have to deal with it.”

  “With what?”

  “Whatever the conflict is between you.”

  “There’s no conflict.”

  “Right. You forget I’ve seen every form of denial. On some it’s a goofy grin.” He mimicked it. “Others the angry brow. Yours is a congenial neutrality.”

  Smith scowled. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m just saying I know a bluff when I see one.”

  Smith spread his hands. “What am I faking?”

  “Your cool detachment.”

  Shaking his head, Smith planted his hands on his hips. “What business is it of yours?”

  “None. Unless you consider the toxic fallout from the interpersonal interactions. Why don’t you make your peace already?”

  “We’re working together, aren’t we?”

  “You’re on the same project.”

  “I convinced her to come. I hired her. She is on my team. Now we have work to do, so if your counseling session is over . . .”

  “Right.” Bair threw down his hands and lumbered back to his position.

  Smith noticed peripherally that Tessa had paused at the edge of the woods, where she moved among the trunks like a nymph, feeling the bark, even putting her nose to the wood and sniffing. She really was a nature hound. All right, then. Let her do the nature part.

  He had a project to program and a manual to build out of all the information he had to sift through. Situating the house advantageously was his primary focus at the moment, but Tessa could rest assured that her labyrinth would find its match in his upstairs window. Form followed function, and that part was already in his design. Still, it pleased him to coordinate his efforts with hers. Bair did not know what he was talking about.

  Deep in the recess, he held his head. They hadn’t gone away. He had given back their spyglass, but they’d been out with it again. When he slept, he felt them there—walking, talking, doing things they should not be doing . . . there.

  Another one had come. She walked differently, watching, listening, sniffing. Like him. But her eyes didn’t hurt. The sun didn’t send pain into her head, didn’t scorch her skin until it flaked and oozed. She was one of them.

  Why were they there? he asked, but he knew. They were taking it away. And he could not let them. Would not. They had everything else, the whole sunshiny world, but they wanted this too. His dark. His peace.

  How he would stop them he didn’t know. But he must. He would.

  CHAPTER

  6

  Over the next two weeks, Smith spent his time acquiring and directing his team, spending hours communicating by phone, fax, and e-mail. Tessa had no trouble avoiding him, since Bair was able to tell her what she needed to know, where to find things, and how to get places.

  From what she’d observed, Smith’s leadership style was organized and competent, and he didn’t shirk his own workload. His natural exuberance had matured into an industrious confidence, though she tried not to analyze him. He wasn’t the reason she had stayed. Her energy went into preparing to re-create the labyrinth— and the rest of the landscape design that Smith had reminded her was equally important to the overall project.

  For the most part, the engineer consultants were working remotely and connecting electronically, each discipline adding to Smith’s base sheets their part of the design as the drawings neared completion. Smith would bring all the designs together under one set of plans and specifications that would eventually get the engineers’, hers, and his own seal of approval. She felt the rising energy.

  The design phase always excited her, and she would have to guard the emotions stirred by observing people in a creative mode— especially Smith. Theoretically, she could create a landscape design remotely, as were the other consultants, working from the plot plan and the civil engineer’s drawings. But she didn’t work that way. She needed to watch the land perform before deciding how and where to develop it. And this time
, of course, there was the labyrinth.

  As she prepared to leave for the day, Bair leaned on the doorframe of her car. “You’re welcome to join us, you know, for dinner.”

  She looked into his ruddy face with its flattened nose and blunt jaw, his hazel eyes, warm and guileless. He had no idea how hard she worked to keep her space. “Thanks, Bair, but no.”

  “Smith would ask . . . if he thought you’d like to come.”

  She pulled the car key from her purse. “He has no reason to.”

  “Right. I know.” Bair shuffled. “It’s just I hate to think of you eating alone.”

  She raised her face. “Gives me time to think.” Brooding, Smith had called it. She called it contemplation. “Really.”

  “All right, then. Drive carefully.”

  She raised her brows. “Would you?”

  “If I were you.” He straightened up, grinning.

  “See you tomorrow, Bair.”

  “Right.” He stepped back but repeated his caution. “Be careful.”

  That second warning caused an uncomfortable sensation. “Has something else happened?”

  Bair looked uneasy. “Like what?”

  “Something I should know about.”

  He folded his muscular arms. “No, just . . . I’m sure it’s nothing. That level is all. Weird.”

  “Maybe someone passing through thought you’d forgotten it.”

  “Passing through from where?”

  She searched the woods, the hint of river through the trees. “No neighbors tucked in somewhere?”

  “Not for quite a ways.”

  She hadn’t realized that was still bothering them, and it made her uneasy.

  “Well.” He backed off and waved. “See you tomorrow.”

  Tomorrow and the next day and the next, for the number of months it took to work up the drainage, planting, and reclamation. Theoretically, she could have her design drawn in a matter of weeks, if she learned what she needed. Smith had said Gaston wanted the grounds close to the original, but while the building was accurately represented, the etchings gave only vague renderings of the landscape.

  She pulled away from the trailer, thankful to escape talk of hauntings and weird happenings. In the two and a half weeks she’d been there, she had felt scrutinized more than once and repelled by something that was almost certainly not there. Now as she drove toward the gate in the deepening twilight, she thought she saw movement in the trees, something pale, ghostly. She shot a look over her shoulder. Nothing, of course, but she shivered.

  She would tell the guys to keep their ghost stories to themselves. No, that would make her seem vulnerable. Dr. Brenner said everything had an explanation, but too often in her experience it was not forthcoming.

  She stopped at the market, purchased a small French loaf and microwaved a pint of vegetable soup, and then drove two miles to the inn. She carried her food into her room and set it on the little desk, but before settling down to enjoy it, she checked the window latches and the door’s lock and deadbolt. She turned the old-fashioned, T-shaped handle and watched the bolt slide into the socket. Locks were only effective against things that could not penetrate material boundaries. Monsters had laws of their own.

  Returning to the desk, she peeled back the cardboard lid from the soup container and eased into the wooden chair. Maybe Bair was right about eating alone. It suddenly seemed pathetic. She dipped the bread and spooned the now-lukewarm soup into her mouth. Not great, but acceptable. She heard a creak outside the door and spun.

  No other sound followed, only her edgy nerves overreacting. But now her mind persisted in pondering what might have bothered Smith and Bair. Noises? That sensation of watchfulness, of danger?

  She swallowed another bite of soup and wished there had been more information about the property. She didn’t need to know much more than the soil, the weather, and the pests to create her design. But for the labyrinth she wanted to get inside the head of its creator. That one small part of a document had whetted her appetite.

  The footers at the entrance had clearly held a gate, unusual in labyrinths. She was sure she’d never seen a gated mouth before. Maybe it had been intended to provide the seeker the chance to walk it without anyone else entering until his circuit had been completed in solitude. Maybe they feared a hostile party would catch them unawares.

  Labyrinth walls were predominantly pruned knee- or waisthigh, like the one she’d made for Mrs. Beauprez. By the size of the entrance footers, however, she guessed the gate, and likely the foliage, in this one had been man-high, providing no view of the path beyond the next turn. The best vantage to see its layout would have been from the corresponding circular window of a loft or balcony within the chapel.

  She finished her soup and jotted a reminder to pick up a shovel. Maybe it was crazy, but she did not want to share the project. Smith and Bair were occupied with the drawing and compiling of conceptual layouts. Her design would be part of that, but Smith had plotted the footprint and had rough locations for the other preexisting elements. He seemed content with her focus on the labyrinth. It was why he’d called her instead of someone he normally worked with.

  She could tolerate the meetings where the consultants communicated on speaker phone and she and Bair and Smith sat together in the office. It was only when Smith shot her a smile or made a joke or referred to something she was trying not to think about that her composure slipped.

  She twisted the wrapper closed around the remainder of the bread, tossed the empty soup container, and stood, thankful she’d followed her instincts and eaten alone. It was not pathetic after all. It was self-preservation.

  Smith drove to a mediocre chain restaurant near the navy base, uneasy for more reasons than one. The business with the level still nagged. There was no doubt in his mind that he had left it in place. There were no properties near, no line of sight from the road. Was Bair drinking? Doing things he didn’t recall? There’d been no sign of stupor, no fumes on his breath. He seemed better than he had in years. No way he could fake that.

  If Bair hadn’t moved it . . . what? Smith frowned. Maybe what he’d heard again last night was not the wind or forest creatures. He had taken a look when he could have sworn he’d heard the door rattling, but had seen nothing in the darkness. Still, they might not be as alone out there as they thought. Had they picked up a spy? Paparazzi hoping to make a spectacle of Petra? Not hard from what he’d heard.

  Or Gaston might be a target himself. After the legal work Dad wouldn’t discuss, his advice had been to use the opportunity but keep his nose clean. It had conveyed enough. Could a P.I. or someone with a grudge have traced their movements and be staking out the site, hoping Gaston or Petra would make an appearance?

  Smith shook his head. Why would that person draw attention to himself? Leaving the level was more like a message being sent. A warning. Should he mention it to Gaston? He’d avoided anything of substance in his daily updates. They were tedious and silly, since developments at this stage were details Gaston neither needed to know nor probably understood, and he wanted the man to realize it. If he mentioned an issue, there’d be no end to the babysitting.

  They ordered Cokes, and Smith said, “Stan Graburg is on board as EE. I wanted Malcolm for structural, but he won’t be available in time. Bloke named Gordon Ellis is taking it.”

  Bair opened the menu. “You know him?”

  “No. Malcolm says he’s good, though. Big fella, good sense of humor. Should lighten up the team.”

  “You mean Tessa?”

  He inclined his head. “She does good work, but she’s—”

  “Sensitive.”

  “Hypersensitive.” Smith waited while the server brought their Cokes. He would have liked a Laughing Lab, but not if Bair was slipping. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m extremely pleased to have her. I mean, she’s treating the labyrinth like an archeological dig.”

  The waiter carried the other drinks on his tray to the next table and took that order.
/>   Bair sipped his Coke. “Then what’s with the sparks and barbs?”

  “Are we back to that again?” When had Bair become a mother hen? “For the last time, Bair, there are no sparks, and the barbs, well, that’s just Tessa.”

  “I’m only saying—”

  “Too much.” He didn’t need this getting messy. Too much rode on this project’s success. In spite of what he had told Tessa, it surprised him that he’d received the contract. Gaston had to have architects in his pockets, yet he’d chosen him. He planned to show Rumer Gaston that he had chosen well. With an effort he shoved back the nagging doubt. He could do the job and do it well.

  Like a fox on the prowl, he slipped from shadow to shadow. He’d gone out sooner than usual to see her as she left, risking the half-light before the darkness made him invisible. Risking her seeing him. But she hadn’t. He’d been quick. Invisible. Silent as night.

  He ran his tongue along the inside of his teeth, feeling the gaps, the soft gum between them as he loped along the road, keeping to the tree line. His joints loosened, his gait strengthened as the last of the light leached away.

  Some nights he watched the ground for small prey. More frequently, he followed the line of the road to their place. So much there for the taking. If you were small. If you were clever. He drew the night air through his teeth in anticipation.

  What would it be tonight, he let himself wonder. Something to eat, yes, but then what? He curled his fingers at his sides, anticipation tickling his palms. A chortle formed in his throat, the fear that had consumed him fading, fading. He would worry about them later. Tonight he was a ghost. A whisper. A half-forgotten dream. He would move through their world like a memory.

  He pulled up the hood of his gray sweatshirt and scuttled on until the lights came into view—not so many, but more than he liked. A streetlight at the corner, porch lights sprinkled about. He had gone far and taken long enough that there were few headlights. He would wait until they slept, softly. Awareness fading.

  He stayed in the trees all the way to the first houses. These gave cover, but he hadn’t yet figured a way in. So he moved on to the one he knew. Waited. Watched. The dog lay like a black heap of fur. He crept close, closer. On hands and knees, he crawled.