F Paul Wilson - Secret History 02 (33 page)

           
Without a word, Kara turned her back
to him.

           
"Kara?" He propped himself
up on one arm and shook her shoulder gently. "Kara?"

           
She was sound asleep.

           
Rob stared at her bare back in the
darkness as a mix of feelings washed over him. He was annoyed and he was
confused, but there was something else. He didn't recognize it at first. An
alien feeling, a new experience: he felt… used.

           
Which was ridiculous. Kara didn't
use people. Kara wasn't—

           
A thought struck him with an icy
shock that sent cold tendrils writhing along his body.

           
Who had he just made love to? Kara…
or Janine?

           
Rob didn't sleep the rest of the
night.

           
Kara noticed that Rob was unusually
subdued at breakfast. He'd always been a morning person. Even last week, after
sleeping in a chair all night, he'd been unbearably cheery. Not today. He
looked tired and seemed troubled as he leaned against the kitchen counter and
sipped his coffee. Preoccupied.

           
Not Kara. She was
up
.

           
Two—count 'em—
two
nights in a row with no craziness. No writing on walls, no
stunts with knives, nothing! And no sleeping pill last night.

           
Maybe good sex was a better
medication than Halcion.

           
Either way, everything was beginning
to fall into place. If she continued on this kind of even keel she might
consider finding a therapist in Philadelphia to work this through. Between the
Jefferson Medical Center and Hahnemann she was sure she could find a
psychiatrist of Dr. Gates' caliber to continue her treatment. She'd mention it
to him during their session today.

           
And it would be so good to be back
in Pennsylvania. She could ship Kelly's things home and sift through them at
her leisure, keeping the personal items—the yearbooks, the photos, her records,
things like that— and giving the rest to a charity.

           
But returning to the farm meant
leaving Rob. A part of her—a big part of her—didn't want to leave him. Last
night had been wonderful, and waking up with him beside her had made the
morning brighter. There had to be a way they could work something out.

           
She watched him and felt the desire
rise up in her again. She wondered at that. Making love to Rob last night must
have started some sort of chain reaction within her, causing her body to want
to make up for all the years without him. It had been too long. She was
actually sore down there. She even had a vague memory of a sex dream last night
during which she'd practically raped Rob. And strangely enough, Dr. Gates
seemed to have been there. A weird dream. But dreams weren't the real thing.
She'd been disappointed when he got up and took a shower first thing this
morning. She'd been hoping for a reprise.

           
"Something bothering you,
Rob?"

           
At the sound of her voice he started
and sloshed a little coffee onto the back of his hand.

           
"No. Everything's fine.
Why?"

           
"You've hardly said a word all
morning."

           
He smiled and Kara thought it looked
a little forced.

           
"Sorry. A lot of things on my
mind, I guess. All sorts of stuff piling up at the precinct. There don't seem
to be enough hours in the day." He glanced quickly away from her, then
back. "Are you seeing Dr. Gates today?"

           
"Eleven A.M. sharp. Every
Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. But I don't know for how long."

           
Concern leapt into his eyes.

           
"What do you mean?"

           
"Well, things seem to be pretty
much under control at the moment. Nothing's happened here like it did at the
farm."

           
"Maybe, but you can't quit
therapy."

           
"I've no intention of—"
Something was going on here. "Rob, what's wrong?"

           
A tortured expression flickered
across his face, and then he put down his coffee and slipped his arms around
her. He squeezed her so tightly for a moment that she couldn't breathe, then he
relaxed.

           
"I just want you to be all
right, that's all."

           
Kara looked into his eyes and saw
that he meant it. She kissed him.

           
"I
will
be all right, Rob. I'm going to see to that." She glanced
at her watch. "But I've got to get going. I want to be back at Ellen's
when Jill wakes up. I want to have breakfast with her."

           
"I'll give you a lift."

           
"That's okay. I'll walk. I feel
good this morning."

           
She could tell by his bleak
expression that Rob felt anything but.

           
They parted at the front entrance.
Kara waved and headed uphill toward Second Avenue. She kept up a brisk pace.
She wanted to squeeze in some school work with Jill between breakfast and her
appointment with Dr. Gates. Kara didn't like her missing all these class days,
but she didn't know what else she could do at present. Until she knew for sure
how long she'd be staying here, they'd both have to play it by ear.

           
The sun was warm on her back. It was
a bright, crisp, beautiful winter day, with hardly a breeze stirring the air.
She had to admit it: New York City could be nice sometimes.

           
The steel band that had been
constricting Rob's chest all morning loosened a bit as he watched Kara walk
away. All night he had lain awake trying to think of a way to ask her if the
woman astride him in the middle of the night had been Kara. He had searched the
still darkness for just the right words, the perfect framing of the question so
that she wouldn't be hurt and insulted if the answer was yes, and she wouldn't
be frightened out of her mind if it was no.

           
He'd come up with nothing. From the
moment she'd awakened beside him he had tried to ask her, but at the last
moment would lose his nerve.

           
This wasn't like him. He could
interrogate with the best of them, asking the most personal, the most
outrageous, the most leading, self-incriminating questions without batting an
eye. But Kara wasn't a suspect. He couldn't bear to hurt her.

           
For all her outward toughness, Rob
still sensed something fragile within Kara. He had to be very careful. He had
lost her once. He didn't want to lose her again.

           
He watched her turn downtown onto
Second Avenue and disappear. He hoped Dr. Gates was as good as Doc Winters said
he was. Rob had a feeling Kara needed more help than she realized.

           
Kara cradled Jill on her lap in
Ellen's dining room.

           
"So, bug. Are you bored
here?"

           
"Oh, no!" Jill said.
"Lucia lets me help her in the kitchen, and when she doesn't need help
mixing stuff, I watch the VCR. It's got great stuff, Mom. I'll show you."

           
"That's okay, Jill. I've—"

           
But Jill was off and running. Kara
followed. The TV was running by the time she reached the den.

           
"You see, you put the thing in
here and the movie comes on the TV. I was watching
Never ending Story
before lunch. See? It's still on. It's really
good."

           
Kara watched a boy sitting atop a
seemingly endless snake with a dog's head as it wound through outer space

           
"And I saw
Flight of the Navigator
and
Pinocchio
—
that was scary—
Old Yeller
—that made
me cry. And Aunt Ellen's going to get me a new Disney movie every day! It's so
great! Can we get one, Mom?"

           
"We'll think about it."

           
Kara vowed that when she finished
her book she'd blow part of the final advance payment on a VCR. God, she had to
get to work on it. But she couldn't think, couldn't organize her thoughts.
Lately everything in her head seemed jumbled. She needed to get back to
Pennsylvania, and soon.

           
But for now, the VCR was a blessing.
With no school and no friends, Jill would have been bored stiff without it.

           
"When the movie's finished,
we'll take a walk to a museum. How does that sound?"

           
"The one with the funny
name?"

           
"Not the Guggenheim. Today it
will be the Museum of Modern Art. But you can call it what you used to call me:
MOM A."

           
Jill smiled and together they
watched the end of her movie.

           
Kara headed back to Kelly's
apartment early. She was tired. On the way she went over the morning's session
with Dr. Gates. He had been his usual remote self, sitting behind his desk,
twirling his key chain and contributing little more than a few noncommittal
grunts while she free associated about her childhood. The whole thing seemed
like an exercise in futility. But no doubt everyone thought that at first.

           
Patience,
Kara
, she told herself.
Patience
.

           
But she knew patience had never been
her strong suit. She tended to want results yesterday, if not sooner.

           
She thought she had seen a slight
reaction in Dr. Gates when she told him of her tentative plans to move the
therapy to Philadelphia if things continued as smoothly as they had since
Monday. It hadn't been much of a reaction. The slightest lifting of the eyebrows,
the slightest down-turning of the mouth. Nothing more. Perhaps it had been her
imagination. Perhaps she had simply wanted to see him react.