The Glass Butterfly (12 page)

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Authors: Louise Marley

Tags: #Romance

BOOK: The Glass Butterfly
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Now, staring out across a beach two thousand miles from that sunlit office, Tory made herself face the truth. She should have taken action that same day. A therapist was supposed to report possible harm to herself, to someone else, or to the client. She should have known Ellice better. She should have understood this client was capable of acting out her fantasy.
But she hadn't.
A wave of guilt swept over her, as cold and dark as the Pacific waves washing the beach at her feet. The weight of responsibility bowed her shoulders, and she dropped her forehead to her knees again. There were cracks in Ice Woman's shell. She could feel them growing, fissures marring the glacial surface she had been hiding beneath. She couldn't stay frozen forever, she supposed. But she didn't know how she could face this failure in herself.
Suppose Ellice Gordon killed someone else?
But suppose, if she called to tell the police what she knew, Ellice turned on Jack? She had sworn to do it, and Tory knew she would. Her fey had surfaced in time to make that desperately clear. The knowledge had pierced her with a bolt more painful than the cut of the knife that had scarred her arm.
Ellice would choose Jack as her next victim if she thought Tory was still alive. If she thought Tory and the file could expose her. She would choose Jack because that would cause the most damage, the biggest explosion. She would use Jack to burst the bubble of her fury, knowing full well that would destroy Tory, too.
 
Every therapist knew the stories. Tory, like her colleagues, had been warned during her training that it could happen, that a client could turn violent. It was a cliché, she supposed now, that she had never believed it could happen to her. She had fallen into the classic trap, convinced that her relationship with Ellice was just what it seemed—respectful, productive, and if not amicable, at least reasonable.
She had spent the morning of that October day in her usual fashion. She had no curtains on her windows because she loved the trees and the natural light, and she always woke when the sun rose. In autumn the light had a special quality, colored by the turning leaves, angled by the turning Earth. She rose early that morning, and went down to the kitchen for her daily cup of freshly ground coffee before she went out to walk through the woods, enjoying the birds and the drift of spent leaves tumbling from tree branches to cushion the ground. She climbed hills and wandered through gulleys, walking for an hour at a good clip before she went back to the house to shower and dress for the day in jeans, a light sweater, a blazer thrown over everything. She had bought some nice Gravensteins at the farmers market the week before, and she sliced one and ate it with yogurt.
She touched the phone on its mount above the kitchen island, but she didn't pick it up. She would have liked to speak to Jack, but nine in the morning probably wasn't a good time. In truth, there were no good times. No matter when she called, he sounded impatient, distracted, busy with classes and friends and all the activities of college.
And that's the way it should be,
she reminded herself.
He's busy with his life, and I wouldn't want it any other way
. Her calls to him had grown infrequent. She had fallen into the habit of waiting for him to call her instead. It didn't happen often.
Other parents used e-mail, of course, but she still hadn't gotten around to buying a computer and learning how to use it. She had put it off for so long now it hardly seemed necessary. She could still send Jack an old-fashioned postcard. That would be better. She would ask him to let her know when to expect him for the Thanksgiving holiday.
She clicked on the radio to listen to the news as she rinsed her bowl and filled the teakettle. She was bending to drop the fruit knife into the dishwasher when she heard the announcement that there had been a shooting in town. It made her straighten in surprise. Their town had so little crime that most people didn't bother locking their doors and often left keys in the ignition of their cars. To hear that something so strange had happened, the victim found in a parking lot outside a liquor store, was really odd. The sheriff's office didn't know much yet, apparently, about who the man was, but he was dead. Deceased, the announcer said, as the result of a single gunshot wound, and left to bleed to death on the pavement. Tory shook her head, saddened by the incursion of violence into her small, quiet town.
Tory heard the sound of a car outside. She turned off the radio, and set the teakettle and cups and tea bags on a tray to carry into her office.
Ellice was her only client of the day. She arrived still in uniform from her overnight shift. With the practiced air of routine, she unholstered her weapon and deposited it in the file drawer. She locked the drawer, then flipped the key neatly onto the desk blotter before she arranged her lanky form in the easy chair.
Tory pocketed the key before she sank into her own chair and regarded Ellice, who sat in a shaft of light that turned her pale eyelashes golden. Tory smiled, and opened her mouth to greet her.
It was at that moment that her fey, somnolent so long, hit her with all its force. The stab of
knowing
struck through her chest so powerfully she only just stopped herself from crying out. The suddenness of it shook her. Her smile died on her lips, and she felt the blood drain from her cheeks. She gazed in horror at Ellice Gordon.
She knew. Appalled and sickened, she knew.
It had been Ellice. It was Ellice's fantasy. She didn't need to ask how it had happened, or why, or what the order of events had been. She could see it, as clearly as if she had also been in that parking lot.
Ellice raised an eyebrow, and her pale eyes met Tory's as directly as always.
Tory's throat constricted. Anguish stole her voice and her breath, and the ache of her fey made her press a hand to her chest.
Ellice leaned back in the easy chair, crossing her long legs, her big hands relaxed on the arms. She said, with a wry intonation, “Good morning?”
Tory dropped her hand, and linked both hands together in her lap. She forced herself to draw a breath around the pain in her chest. She said slowly, “I don't think it's a good morning, Ellice. Quite the contrary.” The pressure in her chest eased a little, and she watched as Ellice's eyebrows pulled together. Though her eyes didn't flicker, they looked dull, as if a shutter had been pulled.
“Well,” Ellice responded. She was very still for a moment, and then her lips curled. “Do you want to talk about that?” She gave a brief, deprecatory laugh.
“You'll need to be the one to talk,” Tory said. Her voice felt thin, fragile as the dry leaves falling past the window.
“What shall I talk about?” Ellice sat very still, only her eyes moving. She seemed not to blink, nor even to breathe.
“I think you know. No—” Tory leaned back in her chair, though her stomach crawled with tension. “No, Ellice, I
know
you know.”
Ten seconds passed before Ellice spoke again. “Okay,” she said. “I guess I do.”
“Tell me about it.”
Ellice glanced away, out into the sun-spangled woods. When she looked back at Tory again her face had changed. Her freckled cheeks flushed. Her eyes glittered, and she leaned forward so abruptly that Tory flinched.
“Why are you surprised?” she said in a gravelly voice. “I told you what I was thinking.”
“You told me it was a fantasy. Everyone has them.”
Ellice grinned, a fierce expression that made Tory's stomach clench harder. “Everyone has them?” she asked. “Not like mine, they don't.”
“Not exactly like yours, perhaps,” Tory said. “But everyone has fantasies. They don't act on them.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“I'm sure that acting on this particular fantasy was a tragic thing to do.”
Ellice's grin faded. She braced her elbows on her knees and regarded Tory for a long time. The silence in the office grew heavy, and the song of the birds in the cedars seemed to fade. Tory thought, for the first time ever, that Kate and Chet's house was too far away. She was alone on her hilltop with a woman who had done something unthinkable.
At last, Ellice straightened, and her gaze left Tory's face to drift back to the grove beyond the windows. “I was right, you know,” she said in an offhand tone. “It was just as I thought it would be.”
“That surprises me.”
Ellice's gaze didn't waver from the trees. “Why? It didn't surprise me at all.”
“I didn't think you were capable of it.”
“You're disappointed in me.”
Tory hesitated. Nothing in her experience or her training had prepared her for such a moment. “I'm—saddened,” she finally said. “I'm sad for you, sad for the man you killed. I'm terribly sad that I didn't know this might happen.”
“Nothing you could have done to stop it,” Ellice said. Her fingers lifted and fell on the arms of her chair, a placid rhythm. “I did it, and I felt good afterward. That shocks you, I suppose.”
Tory let that go. “How do you feel now?”
Ellice lifted one shoulder, and let it drop. “I don't feel anything,” she said. “And I can tell you it's a fucking relief.”
“You're saying that today you don't feel angry.”
“That's right.”
“You don't feel any sense of responsibility?”
Ellice shook her head, gazing out through the glass. A bar of ruby light reflected from the hummingbird feeder to glisten on one freckled cheek. “I'm not stupid, Tory. If I was going to torment myself with guilt, I wouldn't have done it.”
“Did you have any excuse at all, Ellice? Any justification?”
“Sure.” Ellice shrugged, a negligent gesture. “If I needed it.”
“You don't think you need it?”
Ellice turned her head, and Tory felt she was looking into the face of a stranger. She couldn't recognize the client she had worked with most of the year, and that meant she had failed miserably to understand what was happening.
Ellice said in a lifeless tone, “I couldn't help it.” She shrugged again. “It is what it is.”
“But, Ellice,” Tory said carefully, “surely you know I have to report this.”
Ellice blinked, a slow flutter of her pale lashes. “What are you talking about?”
“A therapist has to make a report if a client is a real danger to herself or to others.”
“I thought you had to keep everything between us confidential.”
“A man is dead. You've admitted your responsibility. That's not confidential.”
Ellice straightened in the armchair. She gave the impression of growing taller, bulkier, even though she didn't rise. “You're my therapist,” she said. “I'm supposed to be able to tell you everything.”
Tory sat very still. “You're also a police officer. You must know there are limits to confidentiality.”
Ellice's hand moved, in an automatic way, toward her empty holster. “No,” she said. “I don't know that.” She added, with a truculent thrust of her chin, “I trusted you, Tory.”
“And I trusted
you,
Ellice.”
“You won't do it!” Ellice thrust herself abruptly out of the armchair, and stood over Tory, her fists on her hips. “You're just trying to scare me.”
Tory rolled her chair back a bit, and rose. “I won't have to if you'll do it yourself,” she said. She wanted to put the chair between herself and Ellice, but she forced herself to stay where she was, the desk at her back, the chair pushed to the wall.
“Do it myself? What the hell does that mean?”
“Tell the sheriff what happened.” Tory's skin had begun to crawl under Ellice's hard gaze, and the key of the cabinet where the gun was locked began to grow heavy in her pocket. “I'll speak for your state of mind, of course.”
Ellice barked a laugh that made goose bumps prickle on Tory's neck. “State of mind? I'll tell you my state of mind.” She spun to one side, and took up Jack's graduation picture. She held it up, pointing to it. “I know all about you, Tory.” Ellice's voice rose and thinned, reminding Tory of a crow's caw, harsh and cutting. “I know about your son, and where he goes to school. I know which dorm he's in, what floor, and what room. I know when he comes home, who he sees! I have
power
over you, Tory!”
Tory said, “I don't believe you would threaten Jack,” but her voice faltered.
Ellice took one swift step around the desk. “Don't you?” Her hand flashed out, seizing Tory's wrist in an iron grip, and a rush of anger suffused her face, staining her cheeks red and burning scarlet across her neck. “You don't know me at all!” She yanked Tory close to her. “Report me, and Jack's next,” she grated. “He's the next one I shoot.”

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