The Spiral Path (62 page)

Accepting a tall glass of Alma's fresh,
cold lemonade, he asked, "How is the editing going?"

"Pretty well." She spread a
bright embroidered tablecloth on the pallet of remaining pavers, which was down
to the height of a low table. Then she set out utensils, a bowl of Southwestern
bean salad, and a couple of pita sandwiches filled with tomatoes, lettuce, and
chicken salad. "It's fascinating how easily we can try different scenes,
different cuts, different optical effects, but it gives too blasted many
choices. A good thing I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted before
starting, or I'd be paralyzed by all the options. Even so, it's hard to make
the film match the story in my head."

"'Story is all,' Trevor used to
say."

She scooped bean salad onto her plate.
"What was Trevor like, besides being a good teacher?"

Kenzie's face blanked. "He was a
brilliant man torn between what he knew was right, and urges he couldn't
suppress."

She gave him a swift glance. "You
said that he didn't have a physical relationship with you."

"True." His expression made it
clear that he wouldn't say any more.

She changed the subject. "When you
walk the labyrinth, can you feel the energy getting stronger as it comes closer
to completion?"

"I haven't walked it yet." He
bit into the pita sandwich, chewing and swallowing before he continued.
"I'm waiting until it's finished."

"Why? I'd have thought that once
the pattern was laid out, you'd be walking it at least once a day."

"It's ... magical thinking, I
suppose," he said slowly. "The hope that the longer I delay, the more
powerful the calming effect when I finally do walk it. I need to conjure all
the peace I can get."

She put down her sandwich, dismayed.
"Kenzie, I don't know if a labyrinth is going to be enough to do the
trick. Maybe it's time to consider stronger measures."

His expression darkened. "Have you
and Marcus been debating whether to haul me off to some discreet, expensive
clinic with soothing drugs and well-paid doctors?"

"Marcus suggested it once, but that
will happen over my dead body." She sipped lemonade to lubricate the
sudden dryness of her mouth. "No drugs, no committing you for your own
good. But surely there's some middle ground between doing nothing and getting
checked into an upscale asylum."

He tossed the remainder of his sandwich
to Hambone, then began to prowl restlessly along the curving edge of the
labyrinth, his body tense as a drumhead. "God knows I've thought about it,
but I'm not going to talk to some shrink, Rainey. I couldn't bear to tell
anyone what it was like to be Jamie Mackenzie. The memories churn like the
evils released from Pandora's box, stinging and biting like poisonous snakes. I
can't sleep, can't bear the thought of touching you, can't imagine this ever
ending."

The raw emotion in his voice seared her.
She'd hoped he was making headway in coming to terms with his demons, but
obviously not. He wasn't even able to sweep them under the carpet again.

It seemed particularly horrible that his
ravening memories had made it impossible for him to accept touch, the most
basic of human comforts. Having him so close without being sleeping partners
was miserable. Quite apart from the lack of sex, she missed the skin-to-skin
contact of being with her mate. In the past, that intimacy had soothed them
both, but no more. "Time may be the only healer," she said
hesitantly, "but perhaps small, careful steps can speed the process a
bit."

She rose and intercepted him, laying one
hand on his right wrist. He stopped, the muscles tensing under her hand.
"Just a touch, Kenzie," she said softly. "Nothing sexual about
it. A touch between people who have known and trusted each other for
years."

Slowly his arm relaxed under her palm.
Though she guessed that it was an act of will rather than genuine relaxation,
at least he wasn't ill. Progress of sorts.

He raised his hand and caught hers,
squeezing briefly before releasing it. "It's a start. Thanks for
understanding, Rainey."

Knowing she'd pushed enough for one day,
she started packing up the picnic. "I'll leave the lemonade in its cooler.
See you at dinner? Alma's going to town, and she promised to pick up some of
those great ribs from the barbecue shack."

Then she left, wondering how one could
close Pandora's box.

He
laid the last paver in the row with hands that had almost stopped trembling. He
had hoped that time would bring a measure of peace. Having lived with his past
for over two decades, he should be able to again. Instead, every day deepened
the pressure of corrosive memories. He couldn't even name the volatile mix of
emotions bubbling like lava inside him.

Worst was the way his thoughts about sex
were so intertwined with pain and fear and degradation that he couldn't
remember the joyful, tender lovemaking he and Rainey had shared. Childhood
horrors now contaminated what had been perhaps the most satisfying part of his
life. He wondered with despair if he would ever experience such intimacy again.

Which was why he was building a
labyrinth. Three tiles across, the labyrinth path was about eighteen inches
wide, with another eighteen inches between one circle and the next. Enough so
that a number of people could walk at the same time without crowding each
other, though he doubted that this particular labyrinth would ever host more
than one or two walkers at once. It was coming into existence mostly as his
private attempt to maintain sanity through physical labor.

Laboring in the scorching noonday sun
gave him a vague, satisfying sense of penitence. It was absurd to feel like a
sinner when he'd been the one sinned against, but the mind was not a
particularly logical instrument.

He laid pavers for the next row,
thinking of how Rainey had touched his wrist. His nerves had jangled like an
electrical overload, and he'd had to control the impulse to flinch. Ironic that
he couldn't bear physical closeness, yet he was intensely grateful that she had
stayed near him. She was his anchor in hurricane winds.

It was good not to be alone.

Brooding,
Rainey returned to the house. She needed a dose of her old friend Kate Corsi's
sunny good nature and unconditional sympathy. Kate's remarriage to her
ex-husband made her a role model of sorts. If Kate could rebuild a badly
damaged relationship, maybe Rainey could, too.

Luckily, Kate was in her office. She and
her husband were co-owners of the world's top explosive demolition firm, and
her biggest complaint in life was the time she had to spend on paper shuffling
rather than working in the field, blowing up buildings.

Just hearing her friend's familiar
hello
made Rainey feel better. "Hi, Kate, it's me. Is this a good time to
talk?"

"Perfect. You'll give me an excuse
to delay some number crunching," Kate assured her. "Val tells me that
you and Kenzie are in the high desert. Have you recovered from location
shooting yet?"

That had been the official explanation
for this retreat to New Mexico, but Rainey was too frayed to maintain the
facade. "We're suffering from more than movie fatigue, Kate." She
hesitated, wondering how much she could say without betraying her husband's
confidence. "Being in England stirred up a ... a lot of childhood issues for
Kenzie. He's going through a very bad time."

"I'm so sorry, Rainey. Is there
anything I can do to help?"

"Not unless you and Donovan devised
a magic formula for sorting out the past and getting on with life."

"That wasn't magic--just a lot of
talk, and years of growth between our divorce and when we met up again,"
Kate said. "As hellacious as the breakdown of our first marriage was, now
I'm glad for it. We know ourselves and each other so much better than we would
have otherwise. We appreciate each other more now, too. On our second
honeymoon, we laid out new ground rules, chief of which is that the marriage
always comes first. Next to that, nothing seems important enough to fight
about."

Which did sound like magic, but not of a
sort that would help Kenzie. "Since Englishmen don't talk about their
feelings, that won't work here." She meant the remark to be humorous, but
her voice cracked.

"You sound seriously stressed. Why
don't you visit Tom? He's probably only about an hour or so away from you, and
it sounds like you could use a big brotherly hug."

Tom Corsi, Kate's brother, had been a surrogate
sibling to all of Kate's friends. He was also one of the kindest, wisest people
Rainey had ever known. "I didn't realize his monastery was that close. Can
he have visitors?"

"Yes, though you'll have to wait if
they're in one of the seven daily prayer services Benedictines are so fond of.
Why not drive over? It's a beautiful trip."

"Maybe I will. Where is this
monastery?" Rainey wrote down Kate's directions, then hung up when her
friend had to field a phone call from Saudi Arabia.

The thought of getting away from Cibola
was appealing, but Rainey hesitated. It would take all afternoon to go to Our
Lady of the High Desert, talk to Tom, then come home. Time she should put into
The
Centurion.

To hell with the movie. She'd worked
seven days a week for months. She was entitled to a half day off.

After leaving a message on Eva's voice
mail, she wrote a note to Kenzie and stuck it on the refrigerator with a magnet
on the off chance that he might notice she was gone. Then she changed into an ankle-length,
navy blue cotton skirt and a matching tunic with long sleeves and a hood. It
seemed suitably sober for a visit to a monastery.