I’d been thinking and wondering about that myself. I had vivid memories from the time I was four. Finding a dead friend at age nine should have been traumatic for Joe and me, and it should have been imprinted on our long-term memories.
But it wasn’t.
And I had come up with a plausible reason why.
Chapter Four
Marjorie
I sat with Melanie in her home office. “I’m glad you were free this morning. Thanks for squeezing me in.”
“Anytime. You know that.” She grabbed her notepad. “I’ve cut down my hours in the city so I can relax more at home. I’ve been seeing some patients via FaceTime. It’s working well so far. Anyway, you caught me on a slow morning.”
“I appreciate it.”
“Marjorie, I’ll always make time for you. How are you?”
How are you?
Three such innocent little words.
I’d come here for help, and Mel would help me. She always did.
So I would be truthful.
“Not good. Not good at all.”
“Tell me what’s going on.”
That was Mel’s way. Get straight to the point and then let me take the lead. She knew I’d tell her everything in my own time.
“I almost had a relapse this morning.”
“Oh?”
“The razor blade.”
“The same one?” she asked, her eyebrows arched.
I swallowed as I nodded. I’d told her I’d gotten rid of it. Instead, I’d tucked it in the inside zippered pocket hidden in the bottom of my purse.
“You still have it?”
I nodded again, pointing to my purse.
“First,” she said, “don’t beat yourself up about this. We all have setbacks. It’s part of the healing process. You didn’t actually cut yourself, right?”
This time I shook my head.
“Good. That’s a win.”
“I don’t feel like I won anything.”
“Life hasn’t been the easiest for you, Marj. You’ve had to come to grips with your inadvertent role in Talon’s abduction and the truth about your mother and father. Now you’re taking care of Jade and the boys. That’s a lot of responsibility.”
“Responsibility I’m glad to take on.”
“I know that. We all do. Doesn’t make it easy. You’re a young woman, Marj, and your life is out there. You’re putting everything on hold. It’s a very selfless thing for you to do.”
“I thought…” I stared out the window at the ranch that was my home.
“You thought…what?”
“For about five minutes, I thought my life might be here.”
“It is, of course. What I meant was—”
I held up my hand. “I know what you meant, Mel. I do. But something else happened, something I thought might keep me here in Snow Creek. Even here on the ranch.”
“What are you talking about?”
I sighed. “Bryce Simpson.”
Melanie’s eyes widened slightly. She was trying to hide her surprise. Only Jade knew about my involvement with Bryce, and her word was as good as gold. Clearly he and I had kept our attraction under wraps. Melanie looked seriously astonished.
“What about him?” she asked.
Where to start? I stayed silent for a few seconds that seemed to stretch into hours.
Melanie didn’t try to prod me. She always let me go at my own pace. Finally, I opened my mouth.
“I’m in love with him.”
“I see. When did this happen?”
“I’ve had growing feelings for him for a while, and I’ve been attracted to him forever.”
“He’s going through a lot right now.”
“I know that. And I get it.”
“Does he have any idea how you feel?”
“That I love him? No. It doesn’t matter anyway because he doesn’t feel the same way.”
“How do you know that?”
Words came tumbling out then. I told Mel everything. All of Bryce’s and my encounters, our passion, how he told me I made him insane.
And our last encounter.
The note he’d left.
“It was devoid of even the slightest bit of emotion,” I said, choking back a sob. “And I almost… I almost…”
“But you didn’t, Marj. You didn’t.”
“Only because of Jade and the boys. They need me. I can’t be broken right now. I have too much to do.”
“The reason why doesn’t matter. What matters is that you didn’t succumb to the urge. You didn’t harm yourself.”
“He’s moving into the guesthouse, Mel. He’ll be living less than a half mile from me, and he’ll be working here on the ranch. How am I supposed to deal with any of that? The lovemaking was so amazing. He was so full of desire and passion. I swear the earth moved. How could he have been so passionate and loving but then turn so cold in the span of hours? How could it have meant nothing to him?”
“Have you considered that it didn’t mean nothing to him?”
“But the note…”
“The note doesn’t really matter. You’ve said already that he was honest with you from the outset that he wasn’t in a place to have a relationship right now.”
“I know. I just never expected him to be so cruel.”
“I understand,” Melanie said. “Bryce is not a cruel man, which makes me think something else might be going on here.”
“He’s not his father,” I said. “None of us thinks he is.”
“That’s true. But have you considered that maybe he thinks he is? And he’s trying to keep you at arm’s length because he’s afraid?”
I cocked my head. “You know, he’s been letting his mother pretty much care for Henry twenty-four-seven since everything went down. He says it’s because his mom needs Henry right now, but maybe…”
“Maybe Bryce is afraid to be close to Henry. Afraid of what he might become.”
“That’s silly.”
“Is it? He’s not the only one who’s had thoughts like that.”
I well knew my brother Ryan and his wife had both worried they’d turn out to be psychopathic like their biological mother and father, respectively.
“It’s easy for me or anyone else to tell Bryce that it’s unlikely,” Mel went on, “but it’s not so easy to get him to believe it.”
“I know.”
How well I knew. I’d had the same thoughts about my mother. She was far from a psychopath, but she was certifiably insane. She lived in her own reality where I was still a baby and Ryan didn’t exist.
Which reminded me. I need to touch base with the other nurse who’d been assigned to her the day “my father” had visited. Icy spikes dug into the back of my neck. Nothing had shown up on the visitors’ log, and it was certainly within the realm of possibility that my mother had imagined the whole thing.
Still, it niggled at me. With Dale having seen someone who spooked him, and with Colin Morse and his father acting strangely, I couldn’t help but think some stranger might be lurking around my mother.