“Dad, Dr. Bliss didn’t help when I was eleven years old, and he sure as hell won’t help me now,” Bette snapped.
“Well, he could prescribe something for the anxiety. You don’t look good, Bette. You’ve nearly finished the pot of coffee, and I haven’t seen you eat all day.”
Bette blinked at him.
“Who cares about eating? Do you?” She narrowed her eyes at the plate of Chinese food he’d barely touched.
“You can’t help Crystal if you have a nervous breakdown,” he said quietly.
Bette blinked at him, shocked and hurt by his words.
He wasn’t entirely off base. Bette had suffered breakdowns before. The first occurred during her senior in high school when she was passed over for Valedictorian. The second when her first serious boyfriend, Elijah, died in a car accident.
Both instances landed Bette in the emergency room after hours of hysterical crying. The doctors sedated her, and when she woke, the terror no longer consumed her. She’d tried to explain the terror to Crystal later, the sheer horror that seemed to bypass her mental faculties and lodge in her body, trapping her in a stream of fight or flight. Except she couldn’t fight or flee her failure, nor could she fight or flee from Elijah’s death.
She’d come to understand the physiological responses to fear during her graduate work in anthropology. Humans and chimpanzees were the only species that regularly engaged in war. Thousands of years spent in an environment of battle and death had primed her to be ever vigilant and given her body’s sympathetic nervous system full control when a threat arose.
Most people realized a threat was not imminent, and their nervous system acted accordingly, but Bette’s body had malfunctioned somewhere down the line. She’d been part of the gene pool whose nervous system couldn’t handle the constant release of adrenaline and noradrenaline.
Eventually Bette found coping mechanisms. Diaphragmatic breathing, walks in nature, and meditation, but Bette didn’t do them regularly enough to ensure another attack wouldn’t come.
Bette swallowed the last of her coffee and stood.
“I’m going to lie down,” she told Homer.
She walked upstairs and collapsed onto her bed, head aching and eyes grainy.
She fell into a troubled sleep.
Hours later, Bette woke to voices and leapt out of bed before she’d fully opened her eyes. The door to her bedroom was cracked open, light spilling in from the hallway.
She ran from the room and pounded down the stairs, the light in the kitchen momentarily blinding her. For half a second she saw two figures, one a woman, and thought: Yes, please, Crystal is home. But as her eyes adjusted, she saw it was not Crystal at all.
A tall woman with dark curly hair streaked with silver looked at Bette and then stepped into the hall, gathering her in an embrace.
Bette hugged Lilith, their mother’s best friend, whom she hadn’t seen in nearly two years.
Lilith had moved to Portland, Oregon five years after their mother had died where she opened a used bookstore. Crystal had cried like a child the day Lilith had departed. They’d always been closer, Crystal and Lilith, though Bette never doubted Lilith’s love for both of Joanna Child’s daughters.
“Lil,” Bette cried, hugging Lilith fiercely. It wasn’t Crystal, but it the closest thing to a mother she’d known in a long time.
“Shhh… Oh, Bette. How I’ve missed you girls. Oh, honey…” she murmured and smoothed Bette’s hair, tangled from sleep.
“How did you find out?” Bette asked Lilith after Homer retired to bed.
Lilith sat on the living room floor, her legs crossed, a scattering of oracle cards spread on the cream carpet. Chai plopped on the floor and rolled across the cards, stretching her claws toward Lilith’s leg. Lilith scratched the fur of her neck before scooting her aside.
“Your dad called me yesterday morning. I booked the first flight out. He’d waited to call. He said he kept hoping she would show up.”
“Me too,” Bette admitted. She’d also thought of calling Lilith but hadn’t been able to make the dreaded call informing her of Crystal’s disappearance.
“Can you talk about it?” Lilith asked.
Bette gazed at the cards.
They depicted colorful images of fairies and woodland creatures above words like Surrender, Regenerate, and Higher Power.
“It’s so much worse than I ever thought it could be,” Bette admitted. “Crystal fell in love with one of her professors. I met him. He seemed too good to be true.”
“And he was?”
“He’s married. He’s been married for years. Crystal didn’t have a clue. He has a whole other life in Traverse City.”
Lilith frowned and shuffled the cards before setting them aside. She leaned her back against the couch.
“Crystal’s always been such a good judge of character. She didn’t have any sense that he was hiding something from her?” Lilith asked.
Bette shook her head.
“I don’t think so. She was just… over the moon for this guy, Lil. I’ve never seen her like it. She couldn’t see a flaw in him.”
“Which is a sure sign of a fake,” Lilith said. “No one is flawless. We’re all human.”
“Exactly.”
“You think he hurt her?” Lilith asked.
Bette scowled. “Yes. I mean, it makes sense, right? He’s married; he doesn’t want the wife to find out. Plus, Officer Hart said the wife has money. If Meeks lost his wife, he’d lose the money too.”
“Money,” Lilith grumbled. “It’s a sick fantasy.”
Lilith stood and grabbed her suitcase, pulling out a dark-purple gift bag. “My partner is rather witchy. She’s an herbalist. I brought you a few things.”
Lilith handed Bette the bag.
“Your partner?” Bette asked. “Did you and Heather break up?”
Heather had been a chiropractor Lilith met soon after moving to Portland.
Lilith waved her hand.
“Ages ago. She didn’t like dogs. Hagar growled every time she came over,” Lilith told Bette. Her Dalmatian was named after the comic strip Hagar the Horrible.
Bette smiled. “How is Hagar?”
“Old.” Lilith sighed. “He’s gone blind in one eye. Irina, my new gal, has been treating him with turmeric and boswellia and other herbs. They seem to help with his arthritis but not much she can do at this point. Age gets us all if we make it that long.”
Bette pulled two blue glass bottles out of the gift bag. Little red labels were attached to each bottle.
“Peaceful Tranquility and Sound Sleep,” Lilith said, sitting beside Bette. “That Sound Sleep one saved my life after the store got broken into.”
“Oh, wow, I forgot about that. Did they ever catch the guy?”
Lilith’s store had been burglarized six months earlier, an especially scary event since she lived in an apartment above her shop.
“No. And he didn’t get away with much. A few antique books and a hundred bucks, but I woke up to something rattling my doorknob. Somehow, I convinced myself it was the furnace kicking on. Turns out it was a guy trying to get in. I met Irina that week when I went into an herbal apothecary in town. It’s a New-Age store that sells all kinds of stuff, but she produces all their natural supplements and was dropping off stock. We got to chatting and…” Lilith held up her hands. “The rest is history.”
Bette smiled and leaned her head on Lilith’s shoulder.
“I’m happy for you, Lil.”
“Thanks, honey. I brought a bag for Crystal too. I really hope…” She didn’t finish her statement.