"We bonded long ago, Mom."
"Yes, it's rare, that kind of friendship."
"But surely you have it with Auntie Pansy?"
"To a certain extent, but we were never as close as you and Sarah. I don't think Pansy wanted that kind of intimacy. She's not a bit like her daughter. Sarah's much warmer."
"Well, there's nobody like my Sarah, I must admit. They threw the mold away."
"She is unique, Mal, I agree. But I've been wondering lately-do you think she's enough?"
"I don't know what you mean, Mom." I sat up straighter and focused my eyes on her. "What are you getting at?"
"I'm not talking about friendship, darling. I'm talking about your pain and grief, your heartbreak. Maybe you need more help than Sarah or I can give you. Perhaps it would be a good idea to see a professional. A psychiatrist."
"A psychiatrist. Do you think I need one, Mother?"
"Perhaps. For grief counseling. There are many who specialize in that, and I understand they help people come to grips-"
"I don't want to see a shrink," I interrupted. "You go if you want."
"Perhaps we can go together."
"No, Mom."
"There are groups, you know, who counsel mothers and fathers who have lost children to violent crimes."
I sat staring at her, saying nothing.
She went on, "I've heard of this young woman who lost her child in a car accident. She was driving, and walked away alive. She's started a group. People in similar circumstances, who have lost children, get together to talk. My friend Audrey Laing wants me to go. Do you want to come with me, Mal? It might help you."
"I don't think so," I said in a low voice. I began to shake my head vehemently. "No, no, it wouldn't help, Mom, I'm sure of that. I know you mean well, but I just couldn't… couldn't talk about Lissa and Jamie and Andrew to strangers, to people who had never known them. Honestly, I just couldn't."
"All right, I understand what you're saying. But don't dismiss it out of hand. At least think about it, will you?"
"I much prefer to talk to you and Sarah. And Diana, Daddy when he calls. People who know firsthand what I've lost."
"Yes, darling." My mother cleared her throat. "I do worry about you so. Maybe I should get you another dog."
"Another dog!" I cried, jumping up, gaping at her. "I don't want another fucking dog! I want my dog! I want Trixy. I want my babies! I want my husband! I want my life back!" I glared at my mother, then swung around and flew to the French doors. Opening them, I ran outside. Something inside me had snapped, and I was crying and shaking with rage.
I stood there in the snow, pressing my hands to my face, sobbing as if my heart would break. I was oblivious to the icy wind and the snow, which was falling again.
A moment later I felt my mother's arms around me. "Come inside, Mal. Come inside, darling."
I let her lead me back into the sunroom, let her press me down onto the sofa. She sat next to me, pulled my hands away from my face, and looked into my eyes. I looked back at her, the tears still trickling down my cheeks.
"Forgive me, Mal. I didn't mean it the way it came out, the way it sounded. I really didn't," she whispered in a choked-up voice.
Her own grief and heartache stabbed at me, and my anger dissipated as swiftly as it had flared inside me. "I know you didn't, Mom, and there's nothing to forgive. I know you'd never hurt me."
"Never." She wept, clinging to my arm. "I love you very much."
"And I love you, Mom."
She lifted her head, looked into my eyes again. "It was always your father with you-" she began and stopped short.
"Perhaps I favored him because he was hardly ever there, and so he seemed very special to me. But I've always loved you, Mother, and I know you've always been there for me."
"And I still am, Mal."
A few days after this visit of my mother's I fell into a deep depression.
I became morose, filled with a strange kind of melancholia, and I felt listless, without energy. I could hardly bear to move, and my limbs ached as if I were an old woman suffering from an ague. It was a kind of physical debilitation I was unaccustomed to, and I was helpless, almost an invalid.
All I wanted to do was curl up in my bed and sleep. And yet sleep always eluded me; I only ever dozed. I would soon be wide awake, my mind turning and turning with endless distressing and painful thoughts.
Wanting to end my life though I did, I discovered I did not have the strength to get out of bed, never mind actually kill myself. Apathy combined with a deep-rooted loneliness to render me useless to myself.
There were moments when despair overwhelmed me, brought me to tears again. I was alone, without purpose. I had no future. The absence of my family appalled me, and the loneliness, the yearning for them was destroying me.
At times different emotions intruded, bringing me to my knees: Guilt that I had not been with them, guilt that I was alive and they were dead; rage that they had been victims of street violence, rage that I could not avenge their deaths. These were the moments I felt murderous, wanted to kill whoever had killed my children and my husband.
On those occasions I would call the Twenty-fifth Precinct to talk to Detective DeMarco, wanting to know if any new evidence had turned up.
He never sounded anything but regretful, even sad, when he told me no. He promised they would break the case. He meant well. But I was unconvinced. I never believed him.
Memories were my only source of comfort. I fell down into them gratefully, recalling Lissa, Jamie, Andrew, and little Trixy with the greatest of ease. I relived our life together and took joy from this.
But then one abysmal day the memories would no longer come at my bidding. And I was afraid. Why could I no longer recall the past, our past? Why were my children's faces suddenly so blurred and indistinct? Why did I have such trouble picturing Andrew's face in my mind's eye?
I did not know. But when this loss of total recall persisted for a week, I knew what I had to do. I must go to Kilgram Chase. I wanted to be in Andrew's childhood home, the place where he had grown up. Perhaps there I would feel close to him once more, perhaps there he would come back to me.
Part Five. KILGRAM CHASE
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Yorkshire, March 1989
Spring had come early, much earlier than anyone here at Kilgram Chase had expected.
I had arrived from Connecticut toward the end of January to find everything covered in snow, and the first part of February had been bitter, with sleet, freezing rain, and intermittent snowstorms. But the weather had changed in the middle of the month. The rain and harsh winds had ceased unexpectedly; there had been a general softening, a warming much welcomed by everyone here, most especially the farmers.
Now, on this first Friday in March, the trees were bursting with tender green shoots and the first fluttering little leaves. Grass was beginning to sprout, and the borders at the edges of the lawns were alive with purple, yellow, and white crocuses and delicate, starlike snowdrops. Daffodils danced down near the pond and under the trees in the woods. Tall and graceful as they nodded in the light breeze, their brilliant yellow bonnets reflected the bright afternoon sun.
I stood at the mullioned window in the library, looking out toward the moors, thinking that perhaps I ought to take a walk later.
I had not been able to go out much since I had arrived almost five weeks ago. Within the first few days I had fallen sick, felled by a bad bout of flu, and I had spent over ten days in bed.
Diana, Parky, and Hilary had nursed me through it, done the best they could to make me better. But I had been a bad patient, not very cooperative at all; I had refused almost all of the medicines they had offered me and done little to speed my recovery, hoping to catch pneumonia and die. I had not. But then neither had I been very well; I was slow to get up on my feet and about. When I first arrived I had been exhausted and undernourished, and the aftermath of the flu virus left me feeling even weaker. This physical debilitation combined with my mental apathy to make me more listless and enervated than I had been at Indian Meadows.