I wasn’t sure where she was headed with this, but I feared I was soon going to find out.
“Fairly certain,” I answered. “You think I might have had another reason?”
“I am merely curious,” she returned. “Could you not have simply called the police and notified them? Surely they were better equipped to handle the situation than you.”
“Do you think I was grandstanding?” I asked her. “Attention seeking?”
“I did not say that.” She shook her head. “But in answer to your question, no. That is not what I think. I am simply asking why you did not call the police instead of going after him yourself.”
“I didn’t think there was enough time.”
“Again, are you certain? The Briarwood police station is not that far from your house, is it?”
“Done some research, have you?” I queried.
“A little,” she said.
“Well, I did tell Felicity to call Ben and have him call me on my cell phone.”
“But you still chased after Eldon Porter on your own.”
“Okay. Right now, given my current state, I might be a bit denser than normal, but I can see that you have a different idea about this. I just haven’t figured out what it is. Would you like to share?”
“No,” she shook her head again. “Not really.”
“Excuse me?”
“What I think is not the point, Rowan. What is the point is what your motivation for that decision actually was at the time. Only you know that answer, and me telling you my theory will not help, whether I am correct or not. You have to reach the conclusion on your own.”
“So, no offense, but I’m paying you so that I can reach my own conclusions?”
“No,” she smiled. “You are paying me to help you navigate unfamiliar terrain in order to work toward those conclusions. Just consider me a docent for your psyche.”
I let out a quiet chuckle. “So you’re basically an expensive tour guide.”
“Something like that, but I am not allowed to accept tips.”
“You know, you really aren’t what I expected from a shrink.”
“I should hope not,” she laughed musically.
The mood lightened for a moment as we stood there. Helen waited patiently for me to continue, without prompting, and allowed me to observe where she had taken us. Something in me wanted to rush along to the next exhibit buried deeper within my mind, seeking out the answer that would make everything right-the panacea that would return normalcy to my life. But, I knew deep down that no such cure existed. Obviously, so did she.
Still, she wasn’t about to budge and remained steadfast in her silence. I apparently hadn’t seen everything I was meant to see here.
“I know I wasn’t very grounded at the time I made that decision,” I finally said with a sigh. “And I really haven’t been ever since. That has certainly become a problem for me now.”
“Hence your lack of focus?”
“There’s another understatement,” I confessed. “I’m just this side of legally blind, I think.”
“I doubt you are as bad as that,” she said.
“I don’t know,” I contended. “I feel like I’m trapped on the inside looking out, and it’s midnight with a new moon, clouds, and a power outage.”
“That could be an important milestone.”
“What? Like I’m a prisoner of my own failings?”
“No, nothing so self-deprecating.”
“Okay, I give. How about a hint?”
“What happens when you place a piece of black paper behind a pane of glass, Rowan?” she asked.
“Well, if I remember my grade school physical science class correctly, you end up with a somewhat crude mirror,” I answered with a shrug.
“Exactly. Perhaps the darkness you see is doing just that for you, but instead, you are looking too hard for something else beyond that veil.”
“So you think I should just accept what I see?”
“I think you should take advantage of the opportunity to peer into your own reflection.”
“Now that really scares me,” I returned. “I’m afraid that’s where the real darkness is.”
“We all have darkness within us, Rowan,” she replied. “And when you encounter it, sometimes you have no choice but to light your own way.”
“I’m not so sure I’ve got enough of a candle to do that,” I sighed.
“Of course you do. You must simply find it first.”
“I think I’m running out of places to look, Helen.”
“Do not worry,” she grinned. “I guarantee that it will be in the last place you look.”
I couldn’t help but return a grin of my own in response to the cliche adage. Apparently I’d seen enough, and when she spoke again, we continued smoothly into a seemingly new subject.
“Something Benjamin neglected to tell me was that you had started smoking again.”
I looked down at the freshly burning cigarette in my hand and noticed that it was tucked between my two middle fingers. I didn’t even remember lighting it. It felt completely natural but looked foreign positioned in the middle of my hand as it was now, so I moved it up beneath my index finger.
Now that it looked normal to me, it felt extremely out of place.
I elected to ignore the sensation and took a puff.
“Yeah. Last night,” I acknowledged. “I’ve been fighting the craving for a while, but falling off the wagon was kind of sudden.”
“Stress can do that,” she offered. “We subconsciously return to places or habits that once gave us comfort. I certainly hope my smoking in front of you yesterday had nothing to do with it.”
“No, it didn’t,” I reassured her. “Nothing for you to worry about there.”
“Do you remember when you first started smoking?”
“You mean before last night?”
“Yes.”
“Oh,” I did a quick mental calculation, “sixteen, seventeen years ago.”
“And when did you quit?”
“Almost two years ago, except for a cigar now and then.”
“Do you remember why you originally started?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Something to do, I guess.”
“That is fairly thin reasoning, Rowan,” she said.
“Yes, it is.” I nodded.
“Had something particularly stressful happened to you around the time you started?”
“I don’t think so.” I shrugged again. “I don’t really recall.”
We both stood in silence for a long moment, alternately inhaling and exhaling clouds of smoke that dissipated on the cool breeze. The sky was an expanse of slate grey that stretched from jagged horizon to jagged horizon, even and unblemished. The temperature was hovering in the upper 40’s after having threatened to push fully into the low 50’s earlier in the day. It actually looked far colder than it really was, even with the breeze factored in.
“Rowan,” she finally began after flicking the ashes from her own smoke and gazing thoughtfully out at the skyline. “I realize we have only recently met but you truly do not strike me as the kind of person who is deliberately contrary. Am I correct in this assumption?”
I mulled over the comment, reading between the lines and deciphering the base meaning of her words.
“I’d like to think that I’m not a jackass, if that’s what you mean,” I answered.
“Touche,” she replied. “So much for tact.”
“Please,” I told her, “feel free to be tactful. It makes me feel appreciated. Anyway, you were saying?”
“My point was simply this: Why will you not tell me the reason you think you started smoking again,” she instructed. “Because I am going to go out on a limb here and say that you do not believe it is because of stress.”
“Am I that transparent?”
“Not really.” She shook her head and smiled. “I just have better sight than most.”
I gave the query some thought. Ben had already told her about some of the things he’d witnessed me do, and I’d spoken at length with her about it myself during our first session. I had nothing to lose by being honest.
“I think that I am physically manifesting the habit of a dead person.”
“Whom?” She asked the question without even blinking.
“A young woman named Debbie Schaeffer, or maybe another named Paige Lawson,” I told her. “Maybe even both. I don’t know.”