Free Run to Me by Diane Hester Page B

across the walls.
    Shyler took a sip of brandy, set the glass on the workbench beside her and resumed sanding the roof of the martin house. She didn’t normallydrink while she worked but, still recovering from her trip into town, felt the need for something to settle her.
    Brushing a strand of hair from her face, she caught the scent from her bandaged hand. Gauze, antiseptic and the barest hint of something else. Soap? Aftershave? Something . . .
him
. Suddenly the doctor’s face was before her.
    If anything had made her ordeal less distressing it hadbeen Doctor Hadley. There was something about him, something more than looks and a competent manner. Soft-spoken, gentle, yet radiating an aura of quiet strength, he’d made her feel calmer and more relaxed – and a few other things she preferred not to dwell on – than any man she’d met in a long time.
    Despite her fears, her determination to tell him nothing about herself, he’d somehow managedto draw her out. Not goaded herinto it, as many had tried, but simply let her feel it was all right, that he would listen. And, wonder of wonders, she had believed it, however briefly. She’d spoken more to him in their twenty minutes than at both her visits to Muir combined.
    She felt the slightest prick of conscience recalling she hadn’t left him her contact details as she had promised. Whatshe had told him wasn’t a lie – the first time she’d visited Doctor Muir, last November, she’d only just returned to the cabin and hadn’t expected to stay very long. Just a few weeks, months at the most, she’d told herself. To get over the divorce, losing her job, her friends, the apartment, and . . . everything else. Just a bit of time to pull herself together and then she’d move on. Find a newjob. Start a new life.
    Only it hadn’t worked out that way. Nor was it likely to in the future. When the mere sight of children was enough to bring on your panic attacks, how did you ever go back to teaching? And without a job to get money for treatment, how did you ever get over your problem? Not without asking for help, you didn’t, and that was patently out of the question.
    And so here shewas, ten months later, still at the cabin.
    She gazed towards the workshop’s darkened window, seeing in her mind’s eye the forests beyond. The misty hillsides, shrouded peaks and flowered meadows she’d hiked nearly every summer of her childhood. Sometimes she wondered if part of the reason she’d come running back here was in the hope of finding that girl still out there. Trusting and safe, whollyat peace. So far she hadn’t.
    The winter past had been grim at the start, the long hours of cold and darkness closing in on her, the isolation she’d initially craved driving her slowly beyond despair. Until the day she’d unlocked the door and entered this room, her father’s old workshop, and stepped back in time.
    As she’d cleared the benches and sorted the tools the memories had come floodingback – those wonderful summers she’d spent helping him build the cabin. The hours he’d devoted to teaching her the skills had instilled in her his love of the craft, a love reawakened the minute she’d returned to where it all started.
    Once revived, that love had gotten her through the winter. With the tools and wood he’d left behind, his presence alive in the dusty rafters as though he was watchingover her, she’d renewed her practice of woodwork and carving. By spring she’d had enough decent pieces to consider selling them, and with the last of her food running out, she’d approached Bill at the general store. Their arrangement had kept her going ever since.
    By her second visit to Muir in March she’d known she wouldn’t be leaving the cabin, but by then the anger had taken hold of her andshe’d refused to give him her details on principle. Not in a loud defiant way but by simply ‘forgetting’, as she had today.
    She accepted that her logic on the issue was probably flawed,