Free Dead Voices by Rick Hautala Page B

highly; and anyway, it was just a doctor patient ... no, make that doctor — client relationship. Although the intimacy of a relationship like that could get quite intense, it wasn’t as if they were getting married. She had to admit that the longer she had been with Graydon, the more she had come to recognize that he had quite a magnetic, almost hypnotic charm about him.
    Just be careful. she warned herself.
    When she got back home, just after three o’clock, she was relieved to find that both of her parents were out. Her mother had left a note on the kitchen table, informing her she had gone to Portland for groceries. Elizabeth crumpled up the note and tossed it into the wastebasket. Her father was probably working outside or gone for supplies.
    She sat down at the kitchen table and let her mind wander as she gazed blankly out the window and over the field to the woods beyond. She already felt committed to work with Graydon, and she knew that this meant she would in all likelihood stay with her parents, at least for the time being. And that meant she would soon have to start looking for a job; she had no intention of freeloading off her parents indefinitely. Rather than rush the future or dwell too long and hard on the past, as Dr. Gavreau had told her, she decided for now, at least — just to let things unfold in their own time, to see what would happen without her pushing one way or another.
    The house was soothingly quiet.
    Consciously breathing deeply and evenly, Elizabeth got up and went from the kitchen through the dining room and into the living room. She tried to open up her senses and let herself fully enjoy the tranquility. The clock on the mantel measured a steady, low tick-tock. The sound reminded her of those long-ago afternoons when she had sat in the living room, either doing her homework or else dozing on the couch. Long, yellow bars of sunlight angled across the floor and edged up over the faded wallpaper, casting long shadows of chair and table legs. Spinning motes of dust whirled like planets in her passing as she sat down on the couch, leaned her head back, and closed her eyes.
    If she let herself, she could almost imagine that it was twenty years ago: that she had never grown up, never gone to college, never married Doug, and never given birth to ...
    “Aww, shit !” she said, jumping to her feet as soon as she thought the name Caroline .
    She spoke aloud so suddenly, so sharply, her voice sounded foreign to her own ears, as though someone else in the room had spoken. Pacing back and forth across the living-room rug, she felt her eyes widening as they darted back and forth, scanning the quiet house as though looking for an unseen presence she had dimly sensed.
    ‘‘Take it easy, there,” she muttered to herself, even as she looked almost frantically at the familiar furniture, seeking an anchor to hold down the sudden flood of panic she had felt rising inside her like a tide. She rubbed her hands together, noticing they were clammy. The veins on the backs of her hands stood out like thin blue strings against her winter-pale skin. A thick, salty taste filled the back of her throat, and tears began to roll down her cheeks.
    Was it thinking about Caroline that had started this? she wondered. Or had Graydon said something — or dragged something out of her subconscious that had triggered this sharp, clear pain? Or maybe ... just maybe it was missing —
    “ — Caroline,” she whispered, no more than a ragged, tearing sound.
    Here it’s been a year and a half, she thought, and the grief and pain are still as sharp as the day it happened. The wounds hadn’t healed or even dulled, and Elizabeth knew the pain would never go away. She was going to have to learn to live with it and not let it turn her into an emotional cripple.
    Without knowing why, Elizabeth turned and started up the stairs, but rather than going to her bedroom to lie down, she continued down the hallway to the attic door. Flipping