When Through Deep Waters Page 3

Louise dropped her hand from where it rested on Alicen’s shoulder and with concern watched Alicen’s face. Alicen wanted to swallow the fresh set of tears brimming in her eyes. She wanted to laugh off what Louise must be thinking. She wanted to ask if she’d been screaming Jane’s name out loud again. She wanted to bury herself in a dark hole, she wanted to be alone, she wanted to be lost.

  She wanted to be dead.

  But before she could latch on to a single thought, Louise stepped forward and wrapped Alicen in an embrace. Without the strength to resist, Alicen fell into her friend’s arms, her weight dragging both women to their knees. Silent sobs broke to mournful cries and echoed through the empty house. There, on the kitchen floor that Alicen’s childhood feet had scampered across, she cried until she was numb and had nothing left to give.

  3

  Louise moved to take the teakettle off the stove as its cry signaled the water inside was boiling. Alicen sat at the kitchen table, her throat raw, her eyes swollen from losing control of her emotions only minutes earlier. She had made some lame promise to herself that she wouldn’t do what she just had, not this soon after being reconnected with Louise. In her naiveté, she’d actually believed she could control the monster of loss eating away at her soul. But control was an illusion.

  “Here you go,” Louise said, setting a steaming cup of tea down in front of Alicen and taking the seat across from her.

  “Thanks,” Alicen mustered. Silence filled the room as Alicen kept her eyes off Louise and watched the swirling steam rise off the top of her mug.

  Louise cleared her throat. “So, I got a text from Martha to confirm that she and her daughters will be by tomorrow to help us get this place cleaned up. I figure it’ll be easier to start sorting through things after we’ve had all the dust removed.”

  Alicen nodded. “I can’t believe your family is really selling this place.” She was glad to be in conversation that didn’t bring them back to her mental collapse.

  “It feels a bit odd, but it’s time.”

  “Seems strange to think your family won’t have roots here anymore.”

  “Like I mentioned, Red Lodge isn’t what it used to be. The population is declining, and tourism just doesn’t bring people in like it used to. My dad doesn’t think it’s worth the cost to maintain our properties here anymore.”

  “And the bookstore is all you have left in town?”

  Louise nodded. “Dad sold the apartment and drugstore about five years ago. The bookstore was the first property his great-grandfather built, so he had a harder time letting that one go. And of course this house.”

  “The Watsons are leaving Red Lodge for good.”

  Alicen watched sadness creep into Louise’s eyes. “We tried to keep this town vibrant, but it just wasn’t meant to be, I guess,” Louise said. “Both sites will have to be swept, cataloged, packed up; we’ll have plenty to do. I’m glad you’re here to help.”

  “Yeah, it really puts a damper on all my big summer plans.” Alicen heard the bite in her tone and instantly regretted it. She was being cold for no reason, to someone who didn’t deserve it. To someone who had stuck by her and offered her comfort at every turn. Someone who had just held her while she’d released her violent agony. Logic told Alicen her cruelty was another unfortunate outcome of loss, and her doctor back in Santa Monica would say that all the outcomes of loss could be controlled. But then he had clearly been wrong.

  Alicen exhaled and shook her head. “I’m sorry, I—”

  “Don’t be,” Louise said. “I understand.”

  Alicen swallowed the hateful response forming in her mouth to counter Louise’s false proclamation of understanding. The woman had never married, had no children, had lost nothing. She couldn’t possibly understand.

  “Also, Victoria Flowers is coming by tomorrow morning. I thought it best to get you all acquainted right away.”

  The reality Alicen had been avoiding hit her like a train. She bit her tongue to keep from screaming, a visceral reaction to what she knew lay before her.

  “It’ll be good, Alicen. I mean, I don’t know Victoria that well, but the work they do at Clover Mountain Retreat Center comes highly recommended.”

  “You make it sound like a vacation resort instead of a mental institute,” Alicen said. She remembered hearing about the place growing up. It sat back in the mountains, about ten miles outside the Red Lodge city limits. She’d never been there, and she didn’t know much about the Flowers family who owned and ran the facility. She certainly never thought she’d be a member of the institute’s unique clientele.

  “It really is a beautiful facility.” Louise paused before continuing. “And their Home-Away program is perfect for you. We talked about this.”

  “Right, I get to be a resident of the crazy house without actually living in the crazy house.”

  “Don’t call it that.”

  “Isn’t that what it is? A place for people who aren’t completely sane? Who need special assistance because they can’t be trusted with their own minds? People like me?”

  Louise said nothing. What could she say? That Alicen’s only treasure had been taken from her and she’d lost her sanity? The familiar darkness of loss filled Alicen’s mind, and the dangerous thoughts that had placed her in this position rumbled around like marbles.

  Louise hadn’t brought up the incident. Not since Alicen had been released from the hospital a couple of months earlier. In fact, no one had brought it up. In the world she’d come from, people didn’t talk about such things. They buried them with money or power or both. Before the incident people had looked at her like she was a lost puppy and spoken to her in hushed tones, as if they might rattle her crazy loose if their voices became too loud. After the incident, they looked at her like she was broken and diseased. And they’d stopped speaking to her altogether. She wasn’t one of them anymore. They’d all jumped ship, a massive herd—one day there, the next day nowhere.

  “Being a part of this program is why you’re here,” Louise said.

  “I thought I was here to get some fresh air. You said come be with people who love you, and get out of that empty house marked with . . .” Alicen couldn’t finish her sentence. She shook her head and moved on. “You said come spend the summer with me; I’ll keep you busy and distracted; come clear your head, remember?”

  Alicen could feel Louise’s tender expression without looking at her face, and she wished for it to stop.

  “Yes, and all of that is true. But what you suffered—you need more than to be kept busy, Alicen. You need to talk to someone. You lost your daughter, your husband, your life.”

  “The husband part wasn’t so bad,” Alicen joked.

  “I’m being serious.”

  Alicen let out a short, muffled laugh. “Me too.”

  Louise tried to hide her concern, but it was too strong to mask.

  “Oh, come on, Lou; you knew Allen. Our marriage was a complete facade. It wouldn’t have survived Jane breaking her leg, much less her . . .” Again Alicen couldn’t verbalize the actual words. Dying, she thought. Because Jane is dead.

  Silence filled the kitchen, and Alicen sipped her tea to keep her face from showing Louise any more brokenness.

  “He should have stayed with you,” Louise said.

  “Did you really think he would? He hardly wanted me when I was sane. How could anyone expect him to stay with me in this state?” An image of Allen washed behind her eyes, the way he’d barely looked at her in their last days together. The man she’d committed her life and love to, the one who’d helped her make their most beautiful gift. The same man who had become so cold and hateful. She hadn’t expected him to be comforting, but his disgust had stung more than she cared to admit. He’d blamed her. She couldn’t fault him for that. Alicen deserved to be blamed.

  “That doesn’t make what he did right,” Louise said.

  “When did Allen ever do the right thing?”

  Louise shook her head, anger rolling across her eyes. �
��He always was such a tool.”

  The comment made Alicen laugh in spite of the pain, and that brought a smile from Louise. She raised her eyebrows as if to say, Just stating the facts and took a swig from her mug.

  Alicen was suddenly swept up in her dear friend’s kindness. Everyone else had abandoned her, but Louise, even though they hadn’t lived close to each other in nearly two decades, hadn’t hesitated to help. Emotion roiled inside Alicen’s chest, and she smiled to keep it from exploding. The swing of sensations from happiness to anger, from thankfulness to depression, was a ride she’d like to get off. No wonder she was going mad.

  “Thank you,” Alicen said softly, “for letting me come here. I’m not sure what I would have done otherwise.”

  “We were basically sisters once,” Louise said. “A bond like that doesn’t change.” She let her words hang for a moment before pressing on. “Please talk to Victoria tomorrow? Let her help you? Let me help you?”

  Alicen dropped her eyes to her lap and took a deep breath.

  “I just want you to get better,” Louise said.

  “As if losing a child is a sickness you can recover from,” Alicen whispered.

  Silence again encased the room.

  “I don’t want you to hurt yourself again,” Louise said.

  And there it was. The incident she would never be free of. A moment of weakness that would forever haunt her. But then she knew it was more than mere weakness. It had been strong, a desire she’d dreamed of, something she’d wanted. It had masked itself as an escape, but in the end her actions had only imprisoned her more.

  Louise reached her hand across the table and laid it on top of Alicen’s. Alicen glanced up from her lap and met Louise’s eyes.

  “I can’t imagine the kind of pain you must have felt to get you to that place, but I do know that you can’t heal from this on your own,” Louise said and gave Alicen’s hand a soft squeeze. “Or at least you shouldn’t have to.”

  Louise’s touch was warm and comforting, something Alicen hadn’t experienced recently. It chipped away at some of the stone forming around her heart, and she found herself wanting to make Louise happy. So she gave a halfhearted smile and nodded. “I’ll talk with her.”

  Louise’s face broke with joy. “Good,” she said, releasing Alicen’s hand. “This is going to be good, Alicen. I can feel it.”

  Alicen didn’t want to do anything more to upset Louise, so again she faked a smile, wishing she believed as much as Louise did.

  Louise stood and grabbed both empty mugs. “Now the real question is what the heck are we going to eat. I’m starving.”

  “It’s about time we get to the hard questions,” Alicen teased, pleased when Louise bought her fake humor and chuckled. Alicen would meet with Victoria Flowers; she would help Louise around the house and at the bookstore; she would play her part, like she was supposed to. But it would be a role, not a reality. Because she already knew her reality was etched in stone. Jane was dead. Alicen had killed her. That’s all there was now.

  Alicen stayed in the sitting room as Louise went to the front door. The bell had announced Victoria Flowers’s arrival a moment earlier, and Alicen had decided to wait while Louise greeted her. Louise knew Victoria from high-school days, the ones that happened after Alicen and her mother left Billings and moved to California. From what Alicen gathered, Victoria hadn’t attended the local high school, but she and Louise had crossed paths several times during their Red Lodge summers. Victoria’s uncle, Donald Flowers, had held a seat on the town board, alongside Mr. Watson. The two families had interacted from time to time.

  The night before had ended with a frozen pizza, purchased at the small market in the middle of town. On a warm day, you could walk there from the Watson home. The girls hadn’t walked. They’d driven the two and a half miles, picked up a load of essentials—food, cosmetics, toilet paper, cleaning supplies—and come back to spend the rest of the evening working on the house. They hadn’t done much, just enough to walk through the main living spaces without collecting a trail of dust.

  It had been a good distraction for Alicen, putting her mind to a task. The aftermath of one of her episodes, as she coined them, could be difficult. Flashes of Jane’s face, whispers of her sweet voice. Alicen had deduced that she had in fact been screaming her dead daughter’s name aloud again. She had a tendency to do that when her mind got lost in the past. It was usually followed by the dark thoughts that were heavy enough to drag her soul into depths painted with depression and no foreseeable freedom. The kind that had caused her to reach for a bottle of pills and wash them down with burning liquor. The kind of depths that had gotten her here. Posttraumatic stress, they called it.

  Alicen exhaled calmly as new voices lofted through the air. She couldn’t stop the tremor in her fingers, so she wrapped them tightly in her lap. The voices got louder and were matched with faces as Louise escorted a striking woman and an older male associate around the corner.

  Alicen stood as the three entered. The woman turned her attention to Alicen immediately. She was porcelain-skinned with short black hair and dark caramel eyes. Her lips were painted red and stood out against the fitted black suit she wore. Her presence was overwhelming. Daunting, even—her stance brewing with power; dominance and control readable on her face.

  “Alicen,” Victoria said, extending her hand. “It’s such a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance.”

  Alicen smiled, feeling less than comfortable, and took Victoria’s hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  Victoria released Alicen’s hand and turned to her associate. “Alicen, I would like to introduce Dr. Cormack Wells.”

  In opposite fashion from Victoria, Dr. Wells was understated. At least twenty years her senior with warm skin tones, graying hair, and brown eyes, he wore simple blue slacks and a white button-down shirt. No tie or jacket, which Alicen found immediately appealing. Although his presence entering the room had been completely overshadowed by Victoria’s commanding stature, he held a silent confidence, and his smile was kind. She shook his hand and tried to release more of the tension residing in her shoulders.

  “Dr. Wells is a renowned psychiatrist who just recently joined our team at Clover Mountain. I thought you would benefit from having a couple familiar faces around campus, so I invited him to join us today. I think he will be a wonderful resource for you.” Victoria motioned to the chairs around the room. “Shall we sit?”

  All parties followed her instruction. Louise took the plush chair next to Alicen, while Victoria and Dr. Wells occupied the couch across the room. Alicen shifted awkwardly in her chair, crossing her legs and tucking her hands between her thighs to hide their shivering. It was really only a brief moment of silence, but it felt eternal.

  “I trust you are settling in all right?” Victoria aimed her question at Alicen.

  “Yes,” Alicen said. She noticed the tightness in her tone and tried to relax her throat.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Victoria said. “I want to first say that we all understand how uncomfortable this can be and that it is completely normal to feel a bit of hesitation toward the work we do at Clover Mountain.”

  Alicen collected her courage and made eye contact with the strong woman. She was chillingly confident, but her words and tone were kind. It helped Alicen settle deeper into her chair. She shifted her eyes to Dr. Wells, who wore an agreeable expression on his face. They both seemed calm; Alicen wasn’t sure whether that should make her feel at ease or more nervous.

  “I promise you that if you commit to this process, we will do everything we can to help you,” Victoria said.

  There was a brief pause before she continued. “I think maybe it’s best to review how the Home-Away program works and go over the commitments we at Clover Mountain Retreat Center make with our program recipients, as well as the commitments we hope you will make in return.”

  She waited for Alicen to respond with a slight nod before continuing. “I won’t bore you with too m
uch history of the retreat center itself; we can review more of that when you visit. But there are a couple things I always believe are helpful for our residents to know. Clover Mountain was founded by my great-grandfather Earl Flowers in the early 1940s as a way of making up for the insufficient care he believed his wife, Lori Marie, was receiving during her battle with mental illness. I say that because I believe it’s important all those participating in our programs know the retreat center was built on principles that strive to go beyond the norms of how mental, emotional, and psychological struggles are handled.”

  Alicen watched the way Victoria’s painted-red lips moved with phrases like “mental illness” and “psychological struggles.” Each syllable pounded like a hammer against her skull.

  “The center was created so the woman Earl Flowers loved could get the help she needed while resting in a place focused on tranquility and peace,” Victoria continued, “a place where her physical comfort was just as important as her mental and emotional comfort. We strive to maintain those original principles with each new resident who joins one of our programs.”

  Victoria reached inside her large slick black shoulder bag and retrieved a neatly folded pamphlet. She scooted forward and held the brochure forward, toward Alicen, who leaned forward as well. Alicen grabbed the item and then sat back to review it. A picturesque image filled the front panel, a large stone structure with gray roofing and clean white shutters and large oak doors, met by rolling green lawns, tall sturdy pine trees, and beautifully manicured rosebushes.

  “My great-grandfather wanted a location that was hidden away from the chaos of the city while being close enough that all participants could still interact with the community as part of their recovery programs. This made the mountains surrounding Red Lodge uniquely qualified.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Alicen said as she held the pamphlet firmly, focusing to keep her hands steady. She thought about opening the pamphlet and reviewing the information inside, but she couldn’t bring herself to commit that much yet.