"Deanna,
please honey, just stop doing this to yourself. It won't do anyone any good for
you to make yourself sick like this."
Deanna's
terrified dark eyes met the comforting sea of concern in his blue ones.
"Please....I know you have to be angry with me, so just please
don't...." No matter how worried about her was Deanna couldn't shake the
fact that at any moment Will was going to realize what she had done.
Whatever
had happened to the little girl named Alexandra, horrible as it must have been,
would sooner or later take a back seat to the fact that she had kept their
child from him for at least half a decade. Sooner or later, the hurt of
betrayal would over take them both. She was sure of it.
Instinctively,
Will knew what was bothering her. He reached out, turning her to face him.
"Deanna, listen to me. Whatever happened back then is over. God, you
weren't even much older then Mandy back then. I'm not angry....if anything, I
know now more than ever that I am partly responsible for everything that happened
after the jungle. Anything you did, you had more than a little right to do.
Forget that. What matters now is what happened next.
Deanna
nodded slowly. "Maybe somewhere in the rest of her things...." she
let the sentence trail as she approached the chest again. She picked up that
last picture, staring straight through it. "She didn't come back that
day." How she knew this, Deanna had no clue. Without even hearing Will's
questioning response she reached back into the trunk, feeling for all the world
like she was taking the lid off Pandora's box.
The
necklace. Somehow, her hand had come up with the necklace. Memories of what had
happened in the lot earlier that day suddenly returned. Memories of
memories....the thought was so strange, she might have laughed, but for the
darkness and grief that had suddenly enveloped her soul. ~ NO!~ The word lanced
through her mind, and for the second time that day, she collapsed under the
pressure of that darkness.
Will
barely had time to catch her.
* *
*
Alexis
started, blinked, and then finally just stared. "I'm sorry, what are you
talking about?"
Amanda
immediately cursed herself for asking the question so directly. ~ I've either
scared the life out of her or she thinks I'm completely nuts! ~ "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to blurt
it out like that....It's just, well....I overheard my mom telling my dad about
what happened at the house the other night....about you hearing a little
girl."
Alexis
felt as if her face was on fire. "Oh, that was just a little stress playing
with my overactive imagination is all, nothing to be taken seriously. Why would
that make you think that I was some sort of telepath?"
Mandy
sat up in the chair and looked the older woman straight in the eye. "That
was my sister's room. No one knew that, not even my mom, but somehow YOU knew
she had been there. How else could you explain that?"
"So
that is how you would describe it then? I was never really sure, but for some
reason I never wanted to take the explanation that far." Alexis left her
seat and moved to the window. Somehow, the empty darkness of the night was
already closing in. ~ How appropriate.
~
Amanda
watched her with fascination. "Then there is something, isn't there?"
She suddenly felt sorry for this woman. Here she was, some kid she barely even
knew, and digging up what was clearly a painful subject for her.
"Listen," she whispered, "you don't have to tell me anything,
I'll just go."
"No.....please
stay. If what you say is true, then there are things you have a right to know.
Things you need to know."
The desperation in her plea stopped Amanda cold. For the first time she realized that her revelation hadn't even fazed her companion. That was strange....she should have at least questioned why Deanna had never mentioned having another child, but she hadn't. Instead, she had been completely absorbed in the idea that whatever her secrets were, they might be explained through the blanket terms of telepathy. "You know something, don't you?" she asked.