Frowning, Sharon went to the front door, Kelly trailing after her, and opened it a couple of inches. For a moment she didn't recognize CharlotteLaConner standing on the front porch, her face ashen, her dark-circled eyes reddened with tears. But at last Charlotte spoke. Gasping, Sharon pulled the door wide.
"Please," Charlotte rasped, her voice strained and her eyes darting back over her shoulder, as if she thought she were being followed. "I don't have anywhere else to go. You've got to let me in… please?"
As Kelly pressed close to her, Sharon held the door with one hand and drew Charlotte in with the other. "Charlotte! What is it? What's wrong?"
"They're making me go away," Charlotte sobbed. "They want me to just go away and forget about Jeff. But he's my son, Sharon!" she wailed. "I can't just forget him. I can't!"
Sharon stared at CharlotteLaConner, her mind whirling. What was the woman talking about? Jeff was in a hospital somewhere, wasn't he? She began guiding Charlotte gently toward the kitchen and the family room beyond, then realized that Kelly was still beside her, gazing curiously at the distraught woman. "Go up to your room, sweetheart," she said. "Just for a little while. All right?"
For a second she thought Kelly was going to protest, but then, as if she knew that something was happening that she didn't need to know about, she trotted up the stairs. When she got to the top, she turned and looked back. "Is she JeffLaConner's mother?" she asked.
Sharon hesitated, then nodded. Kelly seemed on the verge of saying something else, but abruptly changed her mind and disappeared down the hall toward her room.
Blake was on his feet when Sharon and Charlotte came into the family room. When he saw the state Charlotte was in, he quickly began stuffing files back into the briefcase. "I'll be out of here in a second," he mumbled. He fell silent as CharlotteLaConner's bleary eyes fixed on him.
"Are you in on it, too?" she demanded, her voice reduced now to a hoarse rattle. Gasping for air, nearly spent from her wild run through the streets, she allowed herself to collapse onto the sofa. But her eyes never left Blake.
"I… in on it?" Blake asked. What was the woman talking about? Of course, he knew about JeffLaConner's breakdown. He'd even helped set up the boy's admission to a private mental institution near Denver.
CharlotteLaConner's eyes were wild now. "They're all part of it, you know," she rasped, her eyes flicking toward Sharon. "They did something to Jeff, and they don't want me to find out what it is. They won't let me see him. They even say it's my fault!" She buried her head in her hands and began sobbing. Sharon reached out, wanting to comfort her, but Charlotte shrank away from her touch.
The door bell rang, and Charlotte flinched visibly at the sound. Wordlessly, Blake hurried out of the room, and a moment later Sharon heard the faint sounds of whispered conversation. Then Blake was back.
Behind him, his eyes veiled with worry, was ChuckLaConner. As soon as he saw Charlotte, his sigh of relief filled the room.
"I'm sorry," he said to Sharon, going to sit next to his wife. But as he tried to slip his arm protectively around Charlotte, she shrank from him as a moment ago she had from Sharon. "I wasn't sure where she went. I've been driving around, looking for her." He paused, then reached out to Charlotte once again. "Honey, it's going to be all right. I'm here, and I'm going to take care of you."
"No!" Charlotte lurched to her feet and scuttled away until she had backed herself into a corner of the room and could go no farther. She froze there for a moment. Dimly, as if from a great distance away, she could hear her husband's voice.
"You have to understand," he was saying. "Ever since the trouble with Jeff started she's been getting worse and worse."
She had to get hold of herself-she had to! He was going to convince them that she was crazy, and if that happened…
She drew a deep breath, then another. She stood quite still for a moment more, then slowly, her hands held carefully at her sides, turned to face the three people who were watching her. Though every one of her frayed nerves demanded she turn away once again, cried out for her to give in to the panic that was building inside her, she knew she couldn't. She swallowed, trying to clear her throat of the lump that threatened to cut off her breathing, then took another breath.
"I'm all right," she said, praying that her voice didn't betray her now. "I just… well, it's been a terrible week for me, and I guess I just came apart for a minute."
Her eyes held Chuck's as she silently pleaded with him to say no more. If he understood the look, he chose to ignore it.
"It's the strain of the last week," he said, his eyes meeting Blake's. "You know the situation-Jeff's in isolation and-" He stopped, his gaze shifting away from the Tanners. "Well," he finally went on, "I'm afraid Charlotte's begun imagining things." He moved across the room and took his wife's hand. "Come on, darling," he said quietly. "Let's go home and let you get some rest."
When they were gone, the house seemed oddly silent. It was Blake who finally spoke, after shaking his head sadly. "I've been working on it all week," he said. "Something just snapped in Jeff's head." He ran his tongue thoughtfully over his lower lip. "And I guess it's pretty obvious where the instability came from, isn't it?"
Sharon said nothing, for while ChuckLaConner had tried to explain what was happening to his wife, her eyes had remained on Charlotte.
And in Charlotte's eyes, she had read a clear message.
Don't believe him. Please…don't believe him.
Mark Tanner and Linda Harris were coming down out of the hills above Silverdale. They'd been hiking for an hour, and though Mark had taken his camera with him, so far he hadn't taken a single picture. Even when a large buck with antlers spread proudly above his head had emerged from a grove of aspens and instantly frozen in place, staring at them, Mark had made no move to capture the image.
"What's wrong with you?" Linda finally demanded, her voice sharp with exasperation. The buck, after nearly two minutes, had bounded away and disappeared,Chivas halfheartedly chasing it for a few yards before giving up and rejoining them as they started back toward town. "I thought you liked to take pictures of everything."
Mark shrugged laconically. "I did," he agreed. "But I don't know-lately it seems like taking pictures is just like everything else I used to do." He fell silent, trying to find the words to explain to Linda what was happening to him. ''Taking pictures is sort of like standing on the outside, looking in," he went on. "And I'm just tired of feeling like I'm left out of everything."
Linda glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. Ever since the night he'd gotten beaten up, he seemed different, but so far he hadn't been willing to talk about it. In fact, she'd hardly seen him all week; three times she'd had to go to cheerleading practice after school, and the other two days Mark had gone out to the sports center to keep his appointments with Dr. Ames. "You mean like sports?" she asked now, keeping her voice as casual as possible. To her surprise, Mark only nodded.
"I guess so," he admitted. "I mean, always before, I didn't really care about being so small, 'cause I didn't want to go out for anything anyway." He grinned at her then, and exaggeratedly flexed one of his arms. "But all of a sudden I'm starting to work out, and I'm putting on some weight. Watch!" He dropped to the ground and did fifty push-ups while Linda watched, astonished. He was barely even breathing hard when he was done. "What do you think of that?" he asked. "Three weeks ago I couldn't even have done ten."
"Big deal," Linda commented sourly. "So you can do push-ups. Who cares? JeffLaConner used to be able to do a hundred. And look what happened to him!"
"Aw, come on," Mark replied, suddenly deflated. He'd been so sure she'd be at least a little bit impressed. "Just because I'm trying to get in shape doesn't mean I'm going to turn into an asshole like Jeff!"