"Surely you must have been, to some degree."
"Oh I was, scared shitless about the whole setup and my inexperience and not knowing how I'd react, but at the same time I could push that person away and be just stupid, wide-eyed Anita Walls bumbling her way into an armed camp. It was intensely liberating. The three months flew by, and I never made a mistake, never showed any fear. It was like jittery old Anne Waverly was locked up inside a glass ball, looking over my shoulder."
"And then you came back."
"Christ, yes. I came out and was taken away for debriefing, and it left me so depressed, I couldn't eat. But I'm sure you remember that."
"I remember."
"It must have been fun to have one of Antony's flaky grad students move in on you and spend a couple of weeks staring at the walls."
"It was not that long, and you didn't stare at the walls. You were charming, in a quiet way."
"I'll bet. But the whole business in North Dakota helped. And once the postpartum depression lifted, the weight I woke up to every morning didn't seem quite so heavy."
"Let's talk about guilt."
" 'Survivor's guilt,' " Anne said wryly. "It wasn't quite that simple, was it?"
"No." Anne took a deep breath and let it out. "No, it wasn't. Still isn't. I did have something to do with Abby and Aaron's deaths. With all the Farm deaths."
"So you have told me."
"My leaving the Farm set Ezekiel off. Look, even then I had enough training, enough experience to know how dangerous it would be to cross a man in his mental state, but I went ahead. I should have known. I did know—but I took off anyway."
They had stepped off the familiar path of the litany, and Maria watched her carefully.
"Why?"
"Why? Because I was selfish. I was stupid and greedy—I was bored with life on the Farm. I wanted to get back to grad school, where people valued what I did instead of telling me how bad I was at milking cows and how unfocused and disruptive I was getting."
"You are saying that your desire for self-fulfillment led to their deaths."
"My impatience, my self-importance, my… My… inability to get along with the father of my child."
"You and Aaron were having arguments," Maria said quietly.
"We had a huge fight about going back to Berkeley and I got in the car and drove away. He didn't want me to take Abby, and I didn't want her with me. And that was the end."
"But not for you."
"Yes, for me. Annie died too, and Anne was built up on the wreckage, poor old battered Anne with her limp and her dogs. And every so often Anne goes away and Anita or Ana or whoever comes to life instead."
"So why are you concerned about this investigation, Anne? Why have you come to me?"
"I'm worried that I can't do it this time. That Ana won't, you know, take over."
"Is this different, the feeling this time?"
"Yes. No. I don't know. I know it sounds crazy, but I'm afraid that I'm not frightened enough."
"You need to be frightened?"
"You know I do," Anne said, growing angry with the slow repetition of the therapist.
"Tell me again," Maria said, meaning, Remind yourself how it works.
"Fear is the force that drives Anne into her corner. Fear's like pain—it can be overwhelming at first, but if you live with it long enough, it can be shaped and molded, and it can be walled away to give you just a little space of your own where it isn't. And that's where Ana and the others live and breathe."
"And you wish to undertake yet another enterprise that will require you to break open your half-healed wounds and encourages you to split into a dual personality."
"You're exaggerating, Maria."
"Am I? Listen to your own words."
"That's just a way of talking about a mental process. A shorthand."
"I don't know that it is."
"Maria, I can't afford this," Anne snapped, and began to gather herself to go. "I can't risk anything getting in the way. You don't know what you're asking."
"Anne, sit down." Maria waited for her client to subside warily into the chair. "Anne, I cannot encourage self-deception, I cannot countenance actions that are so antithetical to the healing process. You knew this when you came here with your dream about Glen."
"Maria, sometimes you have to work beyond the immediate good to see the long-term picture."
"You are saying you need to do this work for Glen for your own state of health?" Maria asked dubiously.
"I'm saying there's unfinished business."
"I thought the last case, the one that you took to Glen, was meant to settle unfinished business."
"It was. But." Anne thought for a moment and then said slowly, "When I volunteered to go into Kansas, I was deliberately going after Martin Cranmer as a way to balance the disaster of the previous case in Utah. Kansas did that. Now it's a matter of reaching back to the beginning of the circle again, back to when Glen first took control of my life."
"The creature has to stand up to the creator?"
"Something like that."
"You and Glen have been very close from time to time. Tell me this, Anne: Do you love Glen?"
"I detest him," Anne said without thinking. "No, I suppose it's not that simple. I feel… God, what don't I feel when it comes to Glen McCarthy? It's like every emotion put together, all the contradictory drives at once. Maybe that's why he was wearing black in the dream—don't they say that when you mix all the colors together, you come up with black? That's Glen, the black hole of my emotions."
"He declared himself God."
"And was dressed as the devil."
"So tell me, Anne: How does Glen feel about you?"
"I think I make him nervous." There was a degree of satisfaction in her voice that neither of them missed.
"Why would that be?"
"He thinks he controls me but he's afraid he doesn't. He thinks he understands me, and he does on one level, better than anyone else in the world, but not on another. He respects and admires me, to the extent that he has an inflated sense of my abilities, but he also, without realizing it, hopes that I will fail."
Maria had been a therapist for a long time, but even so it took her two or three seconds to wipe all trace of the shock and concern she felt out of her voice so she could ask evenly, "Why would Glen hope that you will fail?"
"Oh, he's not about to set me up for a fall. If I screwed up again, it would mean his job. I just meant that deep down he has to feel some resentment that he's so dependent on me. I mean, really: don't all men secretly want to be the one to come riding on the white stallion to the rescue?"
Maria chuckled again at that, but Anne decided against any further revelations in the Glen department. If Maria, friend and therapist, was already worrying about Glen's motivations, it would only muddy the waters further if Anne were to voice her growing suspicion that Glen, deep in a hidden place within that smooth, whole, and completely unscarred skin of his, held a certain dark fascination with the scars and injuries that his job had inflicted on her body and mind.
No, they both had enough to think about; besides, her hour was up.
The term ended, the grade sheets were turned in, she had a final appointment with her lawyer, a farewell dinner with Antony and Maria, and a relatively full night's sleep. Two days, and she would be gone.
The next day she brought out the old Volkswagen bus named Rocinante from its resting place in the barn. Eliot had spent the better part of one enraptured week stripping down the engine and servicing it from roof to road, and it now had nearly-new tires, completely new brakes, a more powerful electrical system, a rearview mirror that actually reflected the road behind her, and it had seen the occasional and disconcerting loss of power during acceleration cured by a radical revamping of the entire fuel system. The old lady was set to tackle mountains and deserts again, albeit at her own placid speed.