CHAPTER Five
Harmony and Charisma both dozed off on the sofas that sat in the parlor across the hall from the music room where Rachel had been ‘encouraged’ to sleep. Raider had not slept. He’d sat in the kitchen, chain-drinking large mugs of coffee brewed one pod at a time. He played Candy Crush with the sound on his phone muted. And every twenty minutes or so, he looked in on the three sleeping witches and the ridiculous cat, being as quiet as a man his size could be.
He was concerned about Rachel. She was one of his wife’s closest friends and she was alright. But he was plagued by a chilling uneasiness when his thoughts turned to Dash. Their friendship was of the unlikely variety.
Raider was self-aware enough to know he was rough and raw, barely refined enough to appear in public. And he regularly thanked the gods his wife was strange enough to accept that. Maybe even like it.
Dash was every bit the opposite. Polished, well educated, soft spoken. And yet they’d hit it off as soon as Dash had arrived for the spring choosing. Of course, as an insider, Raider knew which one or two lucky young men were going to win the mate lottery, but he was bound, not by spell but by vow, to keep the secret and not give away any hint of that foreknowledge. At times that was hard and he almost wished the girls didn’t tell him who was who in advance.
He’d liked Dash so much that it was especially difficult to treat him without partiality. For whatever reason, Raider’s affection was returned by Dashiell Fonteneau. While Raider sat by himself in Dash’s kitchen, in the early hours of the morning, he tried not to think about how hard he would take it if something irreparable had happened. But the unbidden, unwanted thought persisted and had to be sidelined again and again.
Sunrise had occurred with agonizing slowness, or so it seemed to Raider. When it was full light outside, he rose and made a fresh pot of coffee. They had one of those super fancy combination coffee makers that would brew either pot or pod.
Raider felt in his bones that the day was going to bring news that would require either coffee or bourbon or both, depending on the personality and biochemistry of the person afflicted with the curse of an extraordinary event. He didn’t reason that out in exactly that way. He just knew that coffee on hand would be a good idea. So, being more of a ‘doer’ by nature than he would ever voluntarily admit, he made himself useful. The resident proactive barista.
He sat down with a fresh mug, having been forced to switch to decaf, which he considered a pussy drink, because his hands were shaking, and called Dash’s number again. He didn’t know how many times he’d tried the phone through the night. Hundreds, maybe.
He’d just looked at the time on his own phone, which was nine thirty, when he heard a crash followed by footsteps stomping on the suspended wood floor and a yelled, “WHAT THE FUCK?!?”
Rachel was awake. And pissed.
When he stepped into the hall, she turned a glare on him that made him wonder if she was capable of turning him to a pillar of salt. Or a toad. And if she could, would she? But before he met whatever fate was at the end of Rachel’s fury her head swiveled to the left. Toward the living room where her two closest friends had been sleeping on the pretty yellow floral print sofas that faced each other.
Harmony and Charisma raised their heads then raced each other for the hall bathroom.
“Hold that thought,” Harmony said on the way past.
When she beat Charisma to the powder room and slammed the door, Charisma shrieked and made a run for the master suite. She decided the polite thing to do was to head for Dash’s bathroom. After all, Rachel was subject to the same demands of morning and should be able to use her own toilet.
There was only one thing in the universe that trumped Rachel’s fury and worry at that moment and that was the fact that she had to go to the bathroom. Having been left standing in the hallway with so many choice things to say to her friends, she settled on, “UGH!!!” and stomped off.
While there, in her bathroom, she was beginning to lose some of the steam that had threatened to greet the enclave with an Armageddon-style morning. She combed fingers through her hair, washed her eyes, and decided she could just as easily deliver a scathing rebuke to the traitors she’d formerly called friends through freshly brushed teeth.
When she emerged from the master, she could hear voices in the kitchen.
Three pairs of eyes immediately found Rachel when she came to stand in the doorway. Charisma was finishing a phone call. “Yes. She’s up.” Pause. “Yes. I suspect she will.” Pause. “Okay.”
Charisma ended the call and said to Rachel, “Your mother is on the way.”
Rachel huffed. “Great. I take it no one’s heard from Dash.” Everybody shook their heads. “Is there anything about this that you know that I don’t?”
Raider opened his mouth. Harmony reached out with a straight arm and grabbed a fistful of his Henley in a gesture that was understood as, “Don’t say a word.”
Raider calmly pried Harmony’s fist open. “Baby,” he crooned to Harmony, “in her place you’d feel the same. She’s a grown ass woman who deserves to know what we know about her man. Keeping her in the dark isn’t protecting her. It’s disrespecting her.”
Harmony let her hand drop in a gesture that indicated both permission and agreement. For someone so consistently and utterly uninterested in the contemplation of ‘deep’ subjects, Raider could be astoundingly wise.
“Pete hacked the flight. Dash wasn’t on it. That’s all we know that we didn’t know last night. I’ve tried his phone. A lot. Nothing yet.”
Rachel stared straight ahead, quiet and still for a full minute, until a single tear rolled down her cheek. Seeing that, Harmony and Charisma both rushed over and gathered her into a group hug.
After a few beats, she said, “I need to go see. Now.”
Harmony was shaking her head. “Wait for your mother. If you go before she gets here, Gale will kill us.”
Charisma agreed. “And you need to put something in your body first.” She looked at Raider. “Have you looked around? What have we got?”
“I ate the leftover dim sun. And the cheese. There were two croissants…”
“Let me guess,” Harmony said. “You ate those, too.”
“It was a long night,” Raider said in self-defense.
“So what is there?” Charisma asked Harmony, who was looking in the refrigerator.
“Not much. Oh, there’s a thing of crescent rolls.” She looked over at Rachel. “Ready in twenty minutes. It’ll take that long for you to get ready. Right?”
Rachel considered that. “Right.”
“What do you need to do to get ready?” Charisma asked. “Can I help?”
“I need to take a salt bath. You’d better sit with me because I may not be able to control… I might leave without meaning to. So you need to talk to me. Keep my attention.”
“Done. What else?”
“I think maybe I shouldn’t go in the vault.”
“Well, hell no, you’re not going in the vault,” Harmony said. “We’ll make sure nobody comes near you, but we need to be close.”
Harmony didn’t add, Just in case, but everybody in the room heard it telepathically and felt it hanging in the air like text that had been superimposed above their heads by photoshop.
“Come on.” Charisma urged her toward the master. “Let’s get your bath while the rolls are baking.”
While Rachel was in the tub, Charisma said, “Do we need to gather anything up from the vault? Do you have everything you need in your room?”
“I don’t really need anything but warm clothes. You have to make sure the cat doesn’t come in. I don’t think she would disturb my body while I’m gone, but as a precaution…”
“Sure. No cat. Warm clothes.”
“Yeah. My body gets cold when I’m gone and if it gets too cold then when I come back I can’t get warm for hours.”
“Understood.”
Rachel looked afraid. “Char.”
Rachel was the only person who called Charisma ‘Char’. It was a reminder that they’d been friends all their lives and the fact that only Rachel called her that made it an endearment that was a treasure beyond compare.
“No matter what happens, your friends are here. And your mom…”
As if on cue the bath door cracked open and Gale stuck her head in. “I’m not going to disturb. Just letting you know I’m here.”
“Thanks, Mom,” Rachel said. “I’m getting out now.”
Gale nodded and closed the door. Rachel dunked her head under the water so that the salt had a chance to spiritually sterilize every part of her body.
She donned yoga pants, a long sleeve tee, a cashmere sweater, two pairs of wool socks, then proceeded to blow dry her hair. By the time she was through she was flushed from the warmth.
“You sure you’re not too hot?” Charisma asked.
“No such thing as being too hot when I take off.” Rachel often used flying references to talk about her out-of-the-body experiences. They weren’t really analogous, but were as close as anything in common language.
“Breakfast is ready!” Harmony knocked on the bath door.
“Coming!” Charisma said.
After accepting a comforting hug from her mother, Rachel forced herself to eat two crescent rolls without really tasting them. “Did Raider go?”
“He went for kolaches and cranberry juice,” Gale said.
“Oh.”
“Tell us what we need to do,” Harmony said.
“I’m going to lie down on my bed. You don’t need to do anything except make sure no one touches me,” Rachel said. She looked at her watch. It was ten after ten. An hour earlier in Colorado. If that’s where he was. “I’m ready.”
She tried to tell herself that she was prepared for whatever she might find. But nothing could have prepared her for what happened next.
When it came to the art of astral travel, Rachel’s skill level was unmatched. She could find almost anyone or anything by beginning with sufficient clues as to where to look. She didn’t need to have met the person or been to the place. She could review a profile and then ‘call’ out to that person on a spirit level.
In Dash’s case, no preparation was necessary. She was as connected to him as she was to her own body and had been since the moment she first saw him across the courtyard at the beginning of Rite Week. She felt her soul tugging, eager to be free like a strong-willed horse pulling at the reins, trying to take control of the bit. She was so ready that, as soon as she was situated on her bed, covered by one of her faux fur throws, knit hat on her head, her friends and mom withdrawn to a respectable distance in the room, she was gone.
She flew upward so fast that other creatures, lit by their own spirits, dark and light, whizzed by like lights on the runway of a night time flight. As soon as she was clear of the nether regions and on the astral plane, she darted toward the one light in the universe that was Dash.
She had no idea where he was. In a smallish room talking to a man in a police, no, a sheriff’s uniform. Her first reaction was a tsunami-sized wave of relief. He was alive. Her second reaction was to wonder if he’d been arrested.
In astral form, Rachel couldn’t see as clearly as when in her body. The easiest way to describe it would be to say that things appeared grayscale, without color, and in low pixilation. But she could see and hear well enough.
The deputy was saying, “Your family is here in the building talking to the specialist. I guess they’re being prepared for the fact that you won’t recognize them.”
Won’t recognize them?
Dash didn’t look like himself. His expression was haunted, anxious, and maybe a little scared.
When the deputy didn’t say more, she decided to investigate the reference to ‘family in the building’. Being Sunday morning, there weren’t many people around. It was easy to find the small conference room where four people were listening intently to a man in a plaid shirt and North Face puffy vest.
“…early to tell in cases such as this. The missing pieces of memory may be recovered all at once or in stages. He may, at some point, remember everything or this may be permanent. The odds are that he will remember his history. We can’t say when. It could be today, tomorrow, or not at all.”
The man paused as if trying to get a read on reactions. The resemblance between Dash and Zane was unmistakable. So she knew Zane had to be her brother-in-law. Though she couldn’t see color, she could see that they shared eyes that were the same shade, apparently inherited from the handsome, but rather severe-looking woman who sat with her spine ramrod straight. Dash’s mother.
When there were no comments, the lecture continued.
“For Dashiell’s good, you must remember that he doesn’t know his own history. Not any of you. Not even his own name. And I hope you’re prepared to be patient with this, because trying to force him to confront what he can’t remember could retard progress, if not compound the damage.”
Rachel was trying to process what was being said. As the reality was sinking in, she was beginning to sob inwardly. If Dash didn’t know his family, if he’d forgotten who he was, then he’d also forgotten her.
“Now that we know what we’re not supposed to do,” Grey said, “what is it that we can do?”
Dr. Parsighian sat back in his chair. “If I can be frank, it’s providential that Dashiell comes from a family with the means to provide for him while he sorts things out. Basically he needs to be supported while he tries to rebuild his life, whatever shape that may take.” Grey and Adrienne shared a look, as did Zane and Adelaide. “Right now we don’t know the full extent of what he’s forgotten. You could help us by filling in what we don’t know about his history. For instance, is he married?”
Rachel wanted to scream out, “Yes!” But of course, she wouldn’t be heard in her astral form even if she thought it would be a good idea to announce the marriage to Dash’s family under these circumstances.
Of course the answer the family gave was, “No.”
And to Rachel, it felt as if she’d been wiped out of existence with that one small word so offered without hesitation by these people she didn’t know.
“Education?” Dr. Parsighian went on with his abbreviated questionnaire as if Rachel’s world hadn’t just crumbled to ruin.
“He has a BA in business from here,” Zane said.
“And an MBA from Tulane,” Grey said with a hint of pride.
“I see. What we’d like to do, over the next week, is conduct a series of tests to determine what Dashiell…”
“Dash,” Zane interrupted, thinking he couldn’t stand the irritation of having his brother called ‘Dashiell’ even one more time.
Dr. Parsighian smiled ever so slightly. Dropping his chin as he looked at Zane, he nodded. “We need to find out exactly what Dash remembers. That will be useful in determining whether or not he can resume whatever occupation he pursued before this incident.”
“So you want us to bring him back and forth to Boulder?” Adrienne asked.
“Well… Let’s talk about that. As I said earlier, since your family has the means to support Dash, we have the luxury of all options open. Given his age, he may want to live on his own. We need to find out if he remembers how to drive. If he does, he can get a lost license permit and drive himself.
“The main thing, and I cannot stress this enough, is that he not be pushed in any way. You’re going to want him to remember and find it uncomfortable that he doesn’t. But bad luck has given the four of you a special challenge that involves putting his needs above yours. Do not attempt to force affection. Do not ask him to remember. Do not tell him stories thinking you may ‘jog’ his memory. That will do no good and, again, might cause harm. You can ask if he remembers how to perform tasks, like driving, for instance. But not if he remembers playing sports in school. Did he play a sport?”
“Hockey,” Zane said.
“Hockey,” Dr. Parsighian repeated. “Any questions?”
When no one spoke, Grey said, “I think we understand.” He looked and sounded grim.
“Which one of you will be the contact for this office?”
Grey and Zane both spoke at once. Then Zane said, more forcefully, “I will.”
“Very good. So he’ll be leaving here today with you?”
“Yes,” Zane answered before anyone could object.
Grey gave him a look that could have been reproach or respect. It was hard to tell. At the moment Zane didn’t care. He couldn’t allow Dash to go home with their parents because he knew their mother was completely incapable of putting Dash’s needs before her own.
“Alright,” Dr. Parsighian said to Zane, “ring my office tomorrow morning to set up testing. They’ll be expecting your call.” He rose. “I’ll be back in a minute with Dash and Deputy Berry.”
They’d been told how Dash had been found and how kind the deputy had been to go so far beyond the call of duty to help a stranger.
None of the family said a word while waiting for Dash to arrive. Each person was lost in his or her own thoughts, imagining what it would be like to look into those familiar eyes and see no spark of recognition.
When the door opened, Dr. Parsighian filed in first, followed by Dash then Jack Berry.
It was every bit as horrible as Zane had imagined, having his brother scan their faces and look blank.
“Good God, what are you wearing?” Adrienne said.
Dr. Parsighian looked aghast. Adelaide wanted to slap her mother-in-law, not for the first time.
Dash looked down at his clothes. Rachel tried to wrap arms without physical substance around her physical self because she wanted more than anything to take him into her embrace and tell him everything was going to be okay.
Zane got up, stepped forward, but stopped about three feet from Dash. “I’m your brother. I know you don’t recognize me and that’s okay.” Dash didn’t recognize Zane from the perspective of shared history, but having looked in the mirror, he knew instantly that Zane was telling the truth. They looked a lot alike. “This is my wife.”
When Adelaide stood up, Dash’s eyes drifted down to her baby bump and lingered there before returning to her face. Zane pointed out their parents and then turned to the deputy.
“Deputy Berry, my family is in your debt. I need to ask for one more favor. Will you wait with my brother? My family agreed to do a TV interview with Dr. Parsighian. It won’t take long.”
“Sure. We’ll be right here.”
“In a few minutes we’re going to go find out what you like to eat for brunch,” Zane said to Dash.
Zane motioned for Grey to step outside the room. “Get us into the brasserie. Someplace quiet. Maybe the patio. I’ll call you later.” Grey started to say something, then thought better of it. “I’ve got this.” His eyes flicked toward the room where Adrienne was probably violating every rule Dr. Parsighian had laid down. “Try to get a handle on Mom.”
Grey sighed. “I hate to say this, but I’m glad you’re taking lead on this one. I’m not sure your mother is the right person…”
“Yes, you are. You’re very sure. Just like I am. Adelaide and I have got it covered. If he wants to stay with us, he can. If he wants to stay on his own, I’m going to take him to the penthouse.”
He was referring to the 14th Street downtown penthouse the Fonteneaus kept for special business guests from out of town.
Grey nodded. “Alright. That’s a good choice. If he needs a car…”
“If he needs a car, I’m going to get whatever the hell he wants.”
“Exactly. Let’s get this over with.”