A Winter’s Tale by Carrie Elks (2)

‘So your brother is back in town. How does that make you feel?’

Adam looked at his therapist for a moment, rubbing his bearded jaw with his hand. He felt like a blinding spotlight was shining on him every time the man asked him a question. How many more hours would he have to spend here, answering questions that made every muscle in his body tense up? It had been what, three months since his first appointment, which made it another month until he’d fulfilled his commitment. The one he’d made when the LAPD had agreed to only issue him with a caution.

Another month of inquisitions. He could do that, couldn’t he?

He moved his hand around to the back of his neck, rubbing the itchy skin there. His hair was getting long – longer than he’d ever worn it before. ‘I haven’t seen him,’ Adam admitted, pulling at the collar of his checked shirt. Even the mention of Everett made his skin crawl. ‘So it doesn’t make me feel anything at all.’

Martin – his therapist – stared at him for a moment, as though he could see through the bluster and the hair and the muscle Adam had cultivated as a shield. ‘But he’s here in West Virginia? He’s staying with your parents, right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And you still haven’t seen him?’ Martin frowned. ‘Are you actively avoiding him?’

Adam stretched his long legs in front of him, noticing the dirt encrusted on his old, frayed jeans. It had been a while since he’d bought any new clothes. A while since he’d done much of anything, except whittle and sledge and pretend everything was OK. He was teetering on the edge between ‘he’ll get over it’ and ‘we need to talk about Adam’. He’d like to stay on the easier side if he could, even if that meant doing a little clothes shopping.

‘It’s a big house,’ Adam pointed out. ‘And I don’t even live in it. I’m at least a ten-minute walk from the main building. I don’t need to be going over there every day.’

‘When did they arrive?’

‘Three days ago.’

Martin raised a single eyebrow. Adam wanted to swallow the words back down. He knew way too much information for a man who was pretending not to care at all, and Martin knew it too.

‘Has he tried to speak to you?’ Martin asked, tapping his pen against his bottom lip. Over the past three months – and countless sessions – Adam had noticed Martin do this often.

‘Not that I know of.’ Adam couldn’t work out if that was a half-truth or a lie. At the end of the day they were both the same thing – he of all people should know that. Lies were never white, they were dark and sharp and cut people like a knife.

‘I really think it would be good for the two of you to meet again.’ Martin’s voice was earnest. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his woollen trousers, the pen still grasped in his hand. ‘You’ve not spoken to him for so long, you’ve built him up in your mind to be some kind of demon. If you talk to him, you’ll realise he’s as human as you or me.’

Adam shook his head. ‘Not gonna happen.’

‘You sound very sure about that. Why do you think that is?’

Adam shifted his head to the side, trying to work Martin out. If you looked at it from a distance, the two of them had a lot in common. They both made money by coaxing out the truth, especially from unwilling mouths. Or at least they did, until Adam had messed it all up. Now he got by on the remains of his savings and his trust fund – supplementing it with income from his handmade furniture when he felt like it.

‘Because Everett’s an asshole.’

The briefest flash of a smile curved on Martin’s lips. ‘According to you he’s been an asshole for all your life, and yet you were willing to spend time with him before. I want you to think about what’s different right now. What you’re trying to avoid thinking about by avoiding your brother.’

‘OK.’

There was a silence for a moment, and Adam waited for Martin to break it. Instead the therapist stared at him until the pause became uncomfortable, enough to make Adam shift in his seat, and rub the back of his neck once again.

Damn, he knew these techniques. He could have written them all. He’d used them on businessmen and world leaders and military personnel who tried to bluff their way through his documentaries. And yet when they were used on him, he felt as awkward as hell.

He wasn’t going to fill the silence in.

He wasn’t.

Goddamn it. ‘I don’t want to see him, because every time I do I want to rip his fucking head off.’

Martin nodded slowly, showing no elation at his technique having worked. ‘OK. And do you think it’s a valid reaction to seeing him?’

‘Yes, I do.’ Adam could feel the blood starting to rush through his veins, hot and thick. ‘And I think I should listen to my instincts. Look what happened last time I confronted him.’ And look where he ended up. Here, in therapy, having to explain himself.

‘Do you recognise how your body reacts when we talk about Everett?’ Martin asked. ‘I want you to check in right now. Explain to me what’s happening.’

Adam closed his eyes, breathing sharply in through his nostrils. He felt torn between wanting to engage, to see if this thing they were doing could really make him feel better, and resisting it, having a little fun until he pushed Martin too far.

Maybe that’s why he’d been so good at his job. He found people fascinating, but he found their reactions irresistible. Some of his best experiences had come from coaxing stoic men into revealing their inner emotions. Strange how being on the other side of the fence didn’t feel quite so satisfying.

Ah hell. What did he have to lose? ‘My heart is pounding,’ he said quietly, trying to tune in with his physiological reactions. ‘And my pulse is racing, I can hear it rushing through my ears.’

‘What about your hands?’

Adam opened his eyes and looked down to his sides, where his hands were tightly rolled into fists. ‘Yeah, I kind of want to punch something.’

‘Do you recognise what you’re experiencing?’

‘Fight or flight,’ Adam said softly. ‘Except I really want to fight.’

‘Now look around you. Breathe in a mouthful of air. Take everything in. Tell me what you see.’

Adam scanned the room, his eyes taking in the details that most people overlooked. The way one of the blind slats was at an awkward angle, as though somebody had tugged the cord too tightly that morning. A gap in the bookshelf – dust free – where something had been removed recently. Martin’s car keys, slung on the table next to the door, alongside his wallet and a yellow piece of paper – was that a parking ticket? As though he’d arrived late and carelessly dropped them down, without thinking of the security risk.

‘I see your office,’ Adam said, taking in another mouthful of air. ‘I see your desk, and your books, and the half-drunk mug of coffee on the table next to you.’ He glanced to his right. ‘And I see your window, with the broken blind. It’s snowing outside, and the flakes are sticking to the glass, as if they’re trying to claw their way into the room.’

‘That’s good.’ Martin nodded encouragingly. ‘Can you see any threats in here? Anything that should cause your body to react the way it did?’

Adam’s eyes darted around the room once again. ‘No.’

‘So how would you classify your reaction?’

Adam’s lips felt dry and sticky. He picked up the glass of water Martin always left for him on the table – next to a box of tissues in case of client tears – and swallowed a mouthful. ‘I’m reacting to something that’s not there.’ He put the glass down and rubbed his eyes with the palm of his hands. Somewhere in the past ten minutes he’d allowed himself to engage in the therapy. It didn’t feel quite as bad as he’d expected.

‘It’s there,’ Martin told him. ‘But it’s not in the physical world. It’s in your mind, or in your memories. It’s like those guys who came back from Vietnam in the seventies: you’re fighting a war that’s long since over.’

‘You think this is just a reaction to what happened in LA?’

Martin shook his head emphatically. ‘No, that’s too simplistic. There are a lot more layers to it than that. We have to peel them back one by one, until you start to recognise them for what they are.’

Adam was interested now. Enough to lean forward, a frown playing at his lips. ‘And if I recognise them, what then? Does it magically make everything better? Will I fall at Everett’s knees and forgive him everything?’ His chest tightened at the thought.

‘Again, that’s too simplistic. The aim of our sessions has never been to make everything feel like a fairy tale. It’s been to help you recognise what’s happening to you, allow you to take control of your reactions. To stop something like LA from ever happening again.’ Martin crossed his legs, one knee over the other. ‘And soon we’ll need to talk about what happened in Colombia.’

Within a second, Adam sat up straight, flinching as though somebody had hit him.

‘Not right now,’ Martin said, putting his hand up. ‘But we have a few sessions left, and before we finish I’d like to explore what happened there.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘We’re coming toward the end of our time. I’d like to give you a little homework before our next one.’ He turned in his chair, pulling a small notebook from the table beside him. ‘I want you to keep a diary every time you react like you did today. I want you to write down what you’re feeling, where you are, and what you think triggered it. Then next time we can discuss what you’ve done.’

‘Sure.’ Adam took the blue book from Martin’s hands.

‘Are you going to do it?’

Adam couldn’t hide the smirk that played on his lips. ‘Probably not.’

Martin sighed, his frustration obvious. ‘You know, this would be so much easier if you just met me halfway.’

Adam could feel his muscles relax, his spine loosening at this return to more familiar territory. ‘But it wouldn’t be as much fun, either.’

‘Fun for who?’ Martin murmured, in a voice that didn’t invite a reply. ‘OK, Adam, you’re free to go. I’ll see you at our next session.’

Adam lifted his hand in a goodbye wave. In the strangest way, he was looking forward to that.

 

When Adam stepped out of the tall office building on Main Street, the snow was still falling, forming a fresh blanket of white on the ground. It was the first winter storm for the valley – though in Cutler’s Gap, where Adam lived in his cabin, they’d had snow for weeks.

He had a few jobs to do while he was here in the town – letters to mail out and some supplies to buy. Things he couldn’t buy in Cutler’s Gap, with their single convenience store and run-down old bar. Though he liked the isolation, the lack of amenities could sometimes be a pain in the ass.

All the shops were decorated for the season, their white wooden windows framed with twinkling lights, to highlight the displays inside. The street was decorated, too – the lamp-posts were spiralled with red tinsel from the ground to the top, with lights strung between them. And in the centre square, next to the bandstand, was a huge Christmas tree, standing proudly with a large star affixed to the top.

It was all ready for the Christmas parade, due to take place the following week. It drew visitors from throughout the state, and sometimes beyond, people desperate to enjoy the old-fashioned Christmas they rarely saw anywhere except on their television screens. Adam could remember the parade from his younger years – the intense excitement they’d felt as the band started to play, the way the firemen would throw candy out of the truck, while all the kids gathered around with their hands cupped out. It was a relic from a more innocent time.

Ironic, really, that he’d tried to escape LA and the nostalgia for small-town Christmases, and somehow he was back in the real thing.

It was nearly five by the time he’d finished his errands and bought a coffee to go from the Blue Bear café. The sky was already darkening behind the layer of snow clouds, the sun having given up her fight against the encroaching grey. Adam balanced his Styrofoam cup on the roof of his dark red Chevy truck, and slid his keys into the lock, releasing the door. He threw his bags on the passenger seat and then slid inside, gingerly starting the engine up.

He’d had this truck for years. It had spent most of the last decade in his parents’ garage, surrounded by sleeker, shinier models. But there was something about its familiarity, its solidness, which stopped him from upgrading. Plus it was reliable on the old mountain roads, like a Sherman tank on the slippery ice. That counted for something when a short drive could mean taking your life in your hands.

Of course, short was a relative term. In this case it meant little over an hour for him to ascend the mountains and drive back to Cutler’s Gap. Everything was spread out in West Virginia – it wasn’t unheard of for somebody to drive two or three hours for a fresh loaf of bread.

He pressed his foot on the gas, revving the engine up, then slid the gear into drive. It was time to go home. And as he pulled out of his parking space and into the main road, Adam realised that’s exactly what his cabin in the woods had come to mean to him.