Angel Fire - Lisa Unger [28]
“What is?”
“The anniversary of my mother’s death. It seems to weigh on me more every year.” Her voice was a sliver, almost carried away on the wind.
“We’ve talked about this. You need to see someone.”
“I’ve talked to plenty of doctors about this. No one has helped me.”
“They haven’t helped you because you don’t let anybody in. You go once, you decide the doctor is an idiot, and then you leave and never go back. That’s not therapy. It’s like some kind of psychiatric hit-and-run.”
Lydia sighed and he could feel his blood pressure rise. He hated it when something hurt her that he couldn’t fix; and her way of acknowledging her flaws but refusing to change was exasperating. But he kissed the top of her head and put a hand on her shoulder. She didn’t look up at him, kept her eyes level with his chest.
“What can I do, Lyd?”
“You’re already doing it. You’re here.”
“So that’s what you wanted me to look into?” he asked as he took the keys from her hand, threw his bag into the trunk of her Mercedes, and climbed into the driver’s seat. “Your twisted psyche?”
“Possibly,” she answered, smiling. “Possibly something a lot more twisted than that. Why do you always have to drive?”
“I don’t know. I just like it.”
“You just like being in control,” she said, fastening her seat belt.
“And you only mind because you like to be in control.”
“Whatever.”
As they drove, heavy cumulus clouds gathered above them and the sky darkened. Lydia recounted for Jeffrey the events she’d come across in the paper, her conversation with Chief Morrow, and Juno’s history. She omitted her dream and the strange end to her encounter with Juno. “The way I see it, there’s potentially a serial killer roaming around.”
“Whoa, wait a minute. That’s an awfully big jump. No one’s even been killed.”
“Look, we’ve got three missing persons. Not to mention the animal mutilation and the arson.”
“Yeah, but it sounds to me like those people were flight risks to begin with. And the whole triad thing, the arson, animal mutilation, and bed-wetting, are childhood signs of a future violent offender. People don’t generally leap from that straight into murders.”
“I just have that feeling,” she said, looking out the window.
He had to admit that in all the years he had known Lydia, rarely had her instincts been off.
Lydia was so young when they first met, just fifteen years old. Even so, there had been a bond between them from the first night. It would have been inappropriate then for him to have a friendship with her, but he kept in touch with her through her grandparents. Lydia’s grandfather, especially, had taken a liking to Jeffrey and was impressed by his concern for Lydia. And Jeffrey made a point to head up to Sleepy Hollow to see Lydia and what remained of her family whenever he was in New York City on business.
Initially, Lydia’s grief, her tragedy, had haunted Jeffrey. He kept in touch with her because he felt responsible for her somehow. But as she got older and seemed to adjust to her mother’s death, he came to see her more as a young friend, or a little sister. When she moved to Washington, D.C., to attend Georgetown University, Lydia’s grandfather asked Jeffrey to keep an eye on her, which he did gladly. During their regular Thursday evening dinner and movie “date,” he observed her closely, making sure she was well and happy.
But even though she seemed to have adapted to university life well and was thriving academically, there was always something about her that worried him. An inner silence, the merest hint in her voice and her eyes that there was more pain in her still than she would admit to anyone. He noticed over time that she didn’t seem to make friends easily, was more focused on her role as the school newspaper editor than she was on parties and boyfriends. She just didn’t seem to ever have any fun.
“You should get out more, Lyd. There’s more to life than going to class,” he suggested one night over pizza.
“The paper takes up a lot of my time. I’m busy,” she said, avoiding eye contact.
“There’s more than the paper.