dream didn't work out?'
'After that encounter, Jacob wouldn't touch me for weeks,' Renee said. 'Like I was the dirty one, or maybe he was embarrassed by his passion. He was gone when I woke up and didn't come home until the afternoon. We fought a few times, threw things, nothing too physical, mostly yelling, then him storming out.'
The doctor nodded as if such behavior were perfectly normal. 'Why did you behave that way, Jacob?'
'I was afraid she was pregnant.'
'Why was that so frightening? Was it the responsibility?'
'No. The bloodline. I was afraid I would be a lousy father, just like I was taught.'
'Taught?'
'By my own lousy father.'
'Jacob, this sounds like an issue we'll need to work on privately. But for today, let's see if we can understand this one little piece of the puzzle.'
'He sobered up when I missed my period and we got the test results,' Renee said. 'He was the perfect husband, worked hard all day, phoned me before and after lunch, showered me with attention when he got home. It was like being newlyweds again.'
'And the honeymoon ended?'
'Mattie was a quick delivery. She looked so much like Jacob. Not in the features, maybe, since she got my eyes, but in the way she smiled and laughed. The way her eyebrows scrunched when she was upset.'
'She was beautiful,' Jacob said, heading toward the door. 'Better than we deserved. I'm done.'
'I hate you,' Renee said.
Jacob kept walking.
'We need something for you guys to work on,' Rheinsfeldt said to Jacob's back. 'Something to build on for the next session.'
Jacob went around the corner and was gone.
'See?' Renee said. 'It's impossible.'
Rheinsfeldt pulled a tissue from the box on the table and held it out to her. Renee took it but didn't wipe the tears away, didn't stanch the thin streams of mucus running down her nostrils. She knew she looked a wreck, cheeks blotched, eyelids swollen.
Rheinsfeldt put a reassuring hand on her knee. 'Considering Jacob's history, you might be forced to commit him involuntarily.'
'History?'
Rheinsfeldt's compassionate expression melded into an impenetrable mask. 'You didn't know.'
CHAPTER NINE
Jacob left the building and hurried past the playground, afraid he would see the vision of Mattie again. If the hallucinations started, the carefully constructed wall inside his head might crumble, brick by brick. Already, darkness broke through the chinks. And the things inside the darkness might slither out if the gap widened.
The session was a mistake. Nothing had changed since his teens. You couldn't trust them. You couldn't trust her.
He turned the corner and headed down Buffalo Trace Lane. The county historical society said the street had once been a path where buffalo traveled to the high grazing lands in the summer. The Cherokee and Catawba hunted there, put up temporary meat camps, and moved into the valleys when the frost came. Now all the buffalo were gone, slaughtered in order to build the roads that bore their name. Jacob's throat was raw from the bout of vomiting. The air of the town tasted like old coins. A bank's neon clock said 4:37. Back in his old life, Jacob would probably have an appointment somewhere, with a developer or tenant or maybe a loan officer. In his old life, he would be running late.
Back in Rheinsfeldt's office, Renee was probably crying. Rheinsfeldt would swallow it all in her eagerness to help, and Jacob would be 'the problem child' again. Now that he was gone, they could conspire against him. Just like always.
Renee loved that story about the night Mattie was conceived. He'd been drunk. He wouldn't have remembered it at all without her help. But once she'd reminded him, it had been burned into his mind forever. And Mattie was the result, and she was also burned.
Forever.
He needed some cash. The credit card was nearly topped out. He didn't have a postal address so he couldn't apply for another. The way all the financial and credit institutions were tied together, you couldn't slip through the net if you were carrying heavy debt.
He moved like muddy water down the sidewalk as Kingsboro dragged him toward its heart. The town his father had helped nurture now bristled with concrete menace, the old three-story buildings blocking the surrounding mountains. The hardware store where his grandfather bought cut nails and hand tools now sold polyvinyl bird baths and plastic signs that said things like 'Forget the dog… beware of the OWNER.' A girl sat on a bench by the door, Kingsboro's version of a Goth, tiny swells of adolescence on her chest and black lipstick smeared by the cell phone she was holding. She rolled her eyes at Jacob as if he were of a different, dangerous species.
He was.
Three men stood outside the drugstore, one of them smoking. They laughed at the idle afternoon, fingering their pockets in the shade. Jacob recognized the middle one as a roofer who had held some M amp; W contracts. The man's left arm was in a sling, and Jacob wondered if the injury was accompanied by a workman's compensation claim against one of his fellow developers.
'Howdy, Jacob,' the roofer said. Jacob ran through a mental list of names, trying to match one with the face. His father had taught him that showing interest in workers as human beings made them more productive. That meant better profit margins. Warren Wells' philosophy was built on the idea that every person had a role in his empire. 'Hi, fellows,' Jacob said, deciding to include them all. He used their native tongue, that of the Southern mountain boy. He'd perfected it as a youngster, though it never came as naturally to him as it did to Joshua. 'Nice afternoon, ain't it?'
'Yep,' the man in the sling said. 'We been missing you at church.'
The roofer was a member of the choir. Jacob had to mentally remove the stubble, comb his hair, and press him into a suit and tie, but he could picture the roofer praising the Lord, singing about trading this house for a mansion in the sky, a mighty fortress is our God, worthy is the lamb, grace that is greater than all our sin, it is well with my soul, I surrender all. And the blood. Lots of hymns about the revelations of cities charred with fire, oceans boiling with blood, a coming judgment spelled out against the dark, gathering clouds.
'I know,' Jacob said. 'I've been missing it myself.'Father Rose had stopped by several times while Jacob was in the hospital. Jacob had at first refused to talk to him, then asked the preacher the question that had no answer. Why did God let the innocent suffer? When the standard answer came, of the Lord knowing best and that all was in His blessed hands, Jacob had become so angry that he wanted to strangle the old man. He'd shouted and cursed at the priest until the nurse came and gave Jacob a shot. The priest was gone when Jacob came back from the dark grotto. No doubt Father Rose hadn't mentioned the incident to the congregation, merely asked the church members to pray for Jacob's and Renee's acceptance of their loss.
'The Lord's always there to help you heal,' the roofer said.
The Lord had too many agents of healing, that was the problem. From Dr. Masutu to Rheinsfeldt to Father Rose, Jacob was bound for glory no matter what. God probably needed a developer to help house all those angels. Real estate followed the universal law of supply and demand. When the value went up, only the richest could buy.
'I'm getting better,' Jacob said to the roofer. His chest hurt and he was thirsty.
'Terrible thing, to lose a daughter like that.'
'The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.' Jacob wondered if those words were actually in the Bible, or if they were like most religious uttering and simply repeated until they became meaningless, a hollow mantra, an oral admission of helplessness and resignation.
