Chapter 11
CHAPTER 11
At first, Ruth couldn’t tell what woke her. Most likely the strange bed and locale. As she lay with her face pillowed, she heard a noise, though. Almost like a whimper.
Leo?
She rolled over and in the faint moonlight streaming through the window saw him in his bed, sprawled on his back, the sheet tangled around his waist and legs, leaving his upper body bare. Holy muscles.
And scars. She noted the white lines of them crisscrossing his body.
A noise emerged from him again, and she heard the raspy words, “Don’t go, baby girl.”
Talking in his sleep. Not surprising. He’d mentioned having nightmares in their brief session.
To her shock, he suddenly sat straight and bellowed, “Don’t make me wait. I can’t do this anymore. Take me with you.”
The anguish in his voice ripped at Ruth. The man suffered the loss of his child, and she feared, given how long ago the tragedy happened, that he might not ever recover. Most people resumed some semblance of normalcy within months to a year, maybe two. But some clung to their grief, kept it close, and fed it. Those people could be very hard to bring back from the edge.
Leo was one of those people.
He rolled, facing away from Ruth, and sat on the edge of the bed, hunched, shoulders shaking silently.
Many would have chosen to give him privacy as he dealt with his grief. Ruth believed in tackling it.
“It was just a dream.” She spoke aloud, softly, and yet he visibly startled.
He glanced at her over his bare shoulder. “I woke you. Sorry.”
“You can’t control what you do when you sleep.”
“Especially when I’m sober,” he groused, turning away.
She slid from her bed to circle around, asking, “Does being drunk actually help?”
“If I siphon enough of the hard stuff, then yeah, sometimes I can skip the nightmare.”
She crouched in front of him, glancing upward so he didn’t feel threatened by her presence. “Is it the same dream every time?”
“Yes and no.”
“Tell me about it.” She didn’t ask, she demanded. If given a choice, the most recalcitrant would rather keep things bottled.
“Do I have to? It’s the middle of the night.”
“And we’re both awake, not to mention it’s fresh in your mind. Tell me. What do you see when you go to sleep?”
For a moment, he said nothing. When he did, his head ducked, his shoulders rolled inwards, and his expression turned grim.
“It always starts with that day in the sewer from the moment I enter those tunnels. I smell the putridness of the sewage. I relive the battle with the wendigo.” His voice went so low she almost didn’t hear him say, “The first part of my nightmare always ends with me clutching Olivia’s sleeper.”
“First part? What happens in the second half?”
He shook his head and clenched his fists on his thighs. “I don’t want to do this.”
“Because it hurts. I get it. But if we’re going to help you move past what’s troubling you, then I need to know what I’m up against. What is your mind doing to you when you sleep?” The subconscious could be vicious, especially with those carrying around a sense of culpability.
“I see Olivia.”
“That’s not unusual. She was important to you.”
“I get that. The hard part has been watching her grow.”
“Grow?” Ruth couldn’t help a surprised exclamation. “As in she’s not a baby in your dreams anymore?”
“It’s like, as time passed, she actually aged.” He paused. “In the beginning, right after it all happened, the darkness would sweep in after the sewer and I’d get a brief glimpse of a baby, wide-eyed and reaching for me.”
“Did you ever pick her up?”
“Yesss.” He hissed the word. “I snatched her close in the hopes I would wake up and she’d still be in my arms.”
“Only you’d wake alone.”
“Alone and feeling as if I’d been kicked to the ground,” he growled. “In my dreams, I watched her grow from a tiny frail baby to one that crawled for me, babbling. On what would have been her first birthday, she toddled to me with open arms. When she would have been around two, she called me Dada.” His voice cracked.
No wonder the man drank. Ruth might, too, if her own mind tortured her relentlessly every night.
“You know it’s not real.”
“I’m aware,” he snapped. “But that doesn’t make it stop or hurt less.”
“Does your wife haunt your dreams too?”
“No. I barely remember Kylie’s face. It’s always been about Olivia.”
“You saw her tonight,” Ruth stated.
“Yes. Looking around five, the right age if she’d lived. But…” He trailed off and didn’t finish.
“But what?” she prodded.
“The last few months, our conversations have been odd.”
She didn’t laugh. While this dream Olivia was a figment of his imagination, it obviously felt very real to Leo. “What did your daughter say?”
“She claims we’ll be meeting very soon. Looks like this jungle trip will be my last.”
His declaration brought a chill. “Is she asking you to kill yourself?”
He shook his head. “Not in so many words. She actually told me to avoid someone on the trip. Oh, and according to my daughter, I’m not supposed to let you bathe alone once we hit the jungle.” He offered a wan smile.
Her cheeks immediately turned pink as she huffed, “I don’t need someone spying on me.”
“Don’t get mad at me. Just repeating the message.”
“More like your subconscious is trying to give you a reason to leer at me.”
“As if I need a reason,” he retorted.
She ignored the spurt of pleasure at his offhand comment. “As mentioned before, it’s normal for you to feel an attraction, given the intimacy of our conversations.”
He leaned lower to murmur, “It’s more than that.”
“What do you feel?” she asked somewhat breathily.
“Things I shouldn’t.” He leaned back and rubbed his face with his hands.
“You do realize that, despite the tragedy that happened, you are allowed to move on. It won’t lessen the love you had for your wife and child. It will understandably cause you some sense of betrayal, however?—”
“It’s not that,” he harshly interrupted. “I don’t feel any loyalty to Kylie. Our marriage was over long before the monster took her life. It’s the fact I failed them. What if it happens again?”
“You’re worried that you’ll love and lose again. Understandable.” She paused. “Does that kind of thing happen often among the Zodiacs?”
“No.”
“Then what makes you think you’d be so unlucky?”
“I don’t know.”
“Fear is normal, but you can’t let it control you.”
“Easier said than done.”
“If this were one of your friends, what would you tell them?”
“Don’t you try that reverse psychology shit on me,” he groused.
“You know the answer. Why not say it?”
“Because it’s different.”
“How is it different?”
“It just is.”
“And that’s where you’re wrong. You do realize there isn’t a person on this planet who hasn’t had to deal with the loss of a loved one. Widows grieve and move on. Parents lose a child, and while the memory will always hurt, they continue to live.”
“Not all of them,” his low reply.
“Do you really want to die?” her blunt riposte.
“No. If I did, I’d already be dust in the stars.”
“And yet you’ve been self-destructive. Careless. Which leads to the point, if you fear loss so much, why would you jeopardize your friends?”
“I am always sober on the job.”
“Sober, but not mentally fit,” she countered. “Because you won’t allow yourself to forgive and forget.”
“How am I supposed to forget when I see Olivia every time I fucking close my eyes?” he shouted, jumping to his feet.
This seemed like more than PTSD, and it took a moment for her to realize something about his dream bothered. Given everything she’d experienced in the past few days, and considering all the magic being flung around, a theory burst from her, which she instantly regretted. “Are you sure they’re dead?”
“How dare you ask!” he barked.
“You said they never found the bodies.”
“Olivia’s and Kylie’s things were in that monster’s lair. They’ve never been seen or heard from since.”
Don’t say. Don’t say it.
She said it.
“Ever think your wife used this wendigo as an excuse to flee with Olivia?”
“Faked their deaths?” He sounded incredulous.
“She wouldn’t be the first to do so in order to achieve a clean slate. One without a father in the picture.”
He stared at her so long and hard she felt fear, but not for herself—Leo might be unbalanced, but he wouldn’t harm her, she hoped. But she did worry what he’d do if it turned out he’d been lied to.
Rather than go on a rampage, the tension flowed out of his body as he admitted, “Yes, I thought of it. A part of me never accepted their deaths. I went through our apartment looking for proof. After all, there should have been a missing suitcase and clothes. Everything was there. Kylie’s wallet. Our emergency cash stash. The baby formula and diapers. She might have hated me, but I doubt she’d have fled with only the clothes on their backs.”
He might be convinced, but Ruth had to wonder. He’d been frank about his wife’s disposition toward him, her seeming hatred. In the grips of postpartum, women could act inexplicably.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said it.”
“No, you shouldn’t have.”
Leo stalked off rather than return to bed. Then again, she wasn’t tired either. He slammed out of the apartment, and a perturbed Ruth wandered to the kitchen and began mixing up some biscuit batter and frying bacon. By the time he returned an hour later, she had the biscuits cooling and was cooking an egg. She added three more for him. He said nothing as he sat down at the table.
She placed a plate in front of him with three bacon-and-egg biscuit sandwiches along with a side of pan-fried potatoes.
“After the way I snapped on you, I don’t deserve this,” he muttered.
“You were being honest, and I’m also to blame. I pushed you, maybe harder than I should have.” She pursed her lips and added, “I’m sorry I questioned their deaths.”
“It was a valid thing to ask, and there’s days I still wonder, especially when I see Olivia in my dreams.” He sighed. “If she were alive, then I guess I’d have a whole different reason to hate myself.”
“Why would you hate yourself for Kylie kidnapping her?”
“Why would anyone do something so extreme unless they were afraid?”
“Vindictive people don’t need a reason.” Despite having only his side of the story, for some reason, she couldn’t see Leo ever giving his wife a reason to fear him. Ruth had been pushing his emotional buttons, and the worst he’d done was yell, and not once had he threatened to harm her. Having worked with abusive patients, she was no stranger to violence. She’d once had to have one charged for giving her a black eye.
Could Ruth be wrong about Leo? Very possible. After all, relationships added a complicated layer to emotions, but her gut told her this man would have hurt himself before his family.
She changed the subject. “When are we tackling my father’s journal?”
“Anytime you’re ready. Aquarius texted he scanned it all, so we can access the transcript anytime.” He visibly eased and began eating his breakfast.
“You have a computer?” She’d not seen one.
“Nope. We can either go to the office or library to use one.”
“Library sounds nicer.” She frowned. “How many stairs to get there?”
“A few.”
She sighed. “Guess I could use the endurance training if you’re dragging me to a jungle.”
He grinned. “I guess I shouldn’t mention we’ll have to carry our supplies.”
The remark brought a groan. “I take it Tower doesn’t have a magical tent to take care of us?”
“Don’t worry, Buttercup. I’ll be there supporting you.”
It was more reassuring than expected.