Dead Voices Read Online Free PDF Page B

could say anything.
    “He said jus’ this mornin’ that, far’s he’s concerned, you killed Caroline!”
    Her father’s words hit her like the full-bore blast of a shotgun. Elizabeth heard her mother’s sharp intake of breath, but all she could do was look at her father through a pained haze. She was unable even to breathe.
    Placing his fisted hands on the table in front of him, Kendall took a deep breath and made as if to stand up. Even through the astonishment she felt, it cut Elizabeth to the quick to see the flush of anger on her father’s face.
    “He said that ... that I —” she stammered, but that was all she could get out. Stunned, she sat there, watching her own anger and pain reflected in her father’s face.
    Finally, she reached the limit of what she could stand. Pushing herself away from the table, she got up and started toward the living room doorway. A whirlpool of panicked confusion threatened to suck her down. She had been hoping that the waves of grief and guilt she still felt whenever she recalled what had happened to Caroline that night a year and a half ago would stop once she was safely home; but now darkness, cold and numbing, swelled even stronger inside her mind. She reached for the wall to support herself, fearing she was about to black out.
    “Are you sure you’re feeling all right?” she heard her mother say, sounding as though she were speaking from a great distance.
    “Yeah, I — I’m just exhausted from last night and all,” Elizabeth replied, even though the backs of her legs felt like rubber and there was a loud whooshing in her ears.
    “Maybe you should go back to bed,” her mother said. “I can call you down for lunch.”
    “That might not be a bad idea,” Elizabeth said, her voice no more than a whisper. She turned and walked quickly through the living room, up the stairs, and down the hall into her old bedroom. With a shuddering sigh, she collapsed face-first onto the bed, feeling the clean pillow press against her face like a cool, rushing tide. She lay there, trembling as though wracked with fever, for what could have been ten minutes or ten hours. Never really drifting off to sleep, her mind filled with distorted echoes and memories of things she had been through and fears of things that she might yet have to face, and she was filled with the hollow fear that absolutely nothing had changed-except possibly for the worse.
    And all the while she lay there, her eyes closed and stinging with tears, a hissing voice whispered in her mind ...
    He thinks you killed her! ... Doug thinks you killed Caroline!
     
    4.
    Around four o’clock, after spending most of the afternoon cleaning up and rearranging the furniture in her bedroom, and with her mother outside seeing how Kendall was doing overhauling the tractor, Elizabeth took the opportunity to call Dr. Gavreau, her psychiatrist in Laconia, New Hampshire. After briefly explaining to him that she had left Doug and was back home. she asked him what she should do about her ongoing therapy with him.
    “Well. we can continue to work together if you don’t mind the commute,” Dr. Gavreau said. “I’d be, what — an hour and a half each way?”
    Elizabeth grunted agreement.
    “Either that,” Gavreau continued, “or else you can start working with someone local.”
    Although she was intimidated by the idea of cutting off her work with Gavreau and starting fresh, Elizabeth was positive she didn’t want to go back to Laconia, where she and Doug had lived ... not for anything.
    “Do you know anyone around here you could recommend?” she asked.
    “As a matter of fact, I do,” Dr. Gavreau replied. “Just a few days ago at a conference in Denver I bumped into a colleague of mine, a Dr. Roland Graydon. He lives in ... South Portland, I believe he said. Have you ever heard of him?”
    “Uh, no. The name doesn’t ring a bell,” Elizabeth replied, wondering how he could expect her to know anyone in an area she hadn’t