Peggy Holloway - Judith McCain 05 - Monroe Beach Page 3

  “I don’t know, really. Maybe I should talk to Dr. Anna?”

  “Find another therapist, Julia, Dr. Anna has a full plate right now.”

  “Yeah, right. How is Sarah?”

  “She’s better than when I first saw her, but it’s a real puzzle.”

  “Tell her to hang in there. By the way, what can I do for morning sickness? I’m puking my brains out here.”

  I laughed, “I’ve never been pregnant, Julia. But I’ll ask Delilah. She knows about home remedies.” I was laughing when I hung up.

  Delilah called Dave but he told her to not worry about him and to enjoy the time with the girls, as he put it.

  I heard her talking to him one night. “What you eating while I’m down here, Dave? You got anybody to cook fo you?

  “Now don’t you go sassing me. I know you is a growed up man but I can still take you over my knee, me.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. Delilah had been Dave’s wet nurse and had helped raise him. Even though he was in his 40s, she still thought of him as her little boy.

  Dr. Anna didn’t call anyone and, for the first time since I had known her, I began to wonder about what her life was like outside Ocean Sands. Julia and I had always depended on her since we were sixteen and had never given a thought to her needs. I felt ashamed when I thought about this.

  I found her on the porch one night sitting on the swing watching the waves. Everyone had gone to bed and I had gone outside to get a breath of sea air before retiring.

  I had walked outside and heard someone cough above me. This bungalow had both an upstairs porch and a downstairs one and I stepped off the porch and looked up and saw Dr. Anna. I went up the outside stairs. She jumped when she saw me.

  “God, Judith. You scared the hell out of me. What are you doing up?”

  “I was on my way to bed and heard you cough and came up to check on you. You listen to people’s problem all day and sometimes into the night. Julia and I have called you at all hours and you’ve always been there for us, giving selflessly of your time. Who’s there for you, Dr. Anna?”

  She laughed, “It hasn’t been that selflessly, Judith. You and Julia have paid me a lot of money.”

  “Come on, Dr. Anna. It’s not about the money and you know it. And you’re evading the question.”

  When she turned and looked at me, I was surprised to see tears running down her cheeks. I got up and put my arms around her. She wept like a baby on my shoulder. It broke my heart. I felt ashamed that I had never considered the fact that she might need a shoulder from time to time herself.

  When she sat back up, the front of my robe was drenched. “Thank you, Judith. That helped a lot.”

  “You don’t want to talk about it?”

  “I trained you well, Judith. Let’s talk about it tomorrow. It’s getting late and we both need to conserve our emotional strength for Sarah.”

  CHAPTER 6

  That night, for the first time in years, I had the dream I had had most of my life as a child, teenager, and young adult. I had the dream about the murder of my parents when I was three years old and the kidnapping of Julia and me.

  But no, it was a little different. Standing in the background of that daisy bedroom, over by the window, was the shadow of a man. I had never seen him before and I tried to focus in on him but he remained in shadow.

  I woke up in a sweat and had no one to comfort me. Ben would have been so much comfort to me now but that psychopath, Jupiter had killed him. I was glad I had the whole bottom floor to myself. I got up and paced the whole floor for hours.

  If it hadn’t been for Delilah’s wonderful breakfast smells coming from upstairs, I would have had a hard time getting up the next morning.

  I saw that I wasn’t the only one with hollow eyes from not sleeping. Dr. Anna was hunched over her coffee cup staring at the table top. Sarah was jumpy and kept looking from one of us to the other.

  Delilah stood at the stove dishing up bacon, eggs, and biscuits fresh from the oven. She put a plate in from of each of us and when she was done she sat down with a heavy sigh.

  “Who wants to go first?” she asked. When no one said anything she said, “Okay, I’ll go first. He invaded my dreams last night and from the look on your faces, he invaded yours too.

  “I’ve always had a rich dream life and I’ve seen the future from time to time in my dreams. Sometimes I dream about people I never met before, but that I meet later.”

  She looked at me. “The first time I dreamed about you, Judith, I saw two of you but another girl in shadows in the background. It confused me, but after you found Julia I begin to understand.

  “Then a few months ago when you found Christina, the dreams made sense to me.” She laughed. “I even tried to help the police find a killer once but it was no use. I can’t always see these things in the daylight hours.”

  She stopped talking and no one said anything for awhile, each of us lost in her own thoughts.

  Finally Sarah spoke up. “He was trying to drown me in my dream last night. I woke up and couldn’t breathe. I was terrified.”

  “I dreamed about my son last night,” Dr. Anna said.

  We all looked at her surprised. “I didn’t know you had a son, Dr. Anna,” I said.

  She nodded, “He’s fifty two. The last time I saw him he was twenty six.” She looked around at all of us and continued, “We’re all supposed to be here for Sarah and, as badly as I would like to confide in you all and use this time as my own therapy session, this is not the time.”

  I had to speak up. “True, we are here for Sarah, but why couldn’t we all benefit, Dr. Anna? You have been there for so many people for so many years. How many times have I called you in the middle of the night since I’ve known you? Why can’t we use this time as four friends helping each other?”

  I turned to the other two, “How do y’all feel about how we use this time?”

  Delilah opened her mouth to speak but, before she could say anything, Sarah spoke up. “I would feel more comfortable myself if we all shared and benefitted from this experience. I really don’t like the whole focus to be on me.

  “I know y’all said we would try to relax and handle things as they come up, but I’ve been feeling pressured because I know that, in back of your minds, in back of all our minds, we have had one purpose here.

  “I would feel more comfortable to treat this time like Judith suggested, as four friends here becoming comfortable enough with each other that we can share equally. I think it’s going to be the hardest for Dr. Anna because she’s used to being there for everyone else.”

  Then Sarah said something that surprised us all. “Dr. Anna, do you really think it’s healthy for you to be so totally selfless?”

  There was a long pause and we all seemed to be holding our breath waiting for Dr. Anna to speak. At first she looked angry but then she looked at Sarah and laughed, “Well, I’m proud of you, Sarah. Remember how, when you were here as a patient, you were afraid to even speak up in group, let alone actually confront anyone? Now here you are challenging me and I needed that. Thank you, Sarah.”

  We waited for her to say something more but she sat there with her head down, seeming to be lost in her own thoughts.

  We tried to wait her out and when it looked like she wasn’t going to say anything more Delilah spoke. “Well, I don’t know anything about psychology or group therapy, but I’ll tell y’all what I see. I see four women with trust issues, me. So the question is this: Are we going to waste this time fiddle farting around or are we going to all try and solve some problems?

  “The way I sees it, Sarah is the excuse that brought us here but we all have things to talk about. So let’s get started so we don’t leave from here saying, ‘I wish this or I wish that?’”

  I nodded at Delilah. “You hit the nail on the head, Delilah.” I then turned to Dr. Anna, “You’re on doctor.”

  CHAPTER 7

  This is the story Dr. Anna told us:

  I thought
I had married the love of my life. I had waited until I got all of my college degrees, finished my internship, my residency and all that. I got my private practice going and it surprised me. Before I knew what was happening, I had more patients than I could handle.

  Then I met Mitchell. It seemed that we had so much in common and could almost read each other’s minds. I thought we were surely soul mates. Judith, you know in dealing with Jupiter how sociopaths can charm you? They can even cry at will.

  I thought I was educated enough to be able to recognize a sociopath, but when you’re being charmed by one and have fallen head over heel in love, you have lost all your objectivity.

  I was in denial. I didn’t want to admit to myself that I was stupid. I’m not stupid but I am human. It took me awhile to forgive myself for making this stupid mistake.

  He knew all the right moves and all the right words. He was so good at manipulation I found myself agreeing with him when that wasn’t the way I felt at all.

  What brought me out of my denial was when, after we had been married for two years, I told him I was pregnant. He beat me up demanding to know whose baby it was.

  It was like living with two different people. It was like a game to him, keeping me off guard all the time. My private practice was growing and I was a huge success. I was good at recognizing the battered women’s syndrome, although that’s not what it was called back then.

  You have to remember, this was in the generation where men made the decisions. I was a rare animal, getting the education I did. Psychiatrists were looked down upon and a woman psychiatrist was rare. But the women felt they could talk to me. I had no men patients back then.

  So, I appeared to have it together during the day, but at night I lived in fear. I tried to leave him once. He was a detective with the Houston Police department. He had me convinced, that if I left, he would have me arrested and his buddies in the police department would believe anything he told them. He said he could plant any kind of evidence and have me put in jail as a criminal.

  But once I did try to leave. I was checking into a hotel when I was arrested and brought in for questioning. He said I had tried to abort the child but he couldn’t prove it. He told me later that if I tried that again he would kill me and make it look like suicide.

  He was very convincing about everything and he had me brainwashed and confused. It was amazing how I was able to be so successful during the day. I became an expert at compartmentalizing.

  After I had Kenneth, everything changed for awhile and I began to believe Mitchell had changed. The baby looked just like him and he adored the baby. But then things went to hell even worse. I got beaten on a regular basis. When Kenneth was about three years old, he came up to me one day and stared hitting me like he had seen his daddy do. That woke me up.

  I began to see how that, having Mitchell as a role model, Kenneth thought it was perfectly all right to hit women.

  That was the last straw for me. I killed Mitchell.

  CHAPTER 8

  We stared at her in disbelief. I was sure I had heard her wrong. When I looked at the other two I saw that they had the same expression of disbelief I had.

  “Dr. Anna, when you say you killed Mitchell, what do you mean, exactly?” I asked.

  “I mean just what I said. I killed the son-of-a-bitch.” She laughed and it made cold chills run down my whole body.

  “If I had known it was going to be so easy, I would have done it before letting the bastard impregnate me.”

  Delilah nodded and said, “So, that’s what happened to him.”

  Dr. Anna looked at Delilah and nodded. “You picked up on it right away didn’t you? I could almost feel you probing into my soul when you took my hand and gazed into my eyes, when we first met.”

  No one said anything. It was if we were all afraid she wouldn’t continue, but she did.

  CHAPTER 9

  This is the story Dr. Anna Stevens told us that night, while sitting on the porch on the second story of the cabin.

  It had gotten to the point where I knew, for my own emotional health, it was him or me. When my own child had started hitting me, at three years old, I knew I had to kill Mitchell.

  My practice had grown so much I had money. We had bought a house down in the River Oaks area of Houston and it had a beautiful winding staircase. Mitchell had found new ways to torture me and, on top of it all, he had started drinking heavily. He got reprimanded at work for his drinking and was given an ultimatum.

  He either had to get help for his drinking or lose his job. He loved his job and since he always blamed me for his drinking, then he blamed me for getting him in trouble with his boss. I got the worst beating ever.

  That night, after I put Kenneth to bed, I tried to provoke Mitchell. He was already drunk and when he came after me I ran. He was behind me at the top of the stairs. When he lunged toward me, I stepped aside and tripped him.

  He fell all the way down the stairs. I ran down the stairs and peered down at him. He was still alive and asked me to help him. I ran into the front den and grabbed the Remington statue of a cowboy on a horse. He had talked me into buying it for him the Christmas before. It was made of iron.

  I was happy to see fear in his eyes when he realized what I was going to do. Now he knew what it felt like to be afraid for his life. I started hitting him and couldn’t seem to stop. What finally stopped me was when I looked up and saw my little boy staring over the railing.

  I rushed up and put him back to bed. It took a long time because he was crying for his daddy. I felt so ashamed, not for killing Mitchell, but for traumatizing my tiny son.

  Before calling the police, I had a lot of cleaning up to do. They didn’t question anything. I cried like I was grieving Mitchell. The tears were real but not for Mitchell. They were for Kenneth.

  At this point Dr. Anna put her head on her arms on the table and cried, her shoulders shaking. I was crying too, and looked around. Everyone was crying.

  She raised her head and looked at each of us, “I think Kenneth had blocked it all out until he was in college. He started having nightmares and called me one night to talk. We had these late night talks from time to time and we were always close until then, until that particular night.”

  She sat thinking and we waited her out. Then she continued:

  He called, demanding to know if his nightmares were true. It was a day I both dreaded and looked forward to. I wanted it to be in the open with my son but I didn’t know what he would do. I told him they were true and tried to explain that I had been protecting him and myself.

  He expressed anger which I thought was healthy but then he told me what a horrible mother I had always been and that he was one day going to make me pay.

  For several years after that I expected the police to arrive anytime and arrest me. I lived in fear of going to prison. I didn’t hear from him for a few years and then one day he called and said he wanted to see me. I thought he was going to forgive me and we could heal our relationship. He was twenty six at the time.

  When he got to my house he demanded money. I gave him all the cash I had in the house and wrote him a check for two thousand dollars. He laughed and he sounded just like his father. I recognized the cruelty in his eyes. I was afraid of him, the little boy I had loved so much.

  When he came toward me, I ran into the kitchen, where some of my staff was preparing supper. One of them picked up the phone and dialed 911 and Kenneth ran. He was 26 years old and I haven’t seen him since.

  I used to dream about him but he was always a little boy in the dreams. Last night was the first time in years I have dreamed about him, and the first time I’ve dreamed about him as a man.

  I have never told anyone the truth about Mitchell’s death before. I know I can trust y’all.

  We each swore we wouldn’t tell, no matter what.

  CHAPTER 10

  It was as if we had silently agreed not to get into anyone else’s issues for the rest of the day. What Dr. Anna had told
us had emotionally wiped me out, as it must have the others. We decided to walk over to the pool and swim for a change. Sarah and I played tennis after dinner, while Delilah and Dr. Anna had a nap.

  We kept it light for the rest of the day. Delilah made a wonderful supper with an assortment of Cajun dishes and we sat around talking and drinking wine until bedtime. We took one last walk on the beach and turned in.

  I had the dream from my childhood once again, and once again the shadow of a man was there. This time he walked toward me with his hand out. When he got close enough so that I could almost make out his features, I woke up.

  I was drenched in sweat and walked outside to cool off. Sarah was walking up from the beach. She saw me and threw up her hand.

  “Did you have a bad dream too?” I asked when she got close.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Let’s walk back down to the beach so we can talk without waking the other two.”

  Neither of us had shared our dream of the night before because Dr. Anna’s revelation had wiped us out. Now as we sat down on the sand dune, she began.

  “This was the worst dream so far and I could almost make out the killer’s face. I think his hair is white and he is very thin. There was a light behind him and it made his hair appear to be filled with static electricity. There was nothing else in the dream, just this man standing there with both of his arms out.”

  I thought about the dream that had woke me up. I related it to her. “For years I had a dream that led me to discover my family. John helped me with it, through hypnosis. My dream turned out to be real. It was a memory from when Julia and I were three years old.

  “We were kidnapped and our parents murdered. In the dream I saw the whole thing but didn’t know, for years, that the two little girls were Julia and me. Tonight, I had the same dream after not having it for many years. But this time there was a man watching from the background. I couldn’t make out what he looked like but I had the same dream last night. In this second one, he was holding his hands out to me just like he was to you.”