Chapter 9-3
1038 Words
“Do you think we should be worried about the kids yet?” Bill looked at her nervously. He’d been doing his best not to fuss.
Over Bill’s shoulder Perrin spotted the kids down at the other end of the ring. Tamara noticed her attention almost immediately, which told her that the girl had been keeping a close eye on Perrin and her dad for some time. Tamara said something to Jaspar, then grabbed her brother, held rapt watching the dogs, and began towing him by the shoulder in their direction.
“Oh,” she turned her attention back to Bill. “I can make them appear if you want.”
“How?” He narrowed his gaze at her.
“Easy. They’re growing kids.” The kids had made it about halfway through the crowds. “Ready?”
“Sure. Do your worst, lady.”
Perrin closed her eyes and waved her hands over the empty table as if consulting a crystal ball. “Gee, I wonder if anyone’s hungry?”
“We are!” the kids shouted from inches behind Bill who practically levitated out of his chair he was so shocked.
He stuck his tongue out at her as he hugged his kids.
“You all go find us lunch. I’ll hold the table. I eat anything.”
Bill led them away and she sat there.
She felt odd, as if she both was and wasn’t Perrin Williams. If she was, it wasn’t a version of herself that she recognized.
She knew the driven designer, consumed by the need to create beauty and joy with each of her dresses.
She knew the “cheery loon” who kept both her friends and newly-met strangers on their toes. The one who could never seem to let a straight line lie on the ground untended, unquirked. The one who kept everyone at a safe distance, even those closest to her.
And the woman who drove men away before they could even begin to get close—her she understood less, but knew well. So often Perrin had wondered if that woman was afraid that she’d be tested and found wanting, or was she just plain afraid?
And she remembered the girl, remembered her far too well. The one who took years to learn that waking in terror was not normal. The one who didn’t understand for years more that she was the only one who prayed each night to wake up in the morning and learn that she’d been orphaned while she slept.
These were all at least familiar.
The one she didn’t know at all sat here ever so quietly. A hundred dogs running about her. And a man who had offered her a glimpse of another world, an impossible fantasy somehow come to life. This new Perrin scared her to death. Because she dared to want.
She could feel her heart start racing until it was in rhythm with the rushing dogs.
Look at you playing Happy Family games.
She couldn’t think.
Who do you think you’re kidding, you loser!
Couldn’t breathe.
Run!
She had to run!
She couldn’t stand!
Clawing at the table, she managed to gain her feet. A chair crashed to the floor somewhere behind her. An English Setter glanced her direction and missed a gate.
She turned to push free of the crowd too close around her.
She ran blindly into a man who wrapped his arms around her.
She fought, struggled, would have clawed if she could but the arms tightened around her until she couldn’t move.
“Whoa! Perrin. Perrin!”
The nightmare never knew her name. Not that name. It knew a different one, a name she hadn’t used in twelve years. Perrin was her safe name.
Safe name. Safe.
“Perrin!”
She knew that voice. She followed the voice back. Back until she found the face that…
“Oh god, Bill. I’m so sorry.” She covered her mouth and searched for the kids.
They were only now returning, heavily laden with trays of food.
She turned away, so they couldn’t see her face. “Give me a minute. Just a minute.”
He held her just a moment, an infinitely reassuring moment, then kissed her on the forehead and released her.
“Okay, land it there, kids.”
She heard a chair scraped upright. A dog bark. The slow return of normalcy about her.
It had been years since she’d lost it like that. Years since she’d lost her firm grip of control. She stepped farther away, hoping to find and leash a few more pieces of herself. Even Jo had never seen that part of her. Only Cassidy. Only her.
“A kiss on her forehead doesn’t count as number four, Dad,” Tamara teased somewhere behind her.
“Number four what?” Jaspar sounded grumpy.
“So dense,” Tamara complained to her dad.
Jaspar made a raspberry sound.
She could feel them waiting for her to join them. A nice, normal family. They had no wife or mother, but were a good, solid family nonetheless.
And they’d all begun to cast her for the missing role… her! Perrin Williams! How could they be so wrong? She closed her eyes. Perhaps if she couldn’t see them. She focused on the excited panting of the dogs in the nearby ring and the hum of the crowd’s conversation. Perhaps if she couldn’t hear them. Perhaps then she could walk away.
But she could hear them. And when she managed to turn, she could see them; involved in some game for which the prize was someone else’s French fry. Thankfully, Bill had seated the kids with their backs to her.
Ten steps. Ten lousy steps and she could rejoin them.
Or she could turn and run.
She looked over her shoulder toward the entrance, the chaotic Seattle weather had now allowed sunshine to light the wet street beyond the glass entry doors, making it glisten. The distant view of daylight painfully bright and real compared to the industrial lighting inside the hall.
Perrin turned back and took the ten steps to the table. They were hard. Maybe the hardest thing she’d ever done. She had to count each one under her breath to make them real, to prove to herself that she was making progress.
But she made it.
She’d soon lost half her French fries to Jaspar, clearly the table’s master of the game she didn’t bother trying to understand. He may have been targeting her specifically, but that didn’t seem likely. Bill ended the game at that point anyway. It didn’t matter. She wasn’t sure if she could eat much.
Bill’s knee pressed hard against Perrin’s own as he teased Tamara about her third career choice of the week: opera singer, fashion designer, dog trainer.
Bill’s knee. It was all that anchored her in place. But it was enough.
- Writer
