Angels Fall

it with me, thrown it away. I don't remember, j ust  like the other times." 
    His eyes sharpened, but his voice stayed exactly the same. Calm and very firm. "What other times?"
    "I think I'm going to be sick."
    "No. you're not."
    She slammed the drawer, and her eves, red-rimmed from weeping, burned tury. "Don't tell me what I am, what I'm not."
    "You're not going to be sick," he repeated as he walked over and took her by the arm. "because you haven't told me about the other times. Let's sit down."
    "I can't."
    "Fine, we'll stand up. Got any brandy?"
    "I don't want any brandy."
    ""I didn't ask you what you wanted." He began opening cupboards himself until he found a small bottle. Under other circumstances, he'd have offended her sense of aesthetics by pouring brandy into a juice glass.
    "Knock it back, Slim."
    She might have been angry, might have been in the grip of despair, but Reece knew when it was pointless to argue. She took the glass, swallowed the two fingers of brandy in one gulp. And shuddered.
    "The sketch. It could be me."
    "How do you figure?"
    "If I imagined it… I've been through violence."
    "Ever been strangled?"
    "So it took another form." She set the glass down with a snap. "Someone tried to kill me once, and I've spent the last two years wait-ing for someone to try again. There's a resemblance between me and the sketch."
    "In that you're both female and you both have long, dark hair. Or you did." Frowning a little, he readied out to touch the tips of her hair that fell several inches above her shoulders now. "It's not your face."
    "But I didn't see her very well."
    ""But you did see her."
    "I don't  know  .
    "I do." Since he knew she wouldn't have coffee, he opened her refrigerator and was pleasantly surprised to see she'd stocked his brand of beer. He took one out, popped the top. "You saw those two people by  the river."
    "How can you be sure? You didn't see them."
    "I saw you." he said simply. "But let's get back to that. What other things don't you remember?"
    "I don't remember marking up my trail map, or unlocking my door and dragging it open in the middle of the night, putting the damn mixing bowls in the closet and my hiking boots and pack in the kitchen cup board. Or packing my clothes in my duffel. And there are other things, little things. I need to go back."
    "Back where?"
    She scrubbed her hands over her face, left them there. "I'm not getting better. I need to go back in the hospital."
    "Bullshit. What's this about packing your clothes?"
    "I came home one night—the night I went out to Clancy's with Linda-gail, and all my things were packed up. Everything packed in my duffel. I must've done it that morning, or on one of my breaks. I don't remember. And once the flashlight I keep by the bed was in the refrigerator."
    "I found my wallet there once. Weird."
    She let out a sigh. "It's not the same. I don't put things in the wrong place. Ever. At least… not when I'm aware, not when I'm healthy. It's certainly not normal for me to take bowls out of the kitchen and move them to the shelf in the clothes closet. I don't misplace things because I can't function if I don't know exactly where everything is. And, the point is, I'm not functioning."
    "More bullshit." Idly, he poked in the grocery bag. "What're all these leaves and grasses?"
    "They're field greens." She rubbed at the headache drilling into her temple. "I need to go. It's what I was telling myself when I packed. I must have been telling myself that all along, back on the trail, pretending everything was on its way back to normal."
    "You saw a woman murdered while you were on the trail. Not so normal. I had doubts about that at the time, but now—"
    "You did?"
    "Not that you saw her—them. But that she was dead. It was possible she got up, walked out of there. Marginally possible. But she's dead as Elvis."
    "Are you listening to me? Did you see what I did in there?" She flung a hand toward the bathroom.
    "What it you didn't?'
    "Who the hell else? "she exploded. "I'm unstable, Brody, for Christ's sake. I'm hallucinating murders and writing on walls."
    "What if you're not?" he repeated in the same implacable tone. "Listen, I make a pretty decent living on what-ifs. What if you saw exactly what you said you saw?"

    "And what if I did? It doesn't change the rest of it."
    "Changes everything. Ever see  Gaslight  ?
    She stared at him. "Maybe that's why I'm attracted to you. You're as crazy as I am. What the hell does  Gaslight