Deep Waters

not make herself turn back.
    What the hell. She never had been any good at the kind of games men and women played. There had never been any time to practice.
    The night closed swiftly in around her as she hurried along the top of the bluffs. When she reached Elias's madrona-shaded garden she saw that there was still no light in the windows. She walked around to the front of the cottage. Elias's Jeep was parked in the drive.
    She wondered if he had gone for an evening walk farther up along the bluffs.
    Charity made her way back around the cottage to the garden entrance. For a moment she stood, one hand resting on the low gate. After a moment she raised the latch and went into the garden.
    She was halfway along the winding path, headed toward the unlit porch, when she sensed another presence in the garden. She stopped and turned slowly.
    It took a few seconds for her to make out Elias. He sat cross-legged in front of the reflecting pool, a still, silent figure shrouded in twilight shadows. The small pond was a black mirror that revealed nothing.
    "Elias?" She took a step forward and hesitated.
    "Was there something you wanted?" His voice held the distant, chillingly detached quality that had unnerved her on the day they had met.
    "No." She took another step toward him. "Are you all right?"
    "Yes."
    "Elias, for heaven's sake, what's wrong?"
    "An interesting aspect of water is only revealed when there is an absence of light. The surface becomes as opaque to the eye as a wall of obsidian."
    "Great, we're back to the Zen-speak." Charity walked to the edge of the pond and halted a short distance from Elias. "Enough with the cryptic comments. Tell me what's going on here."
    At first she thought that he would not respond. He did not move, did not even look at her. He seemed completely focused on the dark, blank surface of the reflecting pool. An endless moment passed.
    "Garrick Keyworth tried to commit suicide last night," he said at last.
    The stark words hit her with the force of a wave crashing on rocks. She recalled what Elias had said about his mother's death. Suicide always held a special horror for those who had been touched by it.
    "Oh, Elias."
    She sank down beside him. A section of the hem of her light chambray dress settled on his knee. She followed his gaze into the darkness of the reflecting pool. He was right. There was nothing to be seen there. The night sat heavily on the garden.
    Time passed. Charity did not attempt to break the silence. She simply waited. It was the only thing she could do.
    "I thought that because I had decided to walk away from my revenge, the matter was finished," Elias said after a while. "But I did not truly turn aside. I went to Keyworth one last time. Showed him what I could have done to him, had I chosen to go through with it."
    "You don't know that your meeting with him had anything to do with his suicide attempt."
    "It had everything to do with it. I studied him for years. I should have seen the full range of possibilities when I made my last move. Maybe I did see them but refused to acknowledge them."
    "Don't be so hard on yourself, Elias."
    "I knew damn well that the knowledge of his own vulnerability would add to the poison brewing inside Keyworth. But I told myself that it would be only a single small drop in the mixture. Not enough to change the final results."
    "You couldn't have known that it would push him over the edge. You still don't know that it did."
    "It takes only a small impurity to destroy the perfection of the clearest pond."
    Charity tried to think of something to say, but everything that came to mind was useless. A less self-aware, less self-disciplined man might have been comforted by her insistence that he was not responsible for Keyworth's suicide attempt. A less complicated man might have taken triumphant satisfaction from the situation. After all, some would say that had Key-worth been successful, it would have been nothing more than simple justice. But Elias was not like most men. Elias was different.
    After a while Charity reached out to touch his arm. Every muscle, every tendon, every sinew beneath his skin was as taut as twisted steel. He did not move. He seemed oblivious to her fingers.
    "It's getting chilly out here," she said eventually. "Come inside. I'll fix you some tea."
    "I don't want any tea. Go home, Charity." The icy remoteness in his voice made her want to recoil. She fought the instinctive urge to leap to her feet and run. "I'm not going to