Night Passage (A Jesse Stone Novel)

foliage. What made the leaves of the hardwoods so bright, he realized, was the undertone of evergreens behind and between them. The turning trees were made more brilliant by the trees that didn’t turn. Must be a philosophic point in there somewhere, Jesse thought. But none occurred.
    “So are you?” Michelle asked.
    She was still looking at the ground, and as she talked she pointed her toes in and then back out.
    “None of your business,” Jesse said.
    “Embarrassed to say?”
    “No,” Jesse said. “But you don’t go out with someone and then tell everybody what you did.”
    “I’ll bet you talk about it with the other cops.”
    “No,” Jesse said.
    “That’s weird. You ever been married?”
    “Yes.”
    “You divorced now?”
    “Yes.”
    “Is it because you didn’t love each other?”
    “No. I think we love each other.”
    “So what is it?”
    “None of your business,” Jesse said.
    “Jeez, another thing you won’t talk about.”
    “I don’t talk about you and me, either,” Jesse said.
    Michelle was startled.
    “We’re not doing nothing,” she said.
    Jesse grinned at her.
    “That makes it easier,” he said.
    Michelle tried not to, but she couldn’t help herself. She giggled.
    “Jesse, you are really crazy,” she said. “You are really fucking-A crazy.”
    “Thank you for noticing,” Jesse said.
    And Michelle giggled some more and looked at the harlequin leaf bed beneath her dangling feet.

53
     
    Madeline St. Claire, M.D., had her office in a building on Bedford Drive in Beverly Hills a block north of Wilshire, on the corner of Brighton Way. Jenn liked the location. It made her feel important to go there twice a week. Jenn loved Dr. St. Claire and hated her. She was so implacable.
    “What we are after in here,” Dr. St. Claire had said to her in one of her early visits, “is the truth.”
    “So how come you are an authority on truth? Maybe your truth isn’t my truth.”
    “We want your truth,” Dr. St. Claire said. “We want you to know why you do what you do.”
    “Who’s to decide my truth?”
    “You will.”
    “So why do I need you?”
    “Why do you?” Dr. St. Claire had said and Jenn had felt the stab of panic that she often felt when she realized that something was up to her.
    She had gotten past that and now she understood why she needed help with the truth. But the rebellious child angry at the stern teacher never entirely disappeared, and many of the therapy sessions were combative. Sometimes Jenn cried. Dr. St. Claire remained unmoved. She was kind, but she was firm, and nothing Jenn did, no trick from Jenn’s considerable repertoire, could divert her. Under Dr. St. Claire’s steady gaze the strictures of pretense with which Jenn had defended herself for so long began to loosen.
    They were talking about Jesse.
    “The thing is,” Jenn said, “that I feel so much more than I used to feel when I talk to him. I feel stronger. It’s like, sometimes I imagine the skin of a valley girl laying shriveled on the floor, and a kind of new pink me standing up, a little damp, kind of scared, but genuine. Is that too fanciful?”
    Dr. St. Claire made one of her little head movements which managed to encourage Jenn while remaining non-committal.
    “I know I haven’t been here long enough to be what I’m going to be. But when I talk to Jesse I know he’s in trouble, and I know he’s a little scared. Jesse is never scared.”
    “Or never shows it,” Dr. St. Claire said.
    “He’s really very brave,” Jenn said.
    Dr. St. Claire nodded.
    “And the funny thing is, when he sounds a little scared, I feel a lot braver. You know. I feel like I could help him.”
    “Why do you suppose that is?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe I’m glad he’s not so damned perfect, you know? That he can be scared?”
    “Perhaps you don’t need to be quite so much less than he,” Dr. St. Claire said.
    “What do you mean?”
    “You have learned to get what you want by submitting to men. They had power. You, as I believe you said once, knew how to ‘bat your eyes’ when you needed something.”
    “And now I don’t?”
    “Now you may need to less,” Dr. St. Claire said. “I don’t think you are all the way yet.”
    The room was very plain. The walls were beige. The rug was gray with a pink undertone. The only thing to look at other than Dr. St. Claire was her framed diplomas. Her medical degree was from UCLA. There was some kind of psychoanalytic certificate too, and