Wicked Forest (DeBeers 2)

"Would you like something to eat or drink, Linden?" I asked. He didn't respond, not even to shake his head.

"If you want anything, please tell me. Come out as soon as you are able and I'll be happy to take a walk with you, if you like, okay?"

There was no visible sign that he heard me anymore.

I rose slowly, put the stool back, and watched him for a moment more before starting toward the door. I paused at the sight of the pictures piled against each other on the floor, all with their backs toward me. Something caught my eye, a seam in the top one. I looked back at him, and then I knelt and lifted the first picture from the pile.

The sight made me gasp.

It had been slashed in an X. So had the next, and the next, and the next. In fact, they were all slashed!

I stood up quickly and took the sheet off the one on the easel. It had been slashed even more viciously. I knelt and leafed through another pile of pictures stacked against the wall. They were in the same horrible condition.

"Oh. Linden, why? Why did you do this? All your work," I moaned,

He turned and looked at me on my knees, the ruined pictures in my hands.

"Why did you do this, Linden?"

To stop the whispering in here," he said in a tone of voice that as good as called me stupid.

Then he turned back to the window, To stop the whispering," he chanted.

I stood up slowly, weighed down by the sight of the destruction. Then I went out to tell my mother, my own shoulders heavy with the burden of such news, and this, after I had just put some light back into her eyes.

.

She rushed into Linden's studio to see what I had painfully described, then burst into a torrent of tears. Linden looked her way, rose. and shuffled out while I held her.

"Linden," she called after him. He went to his bedroom and closed the door. "What are we going to do?" she wailed. "Thatcher was right. He should be in a clinic. Who knows what he will slash up next?"

"No, no. Thatcher's not right. Mother. I'm here now We'll help him. We don't have to send him away," I insisted.

"But... he might need more than simply tender loving care, Willow. He might need medication and more vigorous therapy." she said.

"Perhaps so," I admitted. but let's give him some more time. Once we're back in the main house and he sees the dramatic changes, he might have a better reaction, don't you think? It could revive him.

"I don't know," she said, sniffing back her tears and grinding her eyes dry. "Nothing- seems certain in my world except that when I think things have gotten as bad as they can, they always seem to get worse."

I was about to reassure her when the phone rang. She sucked in her breath and answered it, then called for me. I thought it might be Nit. Bassinger or Mr. Ross, but it was Thatcher.

"How are you doing?" he asked. "Fine."

"I need only hear one word from your mouth to know you're angry," he said. "I'm sorry I didn't acknowledge you earlier today,"

"Uh-huh."

"The. woman I was with is a client. She's starting a very nasty divorce. I was in the midst of calming her down when you suddenly appeared in the window. It was such a surprise that for a moment. I actually thought you were a vision, some working of my imagination. In the middle of such domestic misery, you looked angelic to me."

You could

have at least nodded," I said.

"Get this straight. Willow. I can't just nod at you and then turn away as if you were just another person, another face, another name in my life. I'd rather not see you at all than suffer like that."

"Thatcher Eaton, you should be writing for Hearts Entwined or some other soap opera rather than writing those boring legal briefs," I quipped, which brought a laugh.

"You're right. You bring out the romantic in me. What can I say? It takes a good woman to make a man good."