Charon's Crossing

"Not yet."

"Well, I think you should. Perhaps you need to go on some other kind of medication."

Kathryn shook her head. "I'm sick of taking pills, Mother. I feel like a walking pharmacy as it is."

"When's your next appointment with Dr. Whalen?"

"Monday."

"Don't wait that long, please. Call her, tell her you need to see her. Talking with her might make you feel better."

"I'll call her, tomorrow, if I don't stop... if I don't feel better."

"Promise?"

Kathryn smiled and squeezed her mother's hand. "Promise."

"That's my girl."

The women were silent for a couple of minutes and then Kathryn cleared her throat.

"I know I'm not supposed to talk about-—about him."

"There was no 'him,' " Beverly said sharply. "You know that, Kathryn."

"Oh, sure. I know that. It's just a figure of speech, Mother." Kathryn licked her lips. "It's just that—that... The thing is, what happened all seemed so—so real."

"Of course it did." Beverly smiled. "What's the point in having a hallucinatory experience if you don't give it everything you've got?"

Kathryn laughed. She felt her tension easing away.

"Your father would say the same thing. I remember one time, he went off to an ashram in the Himalayas. He was determined to experience what some much-lauded swami was calling a 'mystery journey of inner discovery.' " Beverly chuckled. "Trevor came back and said no journey of discovery was worth giving up red meat, alcohol and sex, especially if you had to chant RamiDamiDoo or something like that while you worked yourself into a trance."

"You didn't go with him?"

"I was four months pregnant with you, darling. The only mystery that interested me was what was going to happen in the labor room!"

"But Father left you anyway."

"Of course. That's just the way he was, Kathryn. He didn't mean to be selfish or unkind."

"And you took him back."

Beverly sighed. "I always did, until I finally decided I just couldn't live that way anymore. No real home, no money in the bank, no future..."

Kathryn's mouth thinned. "What a relief it must have been, to have it over with."

"Not really," her mother said softly. "I still loved him. I suppose I never quite stopped loving him."

"It's too bad he didn't feel the same way."

Beverly's brows arched. "But he did, Kathryn. He loved the both of us until the day he died."

"Yeah. He loved me so much that he forgot I existed."

"He never forgot you."

"Come on, Mother. What else do you call it when a man never sends his daughter a letter or even a birthday card?"