Adermoor Cove Part 2: Love Hurts - 5. Chapter 5

A cheerful honk sounded from the driveway. Lane’s heart immediately kicked into high gear. She’s here!

He pulled the water stopper out of the sink and wiped the soap from the backs of his arms with a paper towel. For the past four hours he’d run around like a chicken with his head cut off, trying to make everything perfect for when Nora Hardy got here. Each passing minute, the second her arrival grew closer, the more he grew more excited and secretly dreaded the moment. When did this fear of his mother, the woman who had raised him, take hold?

“Charlie!” he called. He heard the hiss of the shower die. “She’s here!”

He threw the door open just in time to see Nora’s red Chevy Impala pull into the dirt driveway. It had stopped raining for the moment. Nora had gotten out of the car and was now walking towards him with a big smile on her face. Her red hair, now streaked with more grey since the last time he’d seen her, hung around her shoulders. She wore a long black blouse with blue rose petals blooming over the front and an ankle-length skirt. Her skin was slightly tan from visits to the tanning bed.

They embraced in the middle of the driveway with the cabin at Lane’s back. Lane caught a whiff of the perfume Nora was wearing: something with cherry in it. She stepped back and scanned his face as if to make sure he wasn’t sporting any injuries. “It’s good to see you,” she said.

“It’s good to see you too, Mamma.” She had always been Mama to him, no one else.

She released him and turned to look at the cabin. “It’s more beautiful than you said it would be on the phone. Did Charlie build it himself?”

“No, his grandfather - it does belong to Charlie, though.”

She looked around at the trees. There was no sound but for the wind rustling through the branches of the trees around them. “It’s so quiet. I can’t believe you live all the way out here. The silence - does it ever drive you mad?”

“It took some getting used to but now it doesn't bother me. I'm used to it.”

Nora pointed at the garage. “Is that where Charlie builds his cars?”

“Yes. I’m sure he’ll show you what he’s working on. He’s just getting out of the shower.”

Sure enough the screen door opened and Charlie came out, dressed in a clean outfit and freshly shaved. Lane watched nervously as the two people he loved the most stood in the center of the grass, sizing one another up. Like a shy child who expects to be rejected, Charlie held his hand out.

Here it is, the moment of truth, Lane thought.

To both Lane and Charlie’s surprise Nora walked up to Charlie and hugged him. “It’s nice to finally meet you,” she said. “Lane has told me so much about you.”

Charlie chuckled awkwardly, stepping back. “Likewise. I’m glad you made it here safely. Would you like something to drink? I made some tea this morning, it should be good and steeped by now.”

Nora beamed. “Some iced tea would be lovely.”

                             …

That night for dinner, Lane and Charlie worked as a team while Nora sat at the table, drinking iced tea and relaxing. Charlie stood at the stove, working on the steaks while Lane stuck three large potatoes in the microwave.

Nora and Charlie had been getting along quite well so far, something Lane had fretted over constantly. It seemed all the worry, at least for now, was for nothing. Charlie had already taken Lane's mother out to the shed to show off his project. She'd nodded her approval at the truck he was fixing up but was far more impressed with the black Mustang. "Wow!" she'd exclaimed. "It looks like it's just come off the lot!"

Nora didn't know how to relax, never had. Even on her days off, when she wasn't at the office, Lane recalled how she was constantly in movement, cooking and cleaning, working on notes, or preparing for financial audits. She showed the same restlessness and asked multiple times if there was anything she could do to help. Lane couldn’t help but grin as he told her to take a chill pill. Take a chill pill had a funny ring to it with her being a psychologist.

Nora smiled as she held out her glass for Charlie to top off with red wine. "You don't understand," she said. "I'm not used to being able to relax."

Lane’s lip curled. He began tossing a bowl of fresh salad, mixing the homemade garlic dressing into the lettuce. "It's simple: You just sit around, watch us do all the work, and let us pamper you."

Nora took a sip from her glass. Already her face had become quite red. "I'm not used to being pampered like this." She pointed a finger at Charlie. "Where did you find this man? He's a keeper."

"He found me on the side of the road and rescued me," Lane said. He put the bowl of salad on the table. "Ever since then I've lived like a princess."

"Well make you sure you keep him because if you don’t want him you just give him to me."

Face turning beet red, Charlie gave Lane an embarrassed look.

"I don't think that's going to work, Mamma."

She pouted. "Why not?"

"Because you don't have the right equipment, Ma."

She gave him the finger.

With dinner fully prepared the two men joined Nora at the table. Nora exclaimed at how good everything was. "I haven't had a man fix me food this good since your father was alive," she said to Lane.

"So," said Charlie, cutting into his steak, "your son's told me you're a psychologist and you have your own business."

Nora's eyes widened and she smiled. "Yes."

Lane groaned inwardly. Great. Now we get to listen to her verbal-vomit about her business for the next hour.

"I have my own business in Indianapolis. If it wasn't for Lane's father, Paul, I wouldn’t have been able to get it off the ground. His life insurance money practically paid for it all."

For the next several minutes Nora talked about her business. Each department specialized in different things: marriage and domestic violence, and trauma.

"What do you specialize in?" Charlie asked. Lane frowned at him. He couldn’t tell if his partner was truly interested or if he was just being polite to Norma.

"Hypno-therapy."

Now it was Charlie’s turn to frown. He leaned forward. "Come again?"

"Hypnosis."

"That’s really a thing?" Charlie looked skeptical.

"Oh yes," Nora said, glancing at Lane, "and if used in the right hands, with the right methods, for the right reasons it can be quite useful."

Lane felt a shiver go up his spine. In his head he heard a phantom voice say: Lane, I need you to forget what happened…

Forget...forget what?

"What reasons would you have for using it?" Charlie asked.

"Well if you truly want to know I'll give you the reader's digest version of it. Lane always gets weirded out when I start talking about it amongst his peers? Do you have a pen?"

Charlie got up and grabbed a Papermate from the cup on top of the fridge. He handed it to Lane’s mother and sat back down. Feeling as if he was floating away on the waves of a black ocean, scrabbling for something to hold onto, Lane reached for Charlie's hand. Charlie’s fingers laced through his, keeping Lane tethered to reality.

Carefully Nora drew a triangle on the napkin. Lane was familiar with what she was doing, had probably seen her do it hundreds of times.

"Ignore my awful drawing skills," said Nora with the smile. "As long as you get the idea I'll be happy. This is supposed to be an ice glacier." She tapped at the pyramid carefully with the tip of her pen. Now she drew a squiggly line close to the top of the mountain. "And this is supposed to be water, or if you prefer, ice. Now I'm sure you've heard the theory human beings only use ten percent of our brain while the other ninety remains dormant. That's not a lot, is it? Rumor has it dolphins use more than we do. Well it is the same with our subconscious. Only ten percent, the part we are aware of, sticks above the ice while the rest is submerged."

Nora paused, giving Charlie a moment to let the information she'd given him sink in, before continuing. "Our subconscious is the center of who we are - it may not seem like it because our awareness of it is so limited. It’s the voice in the back of our head, the processing plant where our darkest fears and desires are stored - usually the information we discard: the things we don’t want to admit to ourselves, or remember. In the case of my clients it's usually past traumas."

Nora took a sip of her wine. "Now because the divide between our consciousnesses they cannot communicate with each other. The subconscious is virtually unreachable: Repetition, positive affirmations, and…" her grin widened, "hypnosis. It can be used to help a person recall something they've repressed. Or it can help them remember. It all depends on how suggestive the person is, of course." She looked at her son, and then his plate. "Lane, you've hardly touched your food."

Forcing the bile to keep from shooting up his throat, Lane looked up, into his ghost-eyed reflection. It was smirking at him, a mocking caricature of his own face. “Why did you lock the door? What are you afraid she’s going to come in here and do, hypnotize you? Make you forget what happened to your father?” The mocking smile went away and the tone became more urgent. “Nothing is what you think. You need to remember.”

“Whatever it is she made me forget I don’t want to remember,” Lane hissed at the mirror. “Now leave me the fuck alone!”

He went back into the kitchen where Charlie and Nora were talking, as if nothing was wrong. He smiled despite the sick feeling in his stomach: The two people he loved the most in the world were finally in the same room together.

…

He dreamed his mother was calling to him, just as she used to do when he was a kid. The only difference was, he wasn’t a kid anymore, and he wasn’t in the apartment in Indianapolis. He was in Michigan, in the cabin his boyfriend owned.

She was standing in the doorway, fully dressed. How long had she been standing there, whispering his name? She was holding something in her hands, something shiny.

“Mom?” he said, wiping at his eyes. “Do you know what time it is?”

“Shhh,” she said softly. “Don’t wake Charlie.”

She was the swinging something at the end of her hand, a chain with a shiny pendant at the end. Back and forth it went; right to left, left to right. So bright, so shiny.

Don’t look, don’t look...She thinks she’s helping you, she doesn’t know she’s just making things worse.

But he had to look. The pendant was so bright, so shiny, and the motion it made was so fluid and graceful. The pendant barely made a sound as it hissed through the air.

“I’m sorry, Lane,” she whispered, and he realized there were tears in her voice. “But I have to do this... I have to make sure. Get dressed and come join me in the living room.”

“Okay,” he said, and climbed out of bed. He looked back once at Charlie’s sleeping form. A deep part of him wanted to shout out and wake Charlie, but this part of him was far too deep down for him to be able to reach it, its influence muted. He pulled on a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt. Nora sat in one of the armchairs before the fire, waiting for him. Tears continued to trickle slowly down her cheek. He sat down in the chair beside her.

“Are you happy here?” she asked. “Answer me honestly.”

“I am,” he said.

“Do you love Charlie?”

“I do. More than words could describe.”

“Is he good to you?”

“Yes.”

“Does he or has he ever beat you?”

“No,” he hissed, startled by the question.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “but a mother has to know these things. Do you feel safe out here?”

“No,” he said. He felt as if his mouth was moving of its own accord. Deep inside himself he struggled to gain control of himself but he felt like a man whos arms and legs were bound to train tracks.

“But not because of Charlie?”

“No, not because of Charlie.”

“Do you feel something is coming to hurt you?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“I don’t know... but I can feel it coming.”

“The darkness?” Her voice echoed: The dark-nesssss…

He felt a sudden terror at the two words and remembered the dream that had been haunting him for the past few nights: his father trying to kill him. “Yes,” he said.

She nodded, understanding. “And you’re father? Have you been dreaming about him?”

“Almost every night for the past week.”

“What happens in the dream?”

“You ask me to help throw his body down the stairs. But that isn’t how he died... you told me... you told me he fell down the stairs and broke his neck...” He could feel the warmth of his own tears rolling down his cheeks now. The knowledge she’d lied to him hurt like hell. Your mother was the one person who wasn’t supposed to lie to you.

“He did fall down the stairs,” she said. “The dream you had is nothing more than just a dream. When you wake up you will remember him falling down the stairs. You won’t remember the truth. And you won’t remember about your powers, understand?”

Before he could answer the living room light blinked on. Suddenly Charlie was kneeling before him in his underwear, calling his name and gently slapping his cheek. “Lane,” he was saying, eyes wide, hair mussed up from sleep.

“Huh?” Lane said, slowly coming too, the switch thrown back on.

“No!” Nora sobbed. She was standing over by the fireplace, wringing her hands through her hair. “You don’t understand...I can’t imagine how this must look, but it’s for his own good!”

Charlie whirled around, fist clenched, and for a moment Lane was terrified he might hit her, beat her to a pulp until there was nothing left. But he restrained himself from doing so... barely. “What kind of mother are you, hypnotizing your own son? Get out of here before I call the cops.”

She looked towards Lane as if expecting him to help her but he could only stare at her, confused. And then she was gone, out the door with her purse in hand.

He felt as if he’d been drugged.

“What happened?” he asked. “Why did you make her leave?”

“Brainwashing you,” Charlie said, his voice sounding as if it was coming from far away. “She was fucking brainwashing you.”

Moments later they sat at the kitchen table drinking hot chocolate.

“What do you remember?” Charlie asked him

“Nothing,” Lane said. There was a blank, drugged look on his face.

“She was trying to make you forget something? You don’t remember what?”

Lane could feel something stirring in the corner of his mind. She wanted me to forget something? But what? The forgotten memory continued to stir but no matter how hard he concentrated he couldn’t fully conjure it into the light. “I don’t know, Charlie, alright? I don’t fucking know.”

Charlie sighed. “It doesn’t matter because I’m never letting her near you again. Not ever.”

“She’s my mother,” Lane said pathetically.

“Which is the only reason why I didn’t shoot her.” Charlie came over and kissed Lane on the top of his head. “Are you coming back to bed with me?”

“In a little bit. I’m going to stay up a little longer.”

Charlie opened his mouth to object but then closed it. “Okay. I’ll be waiting for you when you’re ready.”

Lane waited until Charlie was in the bedroom before he went back to the armchair in the living room - the one he’d been sitting in when Charlie had found his mother and he together. He closed his eyes and tried to remember what it was Nora had forced him to forget. He had to remember.

Something dangerous was coming for him. He didn’t know what it was but he could feel it coming. If he was going to have any chance of defending himself and Charlie then this was the only way to do it.

He stared into the dying embers of the fireplace, hoping they would provide the spark he needed.