Shadow Notes by Laurel Peterson (cool books to read txt) 📗

and Hugh and my divorce drifted through, but Paul counseled me to let them float by, as if I were watching clouds from the comfort of warm sand on a summer afternoon.

After a while, he suggested I imagine a safe place, either somewhere I loved or a retreat I created. My mind conjured up my mother’s little house at the stable. I walked through it, room by room, claiming it as my own, changing the pillows from turquoise to peach, painting the walls a delicate taupe, filling the kitchen with Tippy Assam tea and the chocolate chip cookies my father used to bake. When I was comfortable, he said, “Ask for an animal to guide you, to nose out the deceit.”

For a moment, nothing came. Then I looked out the window of the little house and saw a gray wolf, his head turned toward me, as if in invitation. I could see his damp black nose surrounded by white, caramel and gray fur, his hazel eyes a match for his thick coat. While I watched, he howled, long and plaintive. Within moments, as if they had fashioned themselves from air, other wolves drifted from the trees, adding their voices to the chorus. The cabin was surrounded, wolf pack upon wolf pack howling into the moonlit sky.

I felt loved and protected for the first time in a long time.

Paul and Richard fed me dinner that night. Paul and I had talked about the wolves and what they meant in the office, but we didn’t agree. Richard took one look at us and opened a bottle of wine.

“I can see that my day at work was cake, compared to yours,” he said. “I’m making coq au vin for dinner. Clara, can you get the chicken and mushrooms out of the fridge? Paul, could you set the table?” Richard removed the Baccarat from the walnut cabinet in the dining room and poured generous glasses. Paul gave him a funny look, but didn’t comment.

They’d bought those glasses a couple of months after Richard’s diagnosis. The pattern was called Perfection—a simple, thin crystal. They’d been in hysterics in the Madison Avenue boutique, joking about the dark irony of claiming perfection as their own, a magic wand to clean up their messy and complicated lives.

I’d tried to talk them into Massena, a heavier, dramatic design with deep cuts in the crystal base, but they said it was named after a fortified city, and they didn’t want to think about war when they were drinking wine. I told them that was Masada, not Massena, and that the design was actually named after a French general, but they said that was the same thing, and dissolved into another round of giggles—an act of hope against the dark.

Richard raised his glass in a toast. “To us,” he said. “To good friends who will see you through.” Our glasses clinked and the wine trailed its warming way down my throat. He set his glass on the counter. “Okay, Clara. You’re in charge of wiping mushrooms and finding the tomatoes in the pantry. I’ll chop onions. Paul, your job—should you choose to accept it—is to keep Clara plied with wine.” He slid the papery skin off the first onion and attacked the root with a small paring knife.

“So my day was pretty much the same as usual: do more work than everyone else while being avoided. You?”

I glanced at Paul, but he was getting napkins from a drawer, his back to me.

“Paul took me through a meditation today.” I shrugged. “Mother wants me to learn.”

“What did you think?”

“Relaxing at first.”

He slid the skin off a second onion.

“I saw a pack of wolves surrounding my mother’s little meditation house.” I stopped, realizing I hadn’t told them about the little house. They were my best friends. Paul was a therapist. How could I not tell them—and anyway, I’d already let it slip. “At least, I think that’s what it is,” I amended lamely. “Over at Loretta’s farm.”

Richard raised an eyebrow, letting my confession slide. “That imagery isn’t too hard to interpret.”

“Yeah, except I felt at one with them.”

“Ah.”

“Am I really the same as the rest of them, just wanting to dissect her?” I shook my head. “I don’t even know my own motivations anymore.”

“Maybe that’s not what the wolves meant.” Richard turned on the flame and began to brown the chicken. “You’re trying to heal things, right? Isn’t a wolf a guardian symbol, Paul?”

“Yup.”

“So maybe the wolves are trying to keep her safe. Maybe that’s your role—fierce guardian—and why you felt so at home.”

“Yeah, that’s what Paul said.”

Paul flipped a chair around and sat down, leaning his arms on the back. “Maybe you need to walk away from this for a little bit. Get some perspective.”

“I thought you told me, not two hours ago, that walking away was bad.” I turned, exasperated. “I just want the truth. If I’m going to help her, then I need her to be honest with me.”

“And you need to be honest with her.”

“About what?”

“What you need from her.”

“I don’t need anything from her.”

“You need her to tell you who you are. Isn’t that what all this is about? If you know who she is, then you can know yourself.”

“Argh!” I slapped down the knife and walked into their pantry, essentially a small closet off the kitchen, to search for the tomatoes. For a moment, I didn’t turn on the overhead light, enjoying the warmth and darkness like a shield between me and Paul’s probing questions and therapy-speak. He was right, of course. All the visions I’d had over the years, from poor Timmy in the schoolyard to my painful arm the night before, made me want to know how the gift worked. I wanted to know if all the women in my family had it. I wanted to know what it had told Mother over the years. Maybe if she would acknowledge its usefulness, I would have permission to be who I was.

I yanked on