To alleviate the heavy silence, she turned on the television to a syndicated sitcom. The laugh track granted her the false pretense of not being lost and isolated. A couple of quiet, uneventful hours passed. Night fell early in the mountains and soon the yawns were cracking her jaw open at ten-minute intervals. Deciding to turn in, she recovered the wiped-clean dinner plates from the porch, cleaned up the kitchen and ascended the staircase for the last time that night—maybe. Exhaustion weighed down her limbs. Hopefully she wouldn’t be back downstairs in a couple of hours pacing the floor.
When she entered the bedroom assigned to her, the first rumble of thunder rolled across the night sky. She hurried over to the bedside lamp, flicked it on and couldn’t contain her sigh of relief as the soft light beat back the darkness. The anxiety that always tagged along with the dark eased and she slid into bed. Huddling under the covers, she closed her eyes and willed sleep to come.
Hours—maybe minutes—later, Tamar jerked up in bed. Unsure of what woke her, her head swiveled from side to side. The room was a black hole. Her heart pummeled her chest, rising up and down like a seesaw. She sucked in several deep gulps of air and her breath was a harsh roar in the silence. Her fingers clutched the blanket, the material bunched in her grasp.
Trembling, she released her death grip on the covers and reached toward the lamp. But a jerk on the chain brought no result. Panic stole up her throat, crafty and with malicious joy. Suddenly she was transported back in time, had returned to her bedroom at home, fumbling with the lamp next to her bed, desperate to have light wash throughout the room. But no matter how many times she flipped the switch the room remained dark. Later she discovered Kyle had deliberately unplugged the lamp, using her fear to torment her.
A mewl like a wounded creature escaped her and the sound horrified and humiliated her. It had been three years since the crash, damn it! Children were afraid of the dark, not twenty-eight-year-old women.
But the scolding didn’t take away the tremors that shook her body. Or the heart-numbing terror that had her gaze darting around the room as if she was a cornered animal. Again she whimpered. To contain the next shameful moan, she sank her teeth into her bottom lip, threw back the covers and swung her legs over the edge of the mattress.
Biting her lip didn’t help. The panicked sounds were a continuous stream from her throat as she pushed off the bed and stumbled several feet in the direction of the bedroom door. Her knee struck a solid, heavy object she assumed was the dresser. Tamar cried out, the pain jolting up her leg, adding to the frantic pounding of her heart.
A deafening crash rang out in the room.
She shrank back against the wall, her arms cradling her head.
“Tamar?”
The familiar voice tore another cry from her. Relief leaked past the consuming grip of fear, but not enough to loosen her vocal cords so she could call out to Nicolai. All she could manage was another mortifying whimper.
It was enough.
One moment she huddled beside the dresser and in the next Nicolai’s hands grasped her upper arms. He dragged her close before wheeling around and shoving her behind him. She panted, her forehead pressed to his warm, hard back, her fingers curled into fists against his waist.
The part of her that had survived a plane crash and abusive ex-boyfriend ordered her to stand up straight and get herself together. She wasn’t this weak cowering woman hiding behind Nicolai. But the primal creature in her had taken over—the primitive part that believed in order to live she must scramble to the cover of the strongest for protection.
“What’s wrong?” he barked. “Who’s here?”
She shook her head, opened her mouth to speak. When only a hoarse moan emerged, she snapped her lips closed, swallowed and tried again.
“The light,” she croaked.
The tension slowly bled from his large frame.
Tamar waited. Braced herself for the exasperated sigh. The you-got-to-be-kidding-me snarl or the don’t-be-fucking-ridiculous ridicule. She’d heard it so often from Kyle it could have been his mantra.
But unlike her ex, if Nicolai condemned her as absurd or silly, she would be an emotional Humpty Dumpty crushed into so many pieces she wouldn’t be able to put them back together again.
“The power went out with the storm,” he said gently.
As if to underscore his explanation, thunder boomed outside the window.
You know what thunder is, her mother’s voice whispered inside her head. It’s God and the angels bowling. When there’s lightning, God’s made a strike.
It was too much.
The phobic terror of the dark. Memories of Kyle and his cruelty. Nicolai rushing to her rescue.
She broke.