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derstand. Sitting there, helpless, watching someone you care about sink deeper and deeper into oblivion." He shook his head, ran a hand through his hair. "Christ, to do it again ..."
He tried not to think of Maeve, but he couldn't help himself. He remembered the night, so many years ago, when he'd tried to extricate himself from the horror of her madness. An eighteen-year-old boy with nowhere to turn and no one to lean on. He could still remember the night, taste it, feel the cold kiss of the snowflakes on his face and hair.
She'd tried to kill herself-again-and Ian had found her, naked and shivering and bleeding in the big copper washbasin in the kitchen, her pale arms drawn protec-
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lively across her chest. She hadn't wanted Ian to have had to clean up the blood....
She hadn't minded that he'd find her body, or that he'd know how little she valued their family, or that he'd be utterly alone without her. All she cared about was the mess, and so she lay curled tight in the tub, the only thing out of place in the gleaming kitchen except for the still-dripping butcher knife she'd used to slit her wrists.
Ian had snapped, unable suddenly to take it anymore. After he'd stopped the bleeding, he bundled her up and carried her into the carriage. They hadn't stopped until they reached the hospital. He'd deposited her in Dr. Wellsby's arms and walked away, his shirt and hands still smeared with his mother's blood.
Ian, don't leave me here. I'm sorry. Please . . .
It was a crystallizing moment in his life; he knew that now. The fact that he could leave her in that place, sobbing and alone, had defined the greatest weakness in his character.
Oh, he might tell Johann he would help Selena, might even try to, but it would be a halfhearted attempt, an easily forgotten vow. In the end, mental illness terrified him, ripped out what little goodness lurked in his dark soul. It didn't matter that three months-and two suicide attempts-later, he'd returned for Maeve, rescued her. There was no redemption from the selfish cowardice of his true nature. But there was honesty. There was truth.
"I can't do it, Johann." He sighed and bowed his head, sickened by his own character, repulsed by his own weakness.
"She needs you to care about her."
"There is no her, Johann."
"The amnesia-"
"Didn't you learn anything from Wellsby? It's not amnesia, Johann. It's brain damage. She's not going to get her memory back. She'll never be normal. That's
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why I can't read her thoughts. There's nothing there to read. No past, no present, no future."
Johann stared at him for a long time, so long that Ian started to become uncomfortable. Finally Johann reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a small glass vial.
Ian frowned. "What have you got there?" "Cachou lozenges." Slowly he opened the vial and poured out the tiny white pills. Then he threw the empty bottle to the ground and cracked his heel down on top of it.
"What are you doing?"
"Making a point." Johann bent down and retrieved a small, nickel-sized piece of glass. Light caught the jagged edges and set them afire in sparkling prisms of blue and red and yellow.
Johann's voice fell to a seductive whisper, so soft that Ian involuntarily leaned forward to catch the words. "Why do you demand such wretched commonness from those you would care about?"
Ian slammed back in his seat and crossed his arms. He was disgusted with himself for having leaned forward at all. "Jesus, Johann, don't be so dramatic. I simply don't find mental illness or brain damage appealing. It's hardly grounds for execution." "You saw the bottle, yes?" "I'm not blind."
"It was pretty and fulfilled perfectly the function it was designed for." "Yes. So?"
"Now, see the bit of glass." Johann extended his hand, until the sharp edges of the glass were almost magical in their colored illumination. Slowly he turned the piece, letting light play across the surface in a shifting fan of yellow and purple and red and gold. "It's broken." "Yes." "But it has its own beauty now, its own value; if only
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one looks past expectations, past 'normality,' there is an almost magical effervescence here. Something seen that wasn't anticipated. A gift." Johann met Ian's frowning gaze, gave him a slow, soft smile.
Ian stared at the jagged bit of glass so long, it blurred like a teardrop in the half-light. He couldn't blame Johann-the younger man couldn't know that Ian had thought the same thing a thousand times in his life. He'd tried to see the beauty in Maeve, tried so damn hard. As a young boy, he tried every day to expect nothing of his mother, to simply love her as his father had. But every time she didn't recognize him, every time she slapped him or walked past him without a word, it hurt.
Johann's theory didn't work; not for Ian, anyway. He looked at life head-on, without blinders or rose-colored glasses. Maeve would always be sick and undepend-able. Selena would always be brain-damaged. He'd wasted enough time already on hopeless dreams-most of his life, it seemed-and he was tired of it, exhausted by the disappointments.
"You won't try again, will you? Won't even hope that Selena can be cured."
