Cause Of Fear. Robert Ross

thanks, sis, for the pep talk.”

      Karen laughed. “I just want you to be as happy as I am, Linda. To have found a man who loves me—that’s just so indescribably perfect.”

      Linda imagined it was. And now she had—hadn’t she?

      And she couldn’t wait for Karen to meet Geoff.

      Linda remembers watching her sister walk down the aisle. How everyone had turned to watch her. “What a beautiful bride,” she heard more than one person whisper. “She’s really the beauty in the family, isn’t she?”

      Then Karen exchanged her vows with her husband, and the whole church applauded them.

      Just so indescribably perfect.

      But I’ll never know what that feels like, Linda thought.

      Linda wanted her sister to be happy. Sure, she’d always been envious of her, but Karen wasn’t a bad person. A little insensitive at times, a little bit self-absorbed—she really did want Linda to be happy, in her own way.

      Linda can’t deny a certain smug satisfaction that Geoff is far more handsome and successful than Karen’s husband. He was handsome like—like Jake Gandolfini back in high school, the jock who had rubbed suntan lotion on Karen’s back. The kind of handsome Linda thought she could never get.

      And now she has.

      Hasn’t she?

      Of course she has. By loving her, by wanting to marry her, Geoff has given her an unmistakable message: you are good. You are worthy.

      She drifts off to a happy sleep, and no dreams disturb her.

      When she wakes, the early morning sun is streaming through the windows, filling the room with a bright pink light.

      But the first thing she realizes is that Geoff is no longer beside her.

      She sits up.

      He is sitting in the chair opposite the bed, staring at her with tired, dark-circled eyes. His face is white. He looks—dead.

      “Geoff! What’s wrong?”

      He doesn’t respond. He just keeps staring at her.

      She hops out of bed and hurries to him. “Honey. Geoff. What’s happened?”

      “I had a dream,” he rasps.

      She kneels beside him. “A dream?”

      “A dream,” he echoes. “A dream of fire.”

      Linda’s heart thuds into her throat. “Fire?”

      He turns his bleary eyes to her. “The house was burning down. I saw the fire claim you. I saw you burn to death in front of my eyes.”

      CHAPTER 3

      “Dear God,” Linda gasps.

      “Then I went to save Josh,” Geoff continues, his eyes staring off into the distance at the memory of his nightmare. “But I couldn’t. He just stood there in the flames. He didn’t move. It was as if he just accepted he was going to die. That it was his fate. I watched as the flames consumed him.”

      “Oh, Geoff,” Linda says, her whole body trembling. She wraps his head in her arms.

      “It was horrible,” he says, his face pressed against her breasts. “The worst dream I’ve ever had in my life. I’ve been up ever since. I was too scared to go back to sleep.”

      She places her hands on his cheeks and turns his face to look up at her. She stares deep into his dark eyes. “Listen to me, Geoff. It’s the power of suggestion. You’ve been so empathic with me about my own anxieties, you took them on as your own. I’ve been going on about fire in my own dreams, and so you had one yourself.”

      He stands, breaking contact with her, staggering across the room.

      “That’s got to be what is, sweetheart,” she says after him. “It’s nothing to worry about.”

      But she doesn’t believe it herself.

      He says nothing. She watches as he scuffs into the bathroom and closes the door behind him.

      It was a sympathy dream, that’s all. The power of suggestion.

      Except Josh had had a dream about fire, too.

      Linda stands, looking out of the window into the glorious golden day.

      What is happening? What do these dreams mean?

      Below, in the yard, she sees Julia. The old woman is walking among the lilac bushes, breaking off a branch here and there. From this distance Linda can’t be sure, but she could swear Julia’s talking to herself. She catches snippets of words—“the boy”—“soon”—“the sun”—and she’s certain she can see the woman’s lips moving.

      Linda turns and raps softly on the bathroom door. “You okay, Geoff?”

      “Yeah,” he grunts. She can hear the shower water turn on, splashing into the tub. “I just need to get my head clear.”

      “I’ll see you downstairs then. I’ll start breakfast.”

      She’s not even at the bottom of the stairs when she sees what’s happened to the white lilacs. They’ve all turned brown. Their purple sisters remain fresh and vibrant and fragrant in their vases, but the whites, despite plenty of water, have faded overnight.

      Julia comes in through the back door, her apron filled with new purple flowers. “I told you we never have white,” she says, pulling out the dead clusters and replacing them with new blossoms.

      Linda says nothing, just heads into the kitchen. She sees the nanny has already started breakfast. The room is filled with the aroma of fresh-baked blueberry muffins. A pan of scrambled eggs is being kept warm on the stove. A pitcher of just-squeezed orange juice awaits them on the table.

      “I was going to cook,” Linda says, her voice weak and ineffectual.

      Julia doesn’t respond.

      “Where’s Josh?” Linda asks.

      “He’s in the backyard,” the nanny tells her. “He said his father promised to take him out on the lake. He’s getting the boat ready.”

      Linda peers out the kitchen window. Sure enough, there’s the boy, untangling the ropes that had tied the small wooden dinghy to the pier.

      She walks outside and calls to him.

      “Josh! Come in and have breakfast.”

      He ignores her.

      “Tell me, Josh. Are there fish in that lake?”

      She’s walking toward him now. He doesn’t look up as she approaches.

      “Perch, maybe? Trout?”

      “Yeah, there’s fish,” he says.

      “Maybe you and your father can catch some when you go out. I can clean them and cook them for dinner tonight.”

      The boy looks up at her. “My father doesn’t like to fish.”

      “Oh, no? Why not?”

      “He can’t stand putting the worms on the hook.”

      This surprises Linda. A little factoid she didn’t know about Geoff. Mr. Dark and Handsome. Mr. Brilliant Professor. Afraid of a little worm guts. She laughs.

      “Back home, my father would take my sister and me fishing all the time. There were a lot of lakes near where I grew up.” Linda rubs her hands together. “Why, if we had some bait we could probably bring in quite the haul here.”

      For the first time something other than hostility registers in Josh’s eyes when he looks up at Linda. There’s curiosity. Interest.

      “Would