Right. Made perfect sense. I didn’t always have some deep-seated reason when I used to paint. But Roy? This painting was too engaging for him to have “just felt like painting it.”

“I don’t buy it.”

“You don’t have to buy anything.”

“This is a clear descent, Roy. What does it mean?”

He wrinkled his forehead this time. “I’ve never fallen.”

“So you’ve said.”

“But there was one time…in an elevator…”

The elevator again. I’d seen him tense up more than once in an elevator. And he didn’t want to have sex in an elevator. Most men would jump at that.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I’m not sure, still. It’s kind of blurry in my head. It might have been a dream. But I was scared shitless. It was like the floor fell out from under me.”

“The cable must have broken. It happens every once in a while.”

He nodded. “I swear my stomach came out through my mouth.”

“You got sick?”

“No, just felt like that.”

“The negative Gs,” I said.

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“So you don’t have any desire to ride those kind of features in an amusement park, huh?”

“God, not in the slightest. The feeling of plummeting to my death isn’t anything I want to relive.”

I found his word usage interesting. Relive. This hadn’t been a dream. Whatever happened in an elevator was part of whatever Roy had buried in his brain. Should I push it? Or should I let it go?

The fact that he’d painted this—indeed, that he’d stayed up the previous night working on it—meant it was becoming unburied in his mind.

That was a good thing, and I should probably let it happen naturally, not push.

But—

“Tell me more about the elevator, Roy.”

46

Roy

The elevator.

The elevator that had appeared in the clearing after I’d trudged through the forest.

Hadn’t been real, of course. I’d been under hypnosis, in a deep state of relaxation.

The gray and silver interior. Still had those same elevators. Still had…

“Roy?” Charlie said tentatively.

“I’m okay.” I closed my eyes. “I want to share this with you.”

“Okay.”

“Except that… I didn’t open it. I didn’t use the key.”

“What are you talking about?”

“My session. It went well, I guess.”

“You said you didn’t want to talk about that.”

“And I don’t. Except that I do.”

She walked into my arms and laid her head on my shoulder. She didn’t say anything, but her actions said something far more powerful than words.

She was here for me.