Page 82 of Silent Threat
He wanted Annie to meet her. He needed to set that meeting up sooner rather than later.
Annie didn’t take her sneakers off as they reached the path. Neither did anyone else. The ground was still soggy from the rain the other day.
They walked in silence. The wind in the trees, the birds, even the sound of squirrels darting around in the underbrush were all an instant balm to her soul. That Cole didn’t benefit from any of nature’s song saddened her.
They walked in a loose formation. After about two miles, she steered them off the path to a spot she’d discovered only a few weeks before, a spot that would be new for everyone.
The clearing was tiny, maybe twenty feet across, nearly a perfect circle framed by seven oak trees. When she’d found it, her first thought was that it was a sacred place.
“You think someone planted the trees like that?” Kevin asked.
She sat at the foot of the nearest oak. “It looks pretty natural.”
Thick roots protruded from the earth, keeping her off the damp ground. “I’m guessing there’s rock under the topsoil. Maybe even one giant rock. The trees couldn’t grow on top it, so they grew around it.” She leaned back against the trunk.
The others followed her example, some folding their legs, others stretching and opening them, Cole crossing his ankles.
Annie hadn’t planned it, but there were six of them and seven oaks. One solitary tree was left without a human, almost as if waiting for Trevor. Maybe his spirit was here and they just couldn’t see his body.
“Why did he do it?” Brett asked, and everyone turned to Annie for the answer.
Probably none of them would think about much else. Her heart ached for the pain on the faces around her. The wound of Trevor’s loss was too fresh, too jagged, still bleeding.
Annie told them the truth. “I don’t know. I wish he had asked for help.”
“Maybe for a second he didn’t see the way out,” Kevin said. “But you don’t make a decision based on your worst moment. You ride out the worst. Then you work on making the next day better.”
Annie offered Kevin a watery smile for having listened during their previous sessions. He’d clearly internalized what they’d talked about. Trevor’s death filled her with despair, but Kevin’s remark made her feel as if, in some small way, shewasmaking a difference.
Brett bumped his fist against his solar plexus as he looked at Annie. “It hurts in there. You got an exercise for that?”
Liam groaned. “Don’t get her into therapist mode, man.”
“We can certainly do a meditation,” she said, ignoring the subtle rolling of eyes around the circle. “Since you guys are begging for it.”
That drew some half-hearted protests. Truth was, they liked to resist ecotherapy, but almost as if for form’s sake. They all identified as tough, unbreakable warriors. Needing medical help—surgery or PT—was one thing. But the men felt they shouldn’t need alternative therapies, especially therapies that worked on thoughts and feelings. Some believed needing that kind of support meant they were weak.
“It takes a strong man to ask for help,” Cole offered. “The weak can’t. All they have is ego. They have to play it tough. The real tough guys, they don’t have to play anything.”
That pretty much ended any resistance. If the SEAL was on board, everybody was on board.
“So just lean against the tree behind you,” Annie began, shooting Cole a look of appreciation when he looked at her at last. “You can close your eyes or not, as you wish,” she said for the others. “Draw a deep, cleansing breath through your nose. Hold it. Let it out through your mouth.”
She made a point to relax her own shoulders. The kind of energy she projected would make a difference. She waited until everyone got in a couple of nice, calming breaths. “Good. Now let’s do that again.”
They breathed silently for a minute.
Cole was watching her mouth. Since he’d kissed her, she’d been more aware of that gaze than ever before.
“Obviously,” she said, “we all have feelings and thoughts about what happened this morning. I am sure we all have things we wish we could tell Trev.”
Several of the men murmured their agreement; others nodded.
“Let’s do that.”
A couple of the guys stiffened. In general, they didn’t like talking about their feelings in a one-on-one setting, let alone in a group situation. Most of her group therapy consisted of simply working or walking out in nature together. Her main goal was to make her patients feel better. She tried to do whatever it took to achieve that.
“Let’s all silently talk to Trev for a couple of minutes. Visualize the words you’d like to say as swirling lines of letters, flowing around inside your chest. The words flow, not out of your mouth, but out your back and into the tree behind you. They travel up the tree trunk, into the branches, into the leaves. From the tips of the leaves they will rise invisibly, like the breath of the tree, up and up, all the way to Trev.”
