Page 70 of Deadly Attraction
“Skye.” She twisted another knob as she stared through the viewfinder. “There she is.”
Notthesky. Emma wasn’t talking about seeing the swath of heavens stretching out over the hills and valleys here.
Skye. Her daughter.
This woman had lost so much—her child, her husband, her marriage. The potential to have more children. Yet, she had found a way to help other lost souls.
Mitch’s hands tightened on her waist. “You named a star after her?”
“The constellation already has a name—Blue Snowball Nebula, but I don’t care.” Emma shifted her head aside so he could look into the lens. “See the brightest star in this field? That’s her.”
Her face was an open book, as Bobby Dyer liked to say. Mitch saw an innocence there—a young girl who wished on stars—and behind it a layer of steel grit, forged from great loss.
He lowered his eye to the eyepiece and saw the star she was talking about. “I’ll be damn. It does have a slightly bluish disc around it.”
“That’s the central star. It’s a dwarf and it’s super hot. Hence the color.”
“That’s amazing.” And it was. Almost as amazing as the woman showing it to him. Turning his face to look at her, he saw the relief in her eyes. “You’re quite the little astronomy buff.”
She grinned. “Not really. I’ve studied Andromeda a bit, and good ol’ Blue here, but the sky is vast. There’s a lot more to explore.”
Mitch had the feeling he had a lot more to explore as well. “Looking at the sky is peaceful.”
“It is, isn’t it? I wish I could give sky therapy to all of my patients. I think it would give them some perspective about their lives.”
“Sky therapy? Is that a thing?”
“Not that I’m aware of, but it should be. Nature, in all its forms, has the ability to heal.”
“Maybe you should invent this sky therapy stuff.”
Her head dipped so she could look in the eyepiece again. “Maybe I should.”
He hugged her from behind again and they lingered in front of the window, taking turns with the telescope. Emma would move the lens a fraction of an inch and then make him look at some random star. He didn’t care about the actual constellations so much as her eagerness to share this private love of hers.
No one knows that. Her name, I mean. You’re the first person I’ve ever told.
Why him? Was it this night? Was it the fact he was only the second man she’d ever slept with and that alone perpetuated an unusual intimacy?
Either way, he felt honored and just a little righteous about it.
“You haven’t told me about your parents,” he mused. “Or your siblings. Do you have any?”
“Parents or siblings?” she joked.
He nuzzled her neck. “Smartass.”
“My parents live in Boston. They’re both professors who met and married late in life. I came along a few years later. I’m an only child and my parents were nearly old enough to be my grandparents. They’re both retired now. Dad lives in the basement, reading biographies and history texts. Mother travels constantly with friends. I see them on occasion, but… Well, we aren’t a dysfunctional family by today’s standards, just a distant one.”
“No wonder you’re so damn smart, being raised by a couple of college professors. What in God’s name made you decide on psychology? Was one of your parents a psych professor?”
“Literature and economics, I’m afraid. For me, it was always psychology. I find the brain fascinating, and there are people who are truly, clinically, out of their mind when they commit a crime. There are also those who are not fit to stand trial for a crime they committed. They are rare, but it does happen. Allowing people like Chris Goodsman to dissimulate and mislead a judge, jury, and trained therapists—supposed experts in this field—to get acquitted of, or to receive a lighter sentence for, committing murder is an injustice.”
“You like to see justice served.”
She turned in his arms to face him. “Don’t you?”
Of course he did. “That’s why I do what I do.”
“From a macro viewpoint, my job isn’t all that different from yours. You analyze terrorists. I analyze criminals.”
When she put it that way… “At the end of the day, we both want justice for the innocent.”
She went up on her toes and kissed the tip of his nose. “Thank you for what you do to keep our country safe.”
Jesus. He didn’t remember ever being thanked by anyone. “Back atcha, Doc.”
He wanted to ask her why she’d switched from adult criminals to kids, but deep in his gut, he knew the answer. She was a mother with no child trying to help children living without their mothers.
Taking her hand, Mitch led her out of the attic and tucked her into bed, climbing in beside her and holding her until she fell asleep in his arms.
