Page 1 of Face Her Fear

ONE

The edge of a cliff was a terrible place for an argument. She hadn’t intended the fight to happen here. She hadn’t intended to have a fight at all. Her husband had suggested that the three of them go for a hike. Get outdoors. The weather was warm and inviting. Low humidity. Up here, this high on the mountain, cool breezes caressed the backs of their calves and ruffled their hair. Overhead, birds trilled happy little ballads. Ben had wanted to give the news to her child out here, where it was serene, the beauty of nature all around them. Why not on the summit? he’d said. They’d be alone, uninterrupted by the trappings of daily life. Surely, it would be welcome news. But she had been wrong. They’d both been wrong. Now she stood with her back to a sheer drop. Hundreds of feet. Sweat dotted her upper lip. Her shoulders heaved with indignation as the child she had borne so many years ago sneered at her with disgust and called her a sick, deluded, selfish bitch.

Ben tried to step between them. Both his hands were raised. “Please,” he said. “Stop. Let’s take it down a notch.”

But it was too late. The damage was done. Her anger gained strength like a forest fire. Every glare from her child’s ungrateful eyes were blasts of oxygen feeding it. “How dare you?” she said. “I did everything for you. I gave you everything!”

“You gave yourself everything,” came the response. “You just used me to get it. How can you even sleep at night? Does he know what you did?”

For a moment, the fire raging inside her went silent. The flames still licked at her insides, heating her skin, making her fingers twitch with the desire to hurt someone, but now there was no sound. Ben’s brows knit together in that look he gave her when he didn’t understand something or when he knew she was holding something back from him. He made no attempt to defend her. He only looked at her, confused and expectant, but there were some things he could never know because he would never understand them. A hawk screeched in the distance.

“Tell him,” said her child. “Or I will.”

A primal noise came from deep in her lungs. She sprang forward, pushing as hard as she could, her outstretched hands making contact with her child’s shoulders. But her progeny wasn’t a small thing anymore.

“Don’t you dare touch me!”

Strong hands shoved back, sending her sprawling on her ass.

Ben said, “Stop, please.”

As much as she loved him, he had never been good when it came to physical confrontation.

Small stones bit into the palms of her hands. She staggered upright, fists closed, and swung at her child only to be rewarded with a kick to her stomach. The breath left her lungs. Her feet stumbled backward, slipping on loose gravel among the rocks that made up the edge of the cliff.

Ben cried, “No!”

She fell. Flailing for purchase, one of her hands found a vine. The other searched the dirt and stones for something to grab. Pain streaked through her fingertips as her nails broke off. Her legs dangled, their weight pulling her down into the chasm. She felt muscles in her shoulders pull. Something made a popping noise and her grip on the vine loosened. Adrenaline blunted the pain. Somewhere, the hawk shrieked again.

Ben’s face appeared. His eyes were wide with terror. He must be on his stomach, she thought. He shimmied forward and held both hands out to her. She fumbled to catch one of them with her free hand. Relief ran through her like an electric current when she felt his palm against hers.

She could always count on him. After all this time, she’d finally found someone true, someone pure and kind. Someone who would always come to her rescue.

“Hold on!” His voice was strained.

She let go of the vine and clutched his other hand. He smiled. Then a shadow appeared behind him. In what felt like slow motion, it resolved into a face. Her own child. Gone was the anger and hurt. Now there were only pursed lips and a chin set in steely determination.

“No. No, no, no.” She shook her head vigorously but all it did was loosen Ben’s grip on her.

“Stop moving,” he said. “I’m going to pull you up.”

But it was too late. She saw the sickening realization on his face as he slid inexorably toward her.

He clutched her hand the whole way down.

TWO

SACRED NEW BEGINNINGS RETREAT, SULLIVAN COUNTY

Day 1

“Tell me why you’re here.”

Josie stared at the woman seated across from her. Waning sunlight streamed through the windows, backlighting her as if she were some kind of supernatural figure instead of a psychologist. Then again, the room didn’t exactly scream therapist’s office with its taxidermied deer heads affixed to the walls and a group of pheasants lurking in one corner. It looked like the exact opposite of a place you would expect to find the Sacred New Beginnings Retreat. The name still grated on Josie. “It sounds like a cult,” she had told her husband, Noah, when she signed up for it. He had laughed. She knew he would laugh now if he could see this room.

Dr. Sandrine Morrow, or simply Sandrine, as she preferred to be called, followed Josie’s gaze from the eight-point buck over the door to an atypical thirteen-pointer on the wall across from it. She laughed softly. “I didn’t choose the location well, I’m afraid. This property is typically rented out to hunters. I asked Cooper to remove some of these more…” she looked around at the animals, searching for the right word before settling on, “majestic creatures.”

Cooper Riggs was the caretaker of the property. “I’d say Cooper had his hands full getting this place ready for the six of us for the entire week,” Josie said. “Hauling supplies, filling the generators, chopping wood.”

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