Page 89 of When She Dreams

“You’re going to tell me about your close brush with marriage, aren’t you?”

“Only if you want to hear the gory details,” she said.

“I’m not sure I want to hear them, but I need to know what happened to you that left you so gun-shy when it comes to marriage.”

“Nearly two years ago I walked into the office of Dr. Brighton Forrester. He was the first man I had ever met who truly understood me when I explained my dreams and why I wanted to get better control of them. He was—is—a lucid dreamer himself.”

“He dreams the way you do.”

Maggie smiled, but it wasn’t the smile that made him catch his breath. This smile made him want to pound Dr. Brighton Forrester into the ground.

“Yes,” she said. “It was such a relief to be able to talk to someone who didn’t think I was delusional or that I suffered from weak nerves or was prone to hysteria.”

“You fell in love with him?” he asked.

Maggie scrunched up her nose. “I told myself that what I felt was love. I was certainly attracted to Brighton, and he was attracted to me, at least at the beginning. We had so much in common.”

Unlike, say, you and me,Sam thought. He decided he would not dwell on that unwelcome thought, not now.

“Go on,” he said.

“It didn’t hurt that he was handsome, well-educated, and intelligent,” Maggie said. “He was a doctor with a distinguished reputation. My family loved him.”

“What went wrong?”

She winced. “I told you the gossip that circulated after the disaster was not accurate. I didnotleave Brighton standing alone at the altar on the day of the wedding.”

“Noted.”

“Yes, Brighton and I were engaged, and yes, all the arrangements had been made, and yes, I suppose everyone had bought the gifts, and yes, I’d had the final fitting for the dress, but I called off the wedding seventeen whole days before the ceremony—not at the last minute.”

In spite of himself, Sam could not suppress a quick grin. “Sounds like a good idea to me. Keep talking.”

“It was generally assumed I had suffered a severe attack of bridal nerves. The stress of the wedding preparation had induced a fit of hysteria. There was talk of sending me back to Sweet Creek for a rest cure. I decided it was past time I left home. So I did. In the middle of the night. Turns out it’s a lot harder to have someone committed when the adult in question is not living under the same roof as those who believe she ought to be committed, especially if that individual can’t be found.”

“Wow. You went into hiding?”

“For several months,” Maggie said. “That’s how I ended up in Adelina Beach. Everyone assumed I would come home when I ran out of money, but I managed to survive writing for the confession magazines.Finally I landed the job as Lillian’s assistant. Somewhere along the line Brighton got engaged to someone else and my family concluded that if I was strong enough to get by in the world without their help or their money, then maybe my nerves were okay after all.”

“You have nerves of steel, lady. What went wrong at the last minute that made you call off the wedding?”

“Seventeen days before the last minute,” Maggie corrected.

“Right. Seventeen days before the big day.”

“I decided to surprise Brighton by showing up at his office for lunch. When I walked into the reception room, his secretary was away from her desk. There was a file open on the blotter and a sheet of paper in the typewriter. It looked like she was in the process of typing up some of Brighton’s notes.” Maggie paused. “I saw my name.”

“Were you still Forrester’s patient at the time?”

“I had never been his patient.”

“You consulted with him?”

“Yes. I ended the consultations before our first date. After that we became colleagues. At least that was how I viewed the relationship. But the notes in the file were recent and they indicated Brighton thought therewassomething very wrong with me.”

“You read them?”

“They were about me,” Maggie said. “Of course I read them.”

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