Author's notes: Thanks to all whose reading this story and especially those who take the time to let me know your thoughts and feelings. It's a pleasure to get to know what people are thinking about it. I hope you like this chapter as Jane starts to address head on his problems.
There's no reply to Teresa's knock, she puts her ear to the door, listening hard for any sound but there's nothing. She knocks again but still no response. She turns to walk away, but has a feeling in the pit of her stomach that she can't ignore and knows that if she goes back to her room she won't be able to sleep. She returns to the door and knocks again.
"Patrick."
She listens but there's no response. She carefully turns the knob, she wants to take a look just to satisfy herself so she can get some rest. The door opens noiselessly, she can now hear a slight noise and as her eyes adjust she can make out the camp bed that Patrick set up. She rushes over to it as her brain computes the noise, Patrick's body's shaking, she kneels down beside him and puts her hand gently on top of the cover while looking at his face, he isn't asleep, his eyes are closed but there's no looseness in his features that comes with sleep.
"Patrick, it's me, Teresa. Are you all right? You're shaking so hard, are you ill?"
She moves her hand to his brow, it's feels clammy but not hot.
"Patrick, what's wrong? I know you're not asleep, open your eyes."
Patrick's eyes open and a tear falls on to his cheek, he seems disoriented. Teresa's stroking her hand over his forehead.
"It's me Teresa, do you feel sick? You're shaking."
Awareness comes to Patrick and he sits up, dragging the cover with him. His attention's drawn to his hands and he sees they're trembling.
"I'm fine...I'm fine it was a just a nightmare."
Teresa crouches in front of him.
"No it wasn't, you weren't asleep."
Patrick looks at her, a trace of fear crosses his face but then a decision.
"I get them when I'm awake too."
Patrick studies her face looking for her reaction, does she think he's crazy?
"Sometimes...sometimes...I have images in my head...images of that night...they come sometimes..."
Teresa's eyes move to the smiley face on the wall behind him. She takes his arm.
"Come, let's go in to my room. You don't need this."
He stands up obediently and she puts his pillow under her arm and leads him out the room. As they enter her bedroom he shakes off her hold.
"I'll just go wash my face."
Teresa nods.
"Sure."
She hears him moving about and the sound of running water as she lays her pillow against the wall and sits against it. She puts Patrick's pillow next to her. When he emerges from the bathroom, she pats the spot beside her.
"Come sit, let's talk."
He doesn't look much better, he face is drawn and his eyes are red, set in deep purple holes, he looks like he's come back hell.
"You need to get some rest Teresa."
"Well that's not going to happen while I'm worrying about my friend. It's not like we have to be up at a certain time in the morning we can sleep as long as we like."
He wearily sits down on the mattress next to her and adjusts his pillow behind him. She gently touches his hand, he looks at her, she speaks softly.
"Can you tell me about it?"
Patrick looks down at his hands, there's only a slight tremor now. He's takes a deep breath and starts to talk. Never taking his eyes away from his hands he tells her about his recollections of that night and how every so often the images come back so real, it's almost like he's reliving it all over again. Teresa listens with growing horror and concern. She realises that she's never truly understood the pain and torment that's plagued his life since the murder of his family.
"Perhaps we shouldn't have come here Patrick, you're obviously not ready."
"Yes, yes, I'm ready, I'm rid of my real demon I want get rid of my imaginary ones as well. I feel I can only do that here. This is where they started, so this is where they will finish."
He finally looks at her.
"I shouldn't have brought you here. This is unfair on you."
"I'm glad you did. This isn't something you can deal with alone, or should deal with alone."
He gives her a quick smile.
"I'm glad you're here."
She covers his hand with hers.
"This is a beautiful house, tell me about it, what made you choose this one?"
"That's easy, the ocean. Angela loved the ocean as much as I did."
He shakes his head and smiles wistfully at the memory.
"The realtor knew exactly what she was doing. She led us straight to the deck overlooking the ocean and we were hooked. It didn't matter to either of us what the rest of the house looked like."
He shrugs his shoulders.
"We had a look around because we had a deal to make and didn't want the realtor to know she had us in the palm of her hands. Luckily as a mentalist, just one look at Angela told me all I needed to know so the rest of the tour we pointed out faults, real and imagined to get the price down, but if they'd stuck to their guns I would have paid the full asking price. As it was we got a pretty good deal."
"I wouldn't expect anything less."
"The day before we moved in Angela told me she was pregnant..."
Lisbon looks at him in surprise.
"She told you. You hadn't already figured it out?"
Patrick smiles and Teresa can feel him relaxing.
She had really bad flu which clouded the reading. She was very sick. I carried her over the threshold and laid her on the couch and she instructed the proceedings from there. She was disappointed but she couldn't move very far without throwing up, luckily it didn't last long and in two weeks she was able to put her mark on it. Then Charlotte was born and it was the perfect place to bring up a child. We spent many hours down on the beach. Charlotte loved the sea and I taught her to swim."
Jane's face and voice is full of pride.
"I say teach her, but it was like she was a fish, I just put her in the water and it she seemed to know what to do naturally. My job was to keep her close to shore."
"It sounds like there was a lot of happiness here."
"Yes, we were very happy.."
Teresa sees his face change, his self-hatred coming off him in waves. She touches his arm.
"Patrick you can never get away from what happened here and I know that I can never convince you that you weren't to blame. But think about Angela and Charlotte, what they would want you to do. You caught him, you did what you promised you would do, what will they want you to do now?"
"I know they want me to move on but I don't know how, or if I can."
