GANDALF SIMON

Jess went into the kitchen to brew tea. Gandalf wondered why people always made tea when big feelings were involved. A learned cultural response, she supposed, since she was unaware of evidence that chemical compounds in tea leaves soothe emotional pain. She straightened the piles of newspaper on the end table and sat on the sofa, waiting for the four-minute steep time Jess believed critical for good tea. She thought about Maine islands and the cold room and being interrogated. She remembered escaping and the cave and the hurricane and the terror. All the tea in the world couldn’t ease those memories.

The doorbell rang and Jess, who was facing the window, stood up.

“It’s the police,” Jess said. “Do you want to hang out in your study, and I’ll deal with them?”

Gandalf nodded and hurried into the back room, hoping that Jess wouldn’t forget her tea, still two minutes shy of perfect. She left the door open enough to hear the conversation in the living room but closed it after hearing the same questions the detectives had asked her earlier.

She knew she should stop dwelling on the irrelevant fact that Iris grew up on Storm Harbor, a short boat ride across the Sound from Hurricane Island, but the coincidence felt momentous. The old Gandalf, the person she had been before being kidnapped and interrogated by Homeland Security, would argue with that last thought. She would dismiss it as simple coincidence, of no importance. But the new Gandalf was not so certain. The new Gandalf balanced her emotions on a knife’s edge. Some days all it took was a heavy rain to send her spiraling back to Hurricane Island and terror. She closed the heavy curtains in her study.

Ten minutes later, Jess opened the study door. “They’re gone,” she said. “Your tea is ready.”

The tea was hot, with a splash of milk and a teaspoon of honey, just the way she liked it. She sipped it and set it down on the newspapers on the end table, centering the cup over the face of a politician she only vaguely recognized.

“How did it go with the detectives?” Gandalf asked.

Jess grinned. “Fine, except that they asked whether either of us had ever been part of the Witness Protection Program.”

Gandalf laughed. “I have never understood how that rumor got started, or how it followed us up here from Manhattan. But it’s always good for a laugh.”

“I’ll take any humor that’s offered today.” She took Gandalf’s hand. “Are you okay? What happened to upset you?”

“Thank you,” Gandalf said. “For coming home early.”

“Your message sounded pretty distraught.”

“I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

Jess shook her head. “Explain it to me. What’s the connection to Hurricane Island?”

Safe in her home, with hot tea and her beloved, none of it seemed as frightening. “It is just that Iris, the missing woman, was born on Storm Harbor. Seeing those two words on the policewoman’s flyer triggered something, and I was back there on Hurricane Island, shivering and terrified.”

Jess took her hand. “Sounds as if it could have been a PTSD flashback, like we talked about. I’ve been reading about the good results people are getting with Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. Remember, I mentioned a couple of therapists in town specialize in EMDR?”

Gandalf stood up abruptly, knocking into the table and sloshing tea on the politician’s perfect hair. “I told you I don’t want any therapy, no matter what the initials are. No one has permission to muck around in my head. No one. Okay?”

Jess patted the sofa. “It’s all okay. Come cuddle with me and drink your tea. It’ll calm your nerves.”

It was not okay, but it would have to do.