“If you don’t take this seriously, I’m going to hand you in to the police. Or the people trying to kill you.”
They are sitting, cross-legged, in a small clearing, in a woodland at the Eternal Glade Wellness Retreat. In front of them Barb is banging a small gong and, from time to time, humming. Night-lights twinkle on the deck.
“Think about what your fears represent,” says Barb. “How your fears might help you. How your fears might control you. Greet them, sit with them, break bread with those fears.”
Amy wonders when Steve might arrive. Soon, she hopes. There is plenty of work to do. They need to go through the printouts from Sheriff Scroggie’s computer. She has been reading them but is yet to find the smoking gun. There is no doubt that Scroggie killed Andrew Fairbanks on the boat. But is there anything in Scroggie’s papers that could lead them directly to François Loubet?
“Rosie,” says Barb, “can you feel the vibrations of the gong?”
“Do you know, I think I can, Barb,” says Rosie. Amy knows it is important for Rosie to enter into the spirit of the thing. Barb is putting them up at the retreat after all.
“Don’t call me Barb,” says Barb, banging the gong once again.
“Sorry, Barb,” says Rosie. “What was it again?”
“Gray Panther,” says Barb.
“Okay,” says Rosie. “Why not Silver Panther? Wouldn’t that be cooler?”
Barb looks at Rosie, the wisdom and serenity departing her face for a brief moment. “I didn’t think of it. No matter. I want you both—”
“You could change it now?” Amy suggests. She’s worried that she’s been a bit quiet, and that Barb might be offended. “We can just call you Silver Panther?”
“I’m afraid you must be known by whichever spirit calls you,” says Barb. “And, besides, it’s on all my business cards, so too late.”
Amy hasn’t yet got to the bottom of how Rosie and Barb know each other. Barb is in her eighties, and looks it, in a comfortable, well-earned way. Surely Rosie isn’t eighty too? Amy sneaks a peek. I mean, possibly? With a lot of work? Was Barb also an author at some point? A rival turned friend? Perhaps an editor?
“I want you to name your fears, Rosie,” Barb continues. “Give them wings and let them fly among us.”
Amy sees Rosie close her eyes.
“I fear mental and physical decline,” says Rosie. “I fear the loss of friends, and loves.”
Barb bangs the gong after each fear.
“I fear being misunderstood,” says Rosie. “Being seen as an inconsequential person, a joke. I fear being forgotten. I fear being remembered for hair and lipstick and leopard print, and sunglasses, and not for what I worked for, and what I am proud of.”
The gong continues. Amy wonders if this is what therapy is like?
“I fear connection,” says Rosie, “and I fear a lack of connection. I fear that perhaps I am not real. That I have been imagined as so many things by so many people that my soul is now in them, and no longer in myself.”
It occurs to Amy that Barb will be asking her the same question in a matter of moments, so she’d better start thinking. What does she fear? Amy feels like she got all her fears out of the way in childhood. If the worst possible things have happened to you already, what can the world do to you?
Rosie is still releasing her many fears into the world.
“I fear that people see the mask and not the face,” continues Rosie. “I fear that I will forget the little girl I once was, many years ago.”
How many years ago, though? thinks Amy.
“I fear being small,” says Rosie. “Being vulnerable, being powerless. I refuse to fear death, but I do fear life.”
Rosie keeps her eyes closed for a few more moments, then breathes in slowly and opens them. Amy sees tears that are refusing to fall.
“Thank you, Rosie,” says Barb. “For your honesty, for your bravery, and for your wisdom.”
Barb turns to Amy, as Amy had known she would.
“Amy,” says Barb, with a light gong bang, “you are welcome here, and you are valued here.”
“Thank you, Gray Panther,” says Amy. Very much not for her, any of this, but needs must.
“Amy, I want you to name your fears,” says Barb. “Give them wings and let them fly among us.”
Amy closes her eyes, as Rosie had done.
“I fear…” starts Amy, wanting to be as truthful as she possibly can.
She dives as deeply as she is able into the blackness of her mind. Into the void she knows is always there, but that she carefully steps around. It’s funny, she and Steve never talk about her childhood. He knows she doesn’t need to, and he knows the importance of resilience. They just chat about nothing instead. He tells her how much he loves her, and how special she is, how they are a family, but they never have to talk about her childhood.
Down and down Amy goes, searching for a fear. Searching for the thing that scares her the most. She finds it.
“I fear,” Amy says, and stops. She takes her time, as she has never acknowledged this before. “Spiders.”
Amy waits a few seconds, breathes out, and opens her eyes. “Thank you, it felt good to admit that. It’s the way they move, I think.”
Barb looks at her for a moment and then, in Amy’s opinion a little sarcastically, bangs the gong.
There is a rustling in the trees ahead of them, and Amy pulls her gun. She nods at Rosie to get behind her.
