The quaver in your voice cut me. I could see how much he’d hurt and frightened you. How much I had. Because I can’t divorce myself from him. I want to, but I can’t. I understand too much about the mind to give the healthy self a free pass. He and I, we’re not integrated. But we’re not totally apart either. Still I had to wonder: What messages? What did I say to you? Honestly, I was too ashamed to ask.
But you must have read it in my face. You were always good at that, tuning in, reading expressions. You always seemed to know what I was thinking.
“You don’t remember, do you? You don’t even know what I’m talking about.”
Again, I just opted for silence.
You leaned in close. When you spoke, your voice was just a whisper.
“What’s wrong with you, Hank?”
And I told you. I’d never told anyone, not even my parents. Only my psychiatrist at the time was beginning to suspect. I was taking medication back then, Ativan for anxiety, Zoloft for depression. I had determined that it was high emotion, anger, stress that caused me to switch over. Like that night; it was the call from Detective Harper that had unstitched me.
“You need help, Hank,” you said. “Serious help.”
This annoyed me; I thought you’d have more sympathy.
“Is that your boyfriend out there?” I nodded to the window.
You nodded. “Yes.”
“Does he know about us?”
You took a sip of your coffee. “He does, yes. I told him—everything. I don’t know if he’ll forgive me.”
“He’s here, isn’t he?” I didn’t like the sharp edge to my tone. You backed away from me, actually shifted your chair. It’s healthy, you know. The healthy person protects herself from dangerous men.
“We’re friends before anything else. He cares about me.”
“We’re friends, too. Aren’t we?”
“We were, Hank,” you said sadly. I saw you almost reach for my hand, then hold back. How I ached to touch you. “We were best friends. But a horrible thing happened to us, and I’m afraid that’s one of the many things Kreskey has taken from us.”
He was practically roaring inside. I focused on my breathing, took a sip of my chamomile tea. I try to avoid caffeine or any kind of stimulant. It’s all downers for me.
I took the crystal heart from my pocket and put it on the table between us. It glittered and shone in the light, just like it had in the store when I first bought it. I remembered thinking, this is it. I’ll give this to her. And she’ll know how much I love her.
“Do you remember this?”
“Hank.”
“I gave it to you for your tenth birthday.”
You picked it up and looked at it, held it up to the light so that it cast flecks of bloodred on the white tablecloth. Then you put it back on the surface.
“That was a long time ago.”
“Not for me.”
You wiped at your eyes, your lashes glistening with tears.
“Have you thought about just trying to move forward? I know. I know, Hank. I didn’t experience the horror that you did. But when you try to stop looking back, to build a solid bridge of love, accomplishments, form new, happier memories, I believe it’s possible to live a life, a good one. Even after extreme trauma.”
Unless it damages your brain. Which I honestly believe is what happened to me. Not just trauma but head injury, as well. (Did you know, Lara, that there’s a strong link between traumatic brain injury and psychosis? You can read my article about it in the New England Journal of Medicine.) Of course, they won’t know that for sure until after I’m dead. Then they can dissect my brain and see what’s really wrong with it.
“He’s out,” I said.
You looked at me and shook your head, stayed silent. But I saw it on your face, the fear, the anger. You had told me all about the letters Kreskey sent you, the ones your family received from Kreskey’s fan club. You had confided in our close moments how you felt like Kreskey still had a part of you—in his dreams, in his mind. Later, I’d discover the pictures he drew of you on that website that sold the effects of murders on the dark web. I knew how much pain you were still in. How you hated him.
“I can’t live with that,” I said. “That he’s out. Walking around free. Can you?”
I thought you’d get up and leave. Instead you took a sip of your