thinking anything,” she said. It was the truth. “I was gone, out of my mind in shock. I barely remember how things happened.”
“Have you forgiven yourself, Lara?”
“No,” she said truthfully.
Something changed on his face. He bent forward into his palms. When he looked up again, the hard mask had dropped, and it was Hank again.
He sat up straighter, looked around the room as if confused. When his eyes fell on her, he got up from his seat and moved toward her, outstretched his hand.
“Hey,” he said, clearly unsure of what was happening. “When did you get here?”
She moved back from him, closer to the door, the strangeness of the moment expanded. What was happening? What had just happened?
“What’s wrong?” He reached for her. “Hey—are you crying?”
“Is this a joke?” she said.
He seemed afraid suddenly, seemed to realize he wasn’t wearing a shirt. He grabbed one that was hanging over the couch, shifted it on. He went to the refrigerator and grabbed two beers, popped the tops and slid one across the counter to her. She stayed where she was, watching him.
“I—uh,” he said, looking down at the floor. “I don’t seem to be able to orient myself. When did you get here?”
He looked at the clock. “Is that the time?”
She wanted to leave, but she stayed. She sat at one of the counter stools, took a deep drink of the beer he’d offered.
“You called,” she said, wobbly inside. “I came.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Awhile.”
“What did we talk about?”
“Kreskey,” she said. “About what happened to us—to you.”
He rubbed at the crown of his head. “Why do you look so—scared?”
She didn’t know what to say. He was Hank again. The man she’d been with earlier; he was someone else—voice, body language, energy. Utterly other.
“You were someone else,” she said. “Someone with so much anger toward me.”
He shook his head. “No.”
He paced back and forth a couple of times.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” she asked.
“I got a call from Detective Harper,” he said. “Do you remember him?”
She nodded, the detective who’d coaxed the memories from her, the one who saved Hank.
“He told me that Kreskey was going to be released.”
“And then what?”
He sank into the couch. “It’s a blank. I don’t even remember how the call ended.”
“Has this happened to you before?”
He just sat, didn’t answer. She grabbed her coat from the chair.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry I ran and hid. I’m sorry I wasn’t more or better or stronger that day. I’m sorry for everything he did to you and to Tess. I’ve carried it with me. If I could go back and change a hundred things about that day, I would.”
“Lara.” Notes of sadness, regret.
“Instead I have no choice but to accept that I survived and that she didn’t. That Kreskey, a deranged man, did horrible things to you that have damaged you. But I was a frightened kid. I was badly hurt. I wish everything about that day had been different. But the one thing I can’t do is go back and change the past. I have moved on. You should, too.”
He turned, his face ashen, so sad. “Don’t leave,” he said. “Of course I don’t blame you. Please.”
But the words he’d spoken, the things he said—they were a poison. Every time she looked at him, she would hear them. She’d know that in some nether region, beneath his affection, he hated her. She’d seen the hatred burning in his eyes, etched into the lines of his face. He blamed her. She couldn’t look at him again.
“Goodbye, Hank.”
She left, letting the door close behind her, and ran down the stairs.
“Part of him is still back there,” she told Gillian now. “He’s still trying to understand what happened to us.”
“Part of him?”
“There are two of him,” she said. “The doctor, the writer, the commentator—he’s well and whole. He helps people through trauma, has used his experience to do good.”
“Okay.” Gillian wore a concerned frown.
“But there’s a part of him that’s still filled with rage—at Kreskey, at me.”
“When you say a part of him, you mean—”
“There are two Hanks.”
“You’re scaring me,” said Gillian. “Like he’s dissociated? Split?”
“In a sense, maybe,” she admitted. “It’s that Hank, I think, mostly—or sometimes, I don’t know really—who writes to me.”
She started flipping through the letters. “Why?” Gillian asked after a bit. “Why do you keep these? Why do you read them?”
Rain picked one up, stared at the crisp, buttery pages filled with his beautiful handwriting.
“Because he’s lonely,” she said. “Because he’s the only