a bonus for referrals, and I was still ignoring my father’s blood money. She apparently asked if I could be rostered on as staff lead because she felt comfortable dealing with me.”
“Did you see Hemi?”
“Sure—and I also saw Tia get shaky about an hour into it. Makes sense if she was recovering from chemo. Pretty tough woman to stick it out that long. She gave me some final instructions before they left to go home early.”
I stilled. “You’re sure?”
“Yes. I felt bad for her because she’d done so much work for the event.”
So Riki had been lying about his father’s alibi—or he just hadn’t noticed the actual time they returned home. That night had never been as important to him as it was to me; he couldn’t be expected to recall all the details. But would my mother have allowed Hemi into her car in the short time between leaving the house and driving off? And would he have left Tia if she’d been feeling unwell?
The man had cheated on her while she was battling cancer.
Yes, he was fully capable of leaving her to go to my mother.
A throbbing in my left temple. Shit. “I better head home.”
Lily didn’t stop me, but she did touch my arm again at the door and say, “Come by again.” Her fingers were warm. “It’s nice being with someone who knows they’re equally screwed up.”
The pounding had increased in ferocity by the time I got to my car. I wasn’t supposed to take the migraine medication if I was planning to drive, so I gritted my teeth and got going. But when lights began flashing in front of my eyes, I knew there was no way I was going to make it home.
Pulling into a small lay-by on the road, the bush falling off into the darkness on one side, I opened the glove box and retrieved the packet of pills I’d thrown in there.
It was empty.
Fuck.
I didn’t remember taking them all, but I must have. Bile coating the back of my tongue, I scrabbled around in there, searching for a pill that might’ve popped out, or for another packet I may have thrown in there and forgotten about.
Nothing.
The lights turned into hammers, the hammers into a vise. And then . . . sweet oblivion.
Transcript
Session #12
“This is the final time I’m going to be coming here.”
“Why?”
“I tell you too fucking much. Things no one else knows. I talk about her, and it all comes out.”
“Have you had better control over your inner rage since the sessions began?”
“Are you saying I can’t handle myself without your pathetic ass?”
“I’m saying don’t give up now, when you’re so close to understanding yourself and the pain you carry within, the wounds that make you hurt.”
“Oh, Christ, save me from this bleeding heart nonsense.”
42
I woke to the smell of antiseptic and that odd mixture of hushed silence and constant murmuring with which I’d become intimately familiar not long ago. The light hurt, but it wasn’t the searing pain of the migraine. After breathing in and out several times, I turned my head—to see Diana seated on the chair beside the bed, her hands thrust into her hair and her elbows braced on her thighs.
“Diana.” It came out a croak.
Her head jerked up to reveal reddened eyes. “Oh my God, Aarav. You’re awake!” Voice trembling, she started to rise. “I have to call the doctors.”
“Wait.” When I began to push myself up into a seated position, she ran around to tuck the pillow behind me. “What happened?” I was no longer in street clothes, was instead wearing a hospital gown. Someone had propped my moon boot on a pillow.
“I was driving Calvin to the hospital to do an emergency surgery—you know his car’s in the shop? No, of course not—”
“Diana.”
She inhaled, held her breath, released. “Sorry. Well, we saw your car parked off the road. We weren’t sure it was yours at first but then I saw that yellow octagonal sticker the rental company has on the back window.” Her words began to fall over one another once again. “The road was empty at that time, so I did a U-turn, and drove up alongside you, while Calvin tried to see inside the driver’s-side window.
“We thought it was probably just a breakdown—but at such a dangerous spot. Then Calvin saw you—you were slumped over the wheel.” She pressed her hand to her heart. “Thank God your door was unlocked. Calvin was able to check your vitals while I was on