Page 57 of Manacled Hearts

Or am I just stalling?

She straightens her head, and her eyes soften.

“It is. I believe in my patient’s privacy.”

“It’s quite extreme, don’t you think? Are we expecting people on the other side of this wall to press their drinking glasses against it to hear the confessions of depressed housewives and men who fantasize about their mommies?”

Her gaze narrows on me once more, only, this time it doesn’t shift back. Either she’s finally losing her patience with me, or my words gave her new and brighter ideas for the next lines of questioning.

“Wait. You are,” I continue, slightly shocked. “This is not just for privacy, is it?”

She draws in a deep breath and relaxes back into her thickly padded, high-back armchair.

“It is, Evelyn. For protection as well.”

“Victims…”

“And criminals,” she adds. “I take private patients, referrals from hospitals, and also from the police. I work as a forensic psychologist too, which means that I took precautions to keep these conversations as private as possible, before court appearances.”

She’s honest. Interesting.

“What most surprises me is that people actually end up in court in this city.”

She leans forward in the dark brown armchair. “What do you mean?”

She places the tip of her shiny black pen against the paper notebook she holds on to the armrest, ready to add to what is probably her conclusion of me. It’s distracting, and it takes me a few seconds longer than necessary to answer.

“Look around you; crime is everywhere. Walking on the same streets, eating in the same restaurants, waiting in the same lines as everyone else before they return to their underworld.” I scoff. “Underworld… Like it’s not all out in the open. Yet, no one seems to care around here.”

“Is this underworld the reason why you are here?” the Dr. asks.

Nothing makes me angrier than the answer to this question. It’s a battle between good and evil—not just in my brain, but my morals too. My heart screams at me every day to deal with it, but the rest of me can’t obey. Not when the flashbacks come… when the ghosts of my scars remind me that they’re still there even if they no longer mark the skin of my forearms, and the ridiculous need to poison my veins flares up.

“Yes,” I answer, but even I don’t miss the slight tremble in my voice.

“Yes?”

“Umm… no.” I look down to my tightly clenched hands, then back up at her, hating how little self-control I have over my feelings and body language.

“No. Okay.” She cocks her eyebrow, and I itch to push it back down with the tip of my finger.

“Look, it’s complicated.”

“How?” the Dr. asks.

My gaze fixes on hers and she holds it. Doesn’t blink, doesn’t move. I’m not even sure she’s breathing. She’s like a soft, dark-skinned statue, glowing in the sunlight streaming through the window.

“Why is it complicated, Evelyn? Were they the ones who hurt you?”

I sigh and turn my attention to the view, the thick, sharp leaves of an old palm tree just about touching the glass with every breeze. Every time it gets real close and I think it’s going to make contact, I open my mouth to answer her question. But it never does, so I don’t either.

“It’s funny, isn’t it? How this concept gets ingrained in us as children—good and evil—like it could ever be so black and white. Like good doesn’t depend on evil for the universe to consider it good, and evil doesn’t depend on it to become despicable. In reality, there’s no such thing.” I turn back to her. “Is it, Dr. Moss?”

“It is one way of looking at it all,” she answers, seemingly accepting the slight change in the subject.

“It’s all gray. We’re all morally corrupt in some way. Most of us are willing to do the unimaginable for the ones we love, but the ones more inclined are willing to do it just because. Evil isn’t just evil.” A soft thud pulls my attention to the window—the palm leaf. It’s time to answer the previous question then. “Evil has many shades, and I was both hurt and saved by it.”

“Which one makes you angrier?” she asks. “The evil who hurt you, or the one who saved you?”

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