Page 51 of I Know She Was There

“Instinctively you knew Nelson would tell me, right?”

“I guess so.”

“Remember we talked about this, upon your release from the institute? About how problems are like potholes in your path? As they get bigger, they deepen into ruts. If you don’t solve a problem, merely drag it around with you, you wear down that rut until it becomes a bottomless trench. One you can’t escape from.”

I shook my head. “I don’t recall that conversation. I don’t even remember being institutionalized.” I could admit this because it had happened a long time ago. I’d already served my time for the events far back in the past.

“I believe that’s a pattern you’ve established, Caroline, over many years. We’ve discussed this pattern before. It’s your coping mechanism, and a form of protection. If you block something out, it can’t harm you. How could it? You don’t even recall what happened.”

I thought of the bleeding woman pressed up against the window. My body shuddered. “But what if the bad things that occurred were only in my mind?” My voice quivered.

Tasha placed her fingers on my forearm. “Bad things happen to everyone, Caroline. Horrific things, sometimes.” She paused, pressing her lips together, looking unsure for a second before continuing. “When you take away the bad, you also take away the good. Do you understand?”

I narrowed my eyes. “No, I don’t follow.”

“Emmy is gone now, but she was here. In your life. That was a good thing.”

A sharp pain sliced through my chest, and I couldn’t get air into my lungs. “I don’t want to talk about Emmy,” I gasped with whatever breath I had left.

“I know that, but pretending she’s still with you only deepens your rut.” Tasha sat back, her eyes locked on mine.

“You were complicit,” I said, feeling my eyes sting. I looked away from her. “When you came to the house, and I left you alone while I tended to Emmy...”

“Come now, Caroline, we both know I confronted you. Remember the day I advised you to let the baby cry?”

I looked back at her. “That’s quite different from telling me I’mimaginingmy baby?—”

“Your health-care team—namely Dr. Ellison and I—felt it would be too jarring for you to confront your mental-health issues head-on without us fully knowing the root cause of your disconnect to reality. And in the nearly two years you’d been at the institute we’d been unable to unearth your underlying problems. Hypnosis was the only method we hadn’t tried, and we were hesitant. Hypnotherapy is risky.” Tasha nibbled on her lower lip.

“Risky? How so?”

“We aren’t sure if the memories a subject dredges up under hypnosis are real or imagined.” She rubbed her hands together in front of her, as though warming them. “The patient may be manufacturing new thoughts rather than recalling events that actually occurred.”

A jolt of electricity raced up my spine. I once again pictured the bleeding woman at 21 Pine Hill Road. Had I witnessed her suffering or caused the event in my own mind?

“But we felt we were making progress,” continued Tasha. “We also determined you were at minimal risk for dangerous behavior, based on our observations of you while you were in the psych unit. We thought we could speed up your recovery by continuing therapy through weekly counseling sessions at your home and quarterly reviews of your medications?—”

“But I didn’t play by the rules.” I looked down at my hands, which had formed into tight fists in my lap. “I went back to the life I’d had before everything happened.” I pictured the bleeding woman’s pleading eyes. She had seemed so real, and so desperate. I thought about Jeffrey Trembly, the reporter searching desperately for her. Had I made him up too?

“I was getting worse.”

“It seems that way, yes.”

“Why did I do that? Go back to the way things were before?”

“Wishful thinking,” said Tasha. “I think your mind was rejecting Tim’s leaving. That was the catalyst for the deviation. When you got out of the hospital, you expected everything to go back to normal, but that’s not what happened. After Tim left, your subconscious mind reasoned that if you still had Emmy, there was a chance of getting him back. Of course, that’s just my hypothesis.”

“Does Dr. Ellison agree?”

Tasha tilted her head, thinking for a few beats before answering. “Dr. Ellison hasn’t seen much of you. I’ve kept him in the loop, but without seeing you himself, he hesitated to change medication or make a new diagnosis. We were operating under a status quo until you had your next visit. But you were digressing. Every time I tried to steer our conversations to the root of your troubles—your childhood, specifically your father’s drowning—you’d hear Emmy crying. That was your mind protecting you.”

I looked at her. “So, what do I do now?”

“When you want to leave one room and enter another, you walk through a doorway,” said Tasha, smoothing her thick hair away from her finely chiseled face. “The only way out is to go through it. Like it or not, you are finally going to have to cross that threshold between your present and your past.”

I looked back at my lap, at the white knuckles of my clasped fists. Something told me I wouldn’t survive the events of my past. Not this time. But... that was okay. I had no desire to persevere. My fists unclenched, fingers splayed out gently on my lap.

CHAPTER28

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