Page 47 of All the Little Raindrops

“Have I told you lately that I—”

“Appreciate me? Yeah, I know. Bye, Evan.”

“Bye, Aria.”

Evan sat back down in his chair, drumming his fingers. Lars and this unknown Hanh, maybe living in this country illegally and maybe returned home, wherever that was. They had been strangers. They hadn’t known each other before waking up in those cages.

But he and Noelle had known each other. And they’d been from the same town. More than that, they’d had a connection. A negative one. That was different. So ... why? Did it add some sort of sick interest? What would two people who hated each other do when asked to take on pain so the other didn’t have to?

He drummed some more.

It was an interesting question. If only it’d been rhetorical.

One of those dreamed-up moral dilemmas asked in a board game where the answer didn’t really matter because it was all for fun.

No, they’d lived it. They’d arrived at the answer.

Just like Lars and Hanh. Unwilling to throw the other under the bus. Or hacksaw, as it were. He shook off the creepy-crawlies that fell onto the back of his neck.

Lars, a Vietnam vet who had already decided he’d seen too much carnage before he even arrived there. And Hanh, a stranger in a strange land, seeing Lars as the first person who stood up for him. Who saw him not as an illegal alien but as a human being. Of course that was speculation, but it seemed to make some sense, if there was any sense to be made from what they’d all experienced. Or rather, how they’d reacted to the experience.

He sat back, gripping his head. He didn’t know where to go from here. So back to square one. Except now he was certain that what had been done to him and Noelle had been done to others.

He sighed.Noelle.

He tried not to think about Noelle too often, because thoughts of her totally threw him off. Still.

All those years ago, they’d said goodbye to each other and gone their separate ways because their feelings were too convoluted. It was like they’d both survived a shipwreck and were floating on a dark sea, each clutching to their own small piece of wreckage, barely hanging on. To come together, to try to survive on a tiny, insufficient piece of flotation would mean that they’d both drown.

Intuitively they’d known it, even if he hadn’t had the words to describe what they were psychologically experiencing at the time.

All he’d known was that he both wanted to run away from her and the feelings she stirred up in him, and simultaneously couldn’t bear the thought of letting her go.

Noelle had been asked to sacrifice his fingers and his teeth and various other body parts, and she’d refused each time. Ironic how much he felt like he’d lost a limb when he’d woken in an empty bed that day so long ago.

And truth be told, for many years after.

Even now. Sometimes.

Like right that minute. He missed her. Jesus. He did.

They hadn’t even kept in touch. Because at the time, he didn’t think that would have worked. It had to be a clean cut, no matter how much it hurt.

Had Noelle regretted it sometimes, or had she known they’d done the right thing? He wondered if she wished so much time hadn’t passed, to where now it was almost impossible to just reach out, make contact.

But in that room that day, he thought they’d done the right thing, despite the regret he sometimes felt. After all, who was going to be the one to suggest that the other person not move on from something like what they’d experienced? Who was going to ask the other to stay stuck?

To drown.

Evan blew out a breath. It’d been a long time since he’d sat and just thought about all things Noelle. It still hurt. He hadn’t even talked about Noelle with the therapist he’d begun seeing right after he’d come home, a retired forensic psychologist recommended by the Reno PD, who did consulting work as a profiler for them and taught classes at the university as well. Even though he’d been technically retired as a psychologist when Evan had first escaped from that abandoned building, he acted as an on-call therapist for the cops when needed and had agreed to see Evan. He’d been told by the cops who’d worked his case that Professor Vitucci was the best, and they hadn’t been wrong. He’d helped Evan immensely. But there had been some things Evan couldn’t talk about, even to him. Of all the sufferings, his complicated feelings for Noelle were almost the worst. And the one that hadn’t ended when they’d gotten free. In some ways, it’d only become more painful.

There, in that dungeon, they’d been together. And as God as his witness, sometimes he yearned for the closeness they’d experienced in those cages. The bond they’d forged.

How sick was that? How twisted? Some inverse form of Stockholm syndrome he couldn’t even begin to explain or justify.

But speaking of Professor Vitucci—psychologist, profiler, and all-around man of wisdom—it’d been a long time since he’d spoken to him.

And he could use his insight.

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