Page 57 of The Stranger in the Mirror

My dearest Julian,

Please forgive me, but I can no longer live in this tortured state. I’ve tried everything to get better, but nothing helps. For a long time I was able to hide it. But now, the voices won’t be silenced. They come to me almost constantly. They are relentless and they urge me to do bad things. All night they shout at me to kill my child, that she is evil and must be removed from the world. I can’t endure it any longer. While I still retain a tenuous and fleeting hold onreality, I must do the only thing that will keep you and Valentina safe. Please tell her that I love her with all my heart and that all I do is for her. One day she will understand.

Your loving wife,

Cassandra

Then he takes the letter from me and scans it. “Very good,” he says, and takes a brown vial from his jacket pocket, placing it on the desk next to me. “I promise this will be painless.” Taking the empty glass from my night table, he fills it with water from the bathroom tap and then places it on the desk next to the vial. I look from the pills to Julian and back at the bottle again.

“Take them, my darling, and afterward you can lie down in bed. There will be no voices, no more nightmares.” He smiles at me and picks up the bottle. “Open your hand, my sweet.”

I hold my hand out, and he pours the pills into my palm. Placing one on my tongue, I wash it down with a sip of water.

Part III

4 Years Earlier

− 51 −

Julian

Cassandra is dead, but I’ve found a way to replace her. My new patient, Amelia, will take her place, like a gift sent from the heavens to make everything all right again. I’ll make her believe that she is Cassandra. It’s no coincidence that she has green eyes like my mother, and like Valentina. She can easily pass for Valentina’s mother. I’m adept at using hypnosis with many of my psychiatric patients, and proficient in memory reconstruction, thanks to the work of my father. I refer all my other patients to colleagues, telling them that my wife has had a breakdown and requires my full-time attention. I’m already seeing a heavily medicated Amelia five times a week. She’s completely withdrawn from anyone she knows; she’s quit her job working at the museum and is living on her recent inheritance. She has been existing for our sessions; our work is the only thing tying her to reality. Even taking photographs has ceased giving her any pleasure. So when I suggest that she come and stay with me so that we can work more intensely together, it is an easy sell.

As much as I’m loath to part with her, I send Valentina to stay with my father. It’s amazing to me, but he’s proved himself to be a good grandfather since Valentina’s birth. When I was growing up, he was too busy building his career and making a name for himself to play games or spend time with Mother and me at home. If he wasn’t with patients, he was holed up in his lab doing research or in his office poring over patient files. Parkinson’s slowed himdown, though, and made him realize he’s not immortal and that he needed to retire. He’s managing the disease remarkably well, and spends his summers in New Hampshire, where he’s eager to have Valentina visit so he can teach her how to fish and play cards.

I drive to Amelia’s apartment building and text her, then wait for her outside. I don’t want anyone to see me. Within minutes, she’s downstairs, wearing tattered jeans and an old sweatshirt and carrying two suitcases, which she throws in the back seat.

“How are you doing today?” I ask as I pull away from the curb. I notice her hair is unwashed, her face devoid of makeup.

She shrugs. “Nightmares again. Even the sleeping pills didn’t help.”

“It’s going to get better now that we’ll be able to spend more time on your therapy. I’m going to take those horrible memories away for you.”

She stares straight ahead. “Can you bring my sister back? Or my mother? Please, I don’t want the memories, the special times with them, erased.”

I don’t answer. We’ve been around and around this topic before. She’s afraid she can’t erase the memory of the tragedy they suffered without losing her memory of them entirely. But though I’ve respected her wish so far, thinking of them does nothing but bring her pain. If she’s to become Cassandra, she will have to believe that her family died when she was twelve, as Cassandra’s did. I won’t burden her by adding false memories of foster care, but will re-create a past for her with a few good images of a nice early childhood, followed by a tragic accident that took her parents. The bulk of her memories I’ll build for her, through stories I tell her, and the photographs I show will consist of our dating, our wedding, and our child.

I’d like to have her believe that she carried and gave birthto Valentina, but in case she ever finds out that she’s never been pregnant, I’ll tell her we used a surrogate. If it ever comes into question, we can always blame the “doctor” who saw her, and who will turn out to be conveniently dead. I’ve had to work out every contingency; Valentina’s happiness depends on my making this work. And this is why I’m doing it, all of it. It’s for my beloved Valentina. But there’s a silver lining. I’m giving Amelia a gift. This is going to save her, too. She’ll have a new life, devoid of trauma and heartbreak.

We pull down the gravel road leading to the house. Amelia looks around. “It’s so secluded here.”

“I like my privacy,” I tell her. I always feel a sense of relief coming home from the hospital. The moment fifteen years ago when I first saw the imposing home surrounded by tall hedges, I knew it was perfect for me. She will come to love it here.

I carry her suitcases for her, and she follows behind wordlessly.

“Are you hungry?” I ask once I’ve put her suitcases in the guest room and settled her in there. She’s too thin, I think. We’ll have to work on this.

She shakes her head. “No.”

“We’ve talked about this, Amelia; you need to keep your strength up.”

“I don’t have an appetite.”

For now I don’t want to push her. The first time I was called in to be the psychiatrist on her team, she’d been enraged about her failure to end her life. The universe had other plans for her, I told her. If the apartment below hers hadn’t flooded, the super of the building would have never found her in time. He’d gone in to check the leak and seen her in a bathtub full of blood, her arms sliced up to her elbows. It was a very serious suicide attempt. Fortunately, he’d been trained in first aid and was able to stanchthe bleeding enough for the paramedics to get her to the hospital alive, where she was put on suicide watch. I saw her every day that first month on the psych unit, and when I was convinced that she was no longer a danger to herself, I signed for her release and she began to see me as an outpatient.

There’s no time to lose, so I steer her into my private office. She looks around and smiles for the first time. “This is nice. Much better than your other office.” I know my hospital office still feels institutional, despite my best efforts to make the space my own, and I hope this new environment will help advance the work we will do.

“I’m glad you like it. Sit wherever you like.”

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