Page 45 of Darkest Before Dawn
Ava
Day 68—home
“Stockholm Syndrome,” Dr. Barnes says. “Have you read that book I gave you regarding it yet?”
“I read the first chapter, and it’s not the same.”
She sighs and shakes her head. “Those feelings, I won’t say you didn’t have feelings, but they were distorted. It was a way for your mind to deal with the trauma of being a captive. It was all manipulation on his part.” She leans across her mahogany desk, locking her eyes with mine. “Manipulation.”
I avert my gaze from hers. I hate that word. Max told me that’s what it was, and never have words sliced so close to the bone. Stockholm Syndrome—I guess that is easier for anyone else to believe, because then there’s a reason that something so depraved seemed so right.
“That’s not what it was,” I whisper.
“Okay, read the book, please. I understand this is difficult for you, Ava, really I do, but you have to learn to move past this. I think if you would let the authorities do their job, maybe then you would see him for what he is.” She pauses, waiting for me to respond, but I have nothing to say to her. I just watch the secondhand on the clock tick by, waiting for this hour of bullshit to end.
“Ava…” I glance up at her. She looks empathetically at me, and it makes me hate her. It shouldn’t, but it does.
She can’t have empathy for me, sympathy maybe, butnotfucking empathy.
“Honey,” she says. “You do realize you aren’t helping matters by not giving the police any information, right?”
I glare at her. I hope she can feel the abhorrence radiating from my gaze. “I don’t have anything to tell them. I only know his first name. I know nothing else.”
“But you won’t even tell them his first name.”
“And I’m not tellingyoueither, so give up already, would you?” I push out of the chair and pace in front of the window, stopping to pick a few of the brown leaves from the wilting plant on the windowsill.
“Ava?”
I continue pruning the plant.
“Ava?”
“What?” I groan with frustration.
“I know you think you are protecting him, but he is a criminal, he held you in that room, hemadeyou think you loved him—”
“He didn’tmakeme love him. You wouldn’t understand.”
She sighs. My back is still to her, and I hear her tapping that damn pen of hers over the desk. That’s how I know she’s getting agitated. “I’ve listened to you twice a week for eight weeks. Sixteen sessions, and we are no closer to resolving this than on day one.”
“There is no resolving this.”
“There is, but you have to be willing to try.”
I spin around, my nostrils flaring. I’m angry. My blood is pulsing through my jugular and all I can think about is grabbing her pencil holder and hurling it across the room. And I know it’s not rational—because, suddenly, I feel tears build in my eyes. Just like someone has flipped a switch, I’m coming apart. “I have tried. I have, but you won’t listen to what I’m saying.”
“I do listen—”
“Stop listening with your degree and listen with your heart. I. Loved. Him. I felt it and there is nothing I can do to prove that it exists to you. No matter how wrong you and every-fucking-body else thinks it is, or how crazy I must be to think it, it is true.” I walk across the room toward the door.
“Ava…come back to reality for me.”
“Reality?” I scoff. “Dr. Barnes, reality encompasses everything which exists, even if those things are not comprehensible. Andthisfeeling exists.” I open the door, slamming it closed behind me as I leave her office.
When I get home, mother is sitting at the dining room table, reading glasses on and sifting through mail.
She smiles as I pass through the foyer. “Oh, someone called for you about—” she says.
