Page 6 of The Therapist

A simple point. It was easy to watch you. Easy to experience your life alongside you before we ever spoke.

I already knew you when we met.

My hands tremble, causing the pages to rustle. Tears brim in my eyes, making the last line blurry. If I read more, I don’t know if I will survive—emotionally.

I could be okay with just the memories that I have.

Could. Such a devious word.

Could is easy.

Could is not action.

Could is no better than a what-if, at best.

But secrets are no better than lies. They can be innocent and sometimes even helpful. Or, they can be insidious and destructive. More often than not, they are the latter.

And the pages I hold may be full of secrets that destroy or validate, but I can’t know which.

One hand balls into a fist.

Self-preservation wins out. I crumple the thick stack of pages and toss them in the wastebasket near the closet door.

Triumphant, I switch the light off and force my eyes closed.

Two

Past

For years, on trips from home to the city for various social engagements, I’ve been able to pass Exit Forty-two without anxiety. Hold my breath as it blurs past, leaving it safely behind me. The exit to my alma mater.

Not this time.

College should have been the best four years of my life. I’d waited, patiently, through high school, begging my parents to let me go out of state. I needed to get away from home. I needed to start fresh somewhere I wasn’t surrounded by the judging eyes of people I’d known my whole life. People who’d deemed me a variety of lackluster adjectives by the time I’d reached ninth grade.

I wanted to be adventurous, fun, academic, and I couldn’t do that at a state school alongside the same kids who’d shared a classroom with me since first grade. I’d forever be dubbed the nerd. So I’d applied to one out-of-state school. Waiting for that acceptance letter had been torture, but after months of praying every night that I would get in, that my parents would letme attend, that financial aid would come through, the package arrived. And it was as if a genie had granted a wish for me.

My college roommate, Amelia, was my best friend. Easy going, free-spirited, gorgeous, and everything that I wasn’t. I could barely buy into the fact that she wanted to be my friend. Even though she was a year younger than I was, she seemed so much more grand than I could ever hope to be. Fate threw us together freshman year, but sophomore year, we chose each other.

She went missing four months after classes started that year.

I saw her seven months after she went missing. I was so elated and shocked to see her, I almost didn’t notice her swollen belly. She stood outside the men’s room at an interstate gas station looking the happiest I’d ever seen her.

She practically glowed.

When she saw me, all the joy drained from her face, weariness replacing it. It stung. I’d thought we were friends. I’d been an anxiety-riddled mess for months. I’d grieved her. Helped her parents put up flyers. Stood on corners waving her picture at anyone who would look.Have you seen her?I’d talked to the police. I’d done everything I thought I could at the time.

But at that gas station, she begged me to not tell anyone. To let her stay. That she wasn’t kidnapped but with her boyfriend and happy. She protectively cradled her belly as the pleas flew from her mouth. As if I were the danger to her.

“Please Robin, for the baby. My parents will never understand.”

Her eyes darted between me and the bathroom door. I wanted to stay, to meet this boyfriend I didn’t know…had never known. I wanted to let her know there was an investigation. To tell her that her parents were distraught. She begged me to let her go. Nearly pushed me away from her.

Confused, and if I’m honest, hurt, I agreed to keep her secret. For a moment, I felt a special sense of purpose knowing I would carry this secret with her, for her. I followed her rules. I’d promised her. I couldn’t betray her trust. I also cried the entire drive back to campus, upset and uncertain I’d made the right decision.

It wasn’t.

I had the chance to save her life, the baby’s life, and I didn’t. I broke the rules and broke any chance Amelia had at a normal life. When a professor ran into her at a grocery store another seven months later, she was recovered safely.

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