Page 42 of Last Seen
“Car bombs are a lot. This is nothing. It’s dealable. We’ll figure it out. Just promise me you won’t be reckless. I don’t like this idea of you getting in the middle of this.”
“Promise. Give Charlie a kiss for me.”
“Just Charlie?”
“You too.” And she clicks off before he can respond. Before she chucks it all and drives straight back to McLean, to his arms, to his bed. God, this is not going how it’s supposed to go. All they did before she moved out was fight. Snarl and spit and slam doors. This gentle, concerned Theo is more like the guy she dated and married, and she likes him. Maybe leaving has made him see her side of things, finally.
It doesn’t matter. Chemistry was never their issue. There is so much water under their proverbial bridge that a few kind words aren’t going to fix a thing.
Still, the house feels lonely without his handsome face on the screen. She straightens up, gathers up the cat and her phone, checks all the doors again, and wanders up the stairs. She’s asleep within moments of her head hitting the pillow.
The dream is new, a memory unleashed. She is walking down her old street in Nashville. Birds chirp. Cars whoosh past. A man on a bicycle rings his bell as he goes by. She is holding something, something soft. A stuffedanimal, a rabbit. Her best friend. His name is Elvis. He goes with her everywhere. He is clutched tightly in her arms as she walks up the street. She’s not supposed to leave the yard, but Elvis saw a beautiful rose on a neighbor’s bush and wanted a closer look. The rose is pink, just the same color as his nose. It has so many petals, and they shimmer in the sunlight. She looks around, up the street, down the street, sees no one, so breaks the rose from its stem and cradles it in her hand. She scoots back to the house, to her yard, and goes inside to the kitchen. Presents Elvis with his prize.
There are voices in the living room—Mom and Cat, having another argument. She ignores them, finds a small bowl, fills it with water, sets the rose in it. It is so beautiful. She will take it to her mom when they stop fighting, and it will make her feel better. Loved. She doesn’t get enough love. The rose flickers prettily in the bowl, and she sets Elvis on the counter so he can see. But Elvis is covered in something. His sweet pink nose is bleeding. She tries to wipe it away, but he comes alive, hopping across the counter, spilling the rose water and knocking over the bowl and leaving a trail of blood behind him. She hurries after him, only to realize his throat is cut. Gouts of blood pour from his small body, and she is covered in it, she is crying, there is no more fighting but silence, dark silence, deeper than anything she’s ever heard. She runs after him and trips, falling. And the scream comes from her very soul, louder and louder and louder—
Halley comes awake sitting bolt upright, the scream dying in her throat. Ailuros is nowhere to be seen; she must have scared him away.
Her chest is heaving. She flips on the light.My God, what was that?
Elvis,she thinks, remembering the soft velveteen rabbit. Cat had done something to Elvis. Was it real blood? Or had she scrawled on him in red lipstick? A slash across his plush little throat. A threat against her? She’d cried and cried and cried, and her mom had promised to buy her another. But she didn’t want another, she wanted her Elvis. So her mom tried to wash him, and his fur tinged red so he was pink, not gray, and that bloody leer from his throat never went away. Who would do that to their sister’s favorite toy? The bosom buddy Halley insisted sit at the kitchen table and have his own plate of food at dinnertime?
She hated me. Cat hated me.
Halley realizes she is crying, that her heart hurts. Theo is right. Maybe she’s better off not remembering. She wipes her face and lies back down, but sleep will not come again.
She is motionless and quiet, breath shallow, forcing her mind to that spot of darkness within and getting nowhere.
When the first rays of dawn turn the light in the window milky, she gets up and moves downstairs woodenly. She makes coffee, going through the motions, still not fully awake.
The dream—the memory—is so vivid still. She doesn’t want to think about it, but her mind is compelled to reach back, to look, to see. The rabbit with its throat cut; her tripping in the living room—how much of this is metaphor, and how much of it is real? What had she tripped over? Her mother’s body? And there it is, bright in her mind, the photo she stared at last night playing out in Technicolor, her mother with red stains spreading across her chest and her eyes open, the tears, her mouth moving. What is she saying? She’s telling Halley something.
Halley closes her eyes and strains to access the memory; what is it? That thin whisper, so light, almost impossible to hear. One syllable. She says it again and again. These are her mother’s last words.
“Run. Run. Run.”
Blackness.
Chills course through her body. Halley opens her eyes. Her heart is pounding. The mug is clenched in her hands, empty. She is in the kitchen of her home in Marchburg. The file on her mother’s murder is spread across the kitchen table, photos a jumbled mess, everything out of order, the stacks disturbed as if she’d stirred them with her hands like shuffling a large deck of cards. And the doorbell is ringing.
She sets the mug on the table and hurries to the door. Glances out the sidelight at a female face she doesn’t recognize.
“Don’t open the door for strangers,” her dad used to say. But she is a grown-up. The woman on the step is older, midfifties, dark hairstreaked with gray in a perfect, shiny bob and kind brown eyes ringed in dark smudges. She looks very tired.
Halley opens the door, and the woman smiles politely. She has large, straight teeth.
“Good morning. I’m Jana Chowdhury. We spoke yesterday. May I come in?”
Chapter Seventeen
Halley offers some coffee, which the doctor accepts gratefully. They sit at the table. She moves the photos and notes out of the way, stacks them all up. The doctor looks at them curiously, and Halley puts a possessive hand on top. The wind whips up outside, and she feels the air start to loosen around them.
The therapist takes a deep sip of her coffee. “Mm, this is excellent. There’s a storm coming. I didn’t know if I’d make it before the heavens opened.”
“They steal up on you here sometimes. You came all the way from Boston?” Halley’s voice is rough, her throat raw from the screaming.
“No. I’m in DC now. Moved my practice there several years ago. I do mostly couples work, but individual psychotherapy as well.”
She thinks of Theo, and wonders if maybe they need to talk to Chowdhury.Focus, Halley. Cat.
