Page 120 of Strays
My pulse kicks hard. “You know that name?”
She glances up at me. “I know an M. Aranya. Doctor Miles Aranya. Total douchebag psychiatrist who claims to specialize in women’s mental health. He gave a guest lecture to my class during my last year of med school.” She grimaces. “He’s the biggest sexist pig I’ve ever seen in my life.”
The memory slams into me, and my chest locks up. I can’t breathe. Can’t speak.
It can’t be the same person. It just can’t.
I don’t know how long I stay frozen, but it’s long enough for her to notice.
“Babe?” she says.
I still can’t answer. The impossibility of what I’m thinking knocks the air out of me.
It just can’t be.
“Talk to me,” she says again, firmer now.
Shane’s at the bathroom door a moment later, Jay right behind him. With our senses this sharp, they must’ve heard everything clear as a bell; it didn’t matter where in the house they were.
Shane steps forward, grabs my arm, and turns me toward him. His eyes lock on mine. “What is it, Kory?”
Jay stands just behind him, scanning the room like there’s a threat I haven’t named yet.
I swallow hard and force the words out. “M. Aranya. Doctor Miles Aranya. That was the psychiatrist my mom was seeing.”
Shane frowns. “The one she was with when she went missing?”
I nod. The memory hits fast and sharp, like a door opening inside my mind.
I’d been acting out that morning, more than usual, and Lydia lost her patience. My mom never fought with her, except when it came to me. They ended up arguing in the kitchen, and it turned into a full-blown fight.
My mother had a session with Doctor Aranya in the afternoon. She had never taken me with her before, but that day she didn’t want to leave me in thehouse with Lydia.
My dads came home on their lunch break to drive us. Her appointment wasn’t until three, and Gavin’s only about thirty minutes from Chicago, where the doctor’s office was, but they wouldn’t be able to leave work again later. So they dropped us off early, and we waited in the office until it was time.
It wasn’t a hospital. Just an old three-story office building with square windows. I remember the fancy chairs in the waiting room of the doctor’s office. We waited for over two hours. My mom took a magazine from the basket and read, but I faced the name printed on the glass door the whole time: Doctor M. Aranya, Psychiatrist.
When they called her in, I stayed behind, watching the door close after her. We were supposed to wait until my dads came back to pick us up after the session, but when she came out, she took my hand and led me around the block to an ice cream shop.
She bought a chocolate sundae for me and a strawberry sundae for herself. After we ate, we walked back to the office and sat on the sidewalk in front of the building to wait. When my dads finally showed up, they scolded her for waiting outside. She was supposed to stay inside the building until they arrived.
The next month, she had another appointment, but she didn’t take me with her that time.
I never saw her again.
I always thought that if I had gone with her, she wouldn’t have gone missing. I would’ve protected her from whatever happened. Even now, as an adult, I still think the same thing. Whoever took her, if she’d had a kid with her, maybe they wouldn’t have done it. Maybe they would’ve been afraid of the kid screaming, or it would’ve been too much trouble to take two people instead of one woman alone.
If I’d been there, she would’ve come back home with me.
If Doctor M. Aranya is the same man as “Doc” Eme Araña, then he’s not just involved in women trafficking, he’s been doing it for nearly two decades. And he’s the reason my mother never came home.
“It can’t be the same,” I say. “My mother’s doctor worked in Chicago. This ‘doc’ is operating around Port Newark.”
Jo’s face tightens, something between sadness and dread. “He gave my class a guest lecture last year,” she says softly. “His office was in New Jersey. At some point between treating your mother and now, he moved east.”
I push past Shane and Jay, out of the bathroom, and head straight to our room. They all follow me like a silent wall of worry.
I grab my phone from the nightstand and start searching. The first link that pops up is Dr. M. Aranya, M.D. Women’s Mental Health Institute, Short Hills, New Jersey. The website is clean, with soft-focus images of trees and a woman staring out a window. At the bottom of the page, his photo makes my stomachturn.
