Page 4 of Borrowed Pain
The caller knew something I didn't. Something about Iris and the place that had broken her so severely she'd rather die than live with whatever they'd done to her.
And they had my number. My professional number was the one I gave to clients in crisis.
Which meant they knew precisely who I was.
I hit replay again. Then again.
It was a blocked number. The caller hadn't gotten that far by being careless. The implications crashed over me in waves.
Someone had been watching. Listening. Waiting.
For eighteen months.
I was sweating despite the cool air. The familiar sounds of my family filtered through Ma's kitchen window—the clatter of dishes and Michael's low rumble of laughter.
It was a world away from where I was standing.
Why she's not the only one.
The words echoed in my head. Other clients? Other people like Iris, broken by whatever happened at this place I'd never investigated, never questioned, never—
You failed her.
The thought tore into every tender spot. I'd had pieces of the puzzle—Iris's panic, her fear, and her insistence that something was fundamentally wrong with the treatment program. And I'd done nothing.
I'd kept her secret, yes, but I'd also let her disappear back into hell. A week later, she was dead.
How many others had there been since? How many clients had I failed to protect because I focused on honoring confidentiality instead of asking the hard questions?
Through the window, I glimpsed Ma moving around her kitchen, probably wrapping the leftover roast in enough foil to survive a nuclear winter. Marcus gestured about something. Matthew laughed at whatever Michael had just said.
They had no idea their baby brother stood ten feet away, drowning in the implications of a thirty-second voicemail.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Pocket the phone. Go back inside.
I couldn't—yet.
Someone out there was waiting for my response. Someone who knew things about Iris's death that I didn't, and who might have answers to questions I'd been too afraid to ask.
Or someone who might be the reason those questions needed to be asked in the first place.
My hands shook as I saved the voicemail.
The familiar sound of Ma's laughter, drifting through the window, carved its way between my ribs.
Everything had changed. And I was the only one who knew it.
When I pushed through the back door into Ma's kitchen, the warmth was foreign, like walking into someone else's life.
"There he is," Matthew said, looking up from where he was drying a serving platter. "Everything okay out there? You look like someone walked over your grave."
Three pairs of eyes turned toward me. Marcus paused in his systematic organization of Ma's silverware drawer. Michael straightened from where he'd been loading the dishwasher. Ma emerged from the pantry with a container of something that would become tomorrow night's dinner.
"Work," I said. "Crisis doesn't take weekends off."
They were cardboard words. Familiar shape, hollow inside.
"Anything serious?" Ma asked.
