Cynthia.
The pig figurines.
The police and Tara staring at me in the basement—and nothing but a solid wall.
The monster who hurt women.
The nightmare about the scar from my dad.
My thoughts spun faster by the second.
Doubt hit first, then panic, tight and cold in my chest.
What if everybody was right and Cynthia wasn’t real?
What if I’d made her up? What if she was some twisted way my brain was trying to survive everything I’d gone through?
Or worse, what if this wasn’t trauma-induced psychosis at all? What if I was just straight-up schizophrenic? It usually showed up in your twenties or early thirties, especially for women. That was exactly where I was. Right now.
Then came the worst thought of all. The big twist: Cynthia was connected to almost every major trauma in my life.
So what if I didn’t just hallucinate her?
What if I fuckingwasher?
My stomach twisted. I dropped my head into my hands.
“Fuck.”
Did I have some kind of dissociative identity disorder? Like in that movieSplit, where the guy turns into all these different people after surviving childhood trauma. Talks like them. Dresses like them. Even becomes an elderly woman.
I almost laughed out loud, picturing myself down there as Cynthia, pacing around that dark basement, talking in her voice, and then answering like I was Emily again.
And if Daniel didn’t hear a voice on that recording, if it was just me talking to empty air, that would be it. He’d have no choice. He’d have to send me to a mental hospital. How could he not?
Anna would support it.
And the psychiatrist too.
Especially once they learned I’d stopped taking my meds without telling anyone.
So I just sat there. Quiet. Still. Like some wide-eyed psycho waiting for the walls to start melting. Staring at my husband, one finger hovered above the screen on my phone. I just sat there, not pressing play.
My mind swung back and forth as if I were a gambler betting everything—house, car, maybe even my sanity—on one last desperate card. Play it or leave it.
Before I knew it, I was talking myself out of playing the recording for Daniel. I should wait until Thursday, play it for Anna instead.
She couldn’t tell Daniel anything. HIPAA laws. Every patient’s right to privacy—unless I was about to hurt myself or someone else.
But then . . .
A wave of nausea rose sharply in my throat, almost choking me.
If I were Cynthia, Ihadhurt someone.
Rasc—
“What are you doing?”
