He was right. I had wanted to engage my students, not put them to sleep. Forensics was fascinating if you looked at it the way we did—thinking like a criminal who doesn’t want to get caught. Thinking backward from the inception of a crime.
“It wasn’t an actual textbook,” I told him. “It was all online, anecdotes drawn from cases, written from the perspective of a criminal.”
He nodded. “Right. What was it called again?”
“Leave No Trace—How to Plan the Perfect Murder.”
“Can you give me an example?”
I gave him one from an actual case I worked with Rowan. A husband who claimed to have walked into his apartment and found his wife murdered. He was ruled out as a suspect because the bloody footprints in the stairwell were from a size eleven shoe and he wore size nine.
“When his alibi seemed shaky, we canvassed every shoe store in atwenty-mileradius looking for the purchase of a size eleven dress shoe with cash. Showed the picture of the husband. And, sure enough, he’d bought the bigger shoes to kill his wife so he could leave exculpatory evidence.”
Landyn circled right back to my need for certainty. “That must have been very satisfying.” He was a dog with a bone.
There was something soothing about this field. How every action left a mark. A hair. A fiber. A tire track. A fingerprint. How every crime had a criminal. Every missing person was somewhere, dead or alive. I work this job because it’s where I belong. Rowan is here because it’s where he needs to be after the PTSD set in.
We work cases that are more than a year old. It takes days, weeks sometimes, to organize the contents, read through the notes, and listen to the taped interviews. Some are so old they exist only in dusty boxes with nothing even logged into a computer. We run physical evidence through new databases—DNA, genetic tracing, even fingerprinting. We check back with witnesses, look into new leads, collect new samples—sometimes without a suspect even knowing. We’ve grabbed a wine glass from a restaurant table. Pulled a hair out of a vacuum bag we took from a garbage can. DNA is everywhere if you know where to look. Even in the bones buried in a grave. You have to burn a body to get rid of it for good.
It’s slow, methodical work. But when it pays off, it feels like we’ve righted the universe.
I liked sharing this with my students. If there was even one person I reached who could understand the satisfaction, feel the passion for the work and maybe pursue it as a career, then it was worth it. I kept teaching until Fran was born, but even now I update the materials from my class with interesting cases I come across. The school has a portal where teachers can post things for students, past and present. I have no idea if anyone ever reads what I post, but I do it anyway. For them. And maybe for me.
Dr. Landyn presses on as the clock ticks down to the end of our relationship. “How are things at home? Do you have the support you need when you start back tomorrow?”
“They’re good. Really good,” I lie again. “I just want to get back to work. Back to normal.”
I don’t tell him about the sleep that won’t come. Or how I sometimes stand in the kitchen and watch my family move through a morning, breakfast on the table, coffee in the pot, cupboards opening and closing. Or how I sit on the couch in the living room, a little girl on either side, both giggling at the TV, and how I find a way to laugh and give them each a squeeze or a kiss on the forehead but that I feel nothing as I do it. I don’t tell him that I am chronically numb, head to toe, inside and out. Numb to my beautiful girls. Numb to my husband, so desperate to help me and safeguard our marriage, which may not be what we had before, but still worth keeping. A broken teacup glued back together. Fragile, but capable of holding water.
I don’t tell him, but he still knows somehow.
“We talked about this,” he says. “There is no ‘back to normal’ after a trauma. You can’t escape it. No one can. You have to go through the stages and get to anewnormal, which you will come to accept.”
Fuck.I feel the emotions swell.
He looks at his notes from our first session. “Do you still feel lonely?”
I nod and breathe and get ahold of myself. “I’m trying to spend more time with people,” I tell him.
He’s not buying it.
“There is a kind of loneliness that is more painful than being alone,” he says. “I think that’s what you were describing—when you’re with the people you love and they can’t understand who you are now, what you think and feel. That kind of loneliness can seem hopeless.”
“I feel that sometimes,” I say. I can’t get around this one. I’m not the same person I was before I killed a man. Mitch can’t understand. Certainly not my children. Even Rowan—it’s different for him. His “new normal” happened years ago.
“It’s getting better,” I assure him. Though it’s not.
“Even with Mitch? It can be difficult for the spouse. They can’t help you through this, and that makes them question the relationship and even how well they really know you. Because, you see, you are in many ways a different person.”
I respond with a quip that feels like a premonition as it leaves my mouth. “Does anyone really know anyone else? We reveal what we choose, don’t we? Even if the decisions are made moment to moment, subconsciously?”
Landyn smiles. “That may be true, and it’s an interesting philosophical question. But I’d rather you focus on your relationship with Mitch. Talk to him, Elise. Fight in those moments to make a different choice and expose yourself—so he can come to know the ways this has changed you.”
Dr. Landyn gives me homework. Things like sharing my feelings, even if I fear they’ll disappoint people.
“We all need to be seen for who we are. That’s what connects us.”
I make promises, nod my head, find an expression that conveys optimism.
