She’d nodded, then, after a moment of hesitation, she’d stepped closer. “I’m a therapist. If, while you’re here, you would like some help with the panic, I’d be happy to squeeze you in.”
I’d dropped my head. “I don’t have money.”
“And I don’t need money. You’d just be keeping me from my paperwork, which would be a blessing, really.”
I’d laughed, and she’d seemed pleased that I could understand her well enough to get the joke.
“You don’t have to. I just thought I’d offer.”
I nodded without much thought at all. “Thanks. I think I might need to take you up on that.”
I had. And even when we had enough to pay her for her time, she’d refused to take our money. Helping her niece get out of a similar situation to the one I’d been in a year ago was the smallest thing I could have done for her to repay her kindness. It was all Icoulddo when she’d repeatedly refused my crumpled cash.
For once, I could be fully honest about what I was going through, able to talk it through with someone who could actually help me. Not at first of course, but eventually, when she’d proven herself safe with the worst of it. She’d given me books for Trips, helped me understand Jansen was going to need more help than she could give, had worked with me to keep the panic manageable while also explaining that I might need medicine as well, if what we were doing wasn’t enough.
Tonight, it’s not enough.
My skin stings; the water is so hot I’ve probably scalded myself, and when I get out, I’m unwilling to look at myself in the mirror.
Who would look back at me?
I killed a man. A man who had wanted to kill me, a man I already thought I’d killed. In self-defense, then, but now, cold-blooded with chilling efficiency.
Maria had helped me process Smith’s death the first time. But now?
Now, I’m forced to process it while locked in my cage, painfully alone and worried about Jansen. About RJ and Walker. About Trips. Even about Mattie.
Will they hate me now? Am I beyond salvation?
I came back, knowing what I might have to do to break us free from Trips’ father. This was one of those things that I knew I might have to face.
But knowing there might be blood on my hands was abstract. Choosing to put blood on my hands without hesitation is concrete.
I should feel something besides the scrabbling of insects on my skin and a chill in my soul, shouldn’t I? Remorse? Anger? Disgust?
I’d researched what it might be like, to prepare myself, on those nights when sleep wouldn’t find me in the RV, when I wasn’t ready to sit with Trips’ silent self-contempt or Jansen’s manic midnight serenades.
Sometimes, even being surrounded by people I love can be too much. Sometimes, I need a moment to myself. And now I have too many moments to myself. Nearly all my moments are for myself, and I feel like I’m oozing out of the edges of my body, seeking contact where I know there’s none.
It turns out that my research into taking a life was inadequate. This coldness in my soul isn’t what I’d thought would happen. There’s only apathy about taking Smith’s life. I can’t tell if I’m a sociopath or if my brain is trying to protect me from what I just did. Maria would say the latter, but she’s not here. Nobody is here.
The ice is an unknown that I can’t parse, and I know if one of the guys, any of the guys, were here with me, they’d somehow break through the ice. There’d be an outlet for whatever this lack of feeling is.
Alone, I wrap myself in a fuzzy bathrobe, coat my hair in the collection of fancy products that came with the room, thenplop the mass on top of my head. With nothing else to do, I curl up under the blanket, folding it over itself so I’m twice as warm, so it’s twice as heavy, tucking myself in, pretending I’m surrounded by warm bodies and gentle touches. Pretending that I’m not totally and completely alone. Pretending that telling myself I had no other choice makes it true.
Smith wasn’t a good man. I know that if I hadn’t shot him, someone else would have. Or someone would have forced me to do it. I’m not sure how, but I also don’t want to know what other levers Trips’ father can pull.
I know that the only way out of here is through the maze of imperfect options and barriers that Trips’ dad will put in front of us. It’s all impossible.
Everybody says that the morning light is a new beginning.
But today, it was an end. I turned it into an end.
All my choices, all my plans, and here I am—a killer.
Phantom lovers aren’t real, and self-told platitudes do nothing to break the ice in my soul.
I stare at the unlit fireplace until my eyes are bleary, and wish that I were a wisp of smoke, pulled up and out into the sky above. Weightless. Unbound.
