Instead, I bend down to pluck something from the ground near my feet. Moving toward her, I extend the offering. She holds out her hand, and I place the small, pink flower into her palm.
This close, I can see the lightest dusting of freckles across her nose and cheeks. “If you press it between the pages of your book, it will flatten and dry out. You can use it as a bookmark.”
Her eyes flit down to the rhododendron. A slow smile spreads across her lips. She nods, and placing the flower into her book, turns to leave.
I keep my eyes trained on her back until she has left the clearing and is well out of sight. A surge of pleasure swoops low in my belly that she took something I gave her.
Maybe she had taken a piece of my heart with it, too.
1
THE DOCTOR
KAT ~ GREENWOOD, WA. PRESENT DAY: OCTOBER 2024
Ioften have extremely dark thoughts about death. About other people dying. About death and dying in general. Like,very dark. For example, I think about my father’s death. About his death here in this very house. Swinging heavy from a polished beam. And the days he spent alone before he was even found.
And as I stare up at the ornate second story balcony overlooking the driveway, I wonder what it would be like to swan dive off of it. Right onto the wet, midnight black concrete below.
Would I splatter? Would I implode?
I imagine myself vanishing into the forest, the dense trees enveloping me and unburdening me from the sharp, stabbing pangs of grief and uncertainty that plague so much of my life.Maybe I do want it… to die.
My mother died, shortly after giving birth to me, and at times, I feel as though that set the tone for death to follow me for the rest of my life.
Thankfully, I doubt that my patients suspect I am borderline suicidal. I think the clinical phrasing would be something along the lines of—struggles with acute grief and loss, moderate depression, and endorsing suicidal ideation with unclear intent.
I know there is something dark inside of me. It’s probably what compelled me to move into this house and set up my own bedroom in the very space my father ended his life in.
Fuck.
And that’s the thing about when someone kills themselves. The ones still alive—the ones that didn’t take that route—are left spinning their wheels over and over in the trenches of guilt and shame. And they make stupid fucking choices.
I stifle a manic sound that threatens to bubble up at the?back of my throat. I’m honestly not sure if it’s a sob or a giggle.
I am jolted back to reality by a deep male voice.
“Miss?”
“W-what? Sorry…” I blurt out.
“Did you decide on your colors yet? We are all ready to go, but there isn’t any paint yet.”
Shit.?I knew I was forgetting something. How could I not be? My brain is simply holding too much weight at the moment.
I take a steadying breath and reply in what I hope is a normal tone, “Yes, I have! So sorry. They’re in my car. I can go grab them for you right now.”
After days of carrying the paint samples with me from room to room and around my office and then back home again, I had finally decided on the colors for the house: Onyx, Soot, and Milky Alabaster for the window trim.
With this color palette, I’m keeping Pearson House essentially the same as it always was. Just refreshed and updated. The gothic wainscoting and twisting balconies wereseverely weathered over the years by the near constant rain in this part of Washington.
Of all the houses I inherited from my father, this one—Pearson House, is my favorite. It has been ever since I was a girl. Or at least it was. Before my father died in it.
With four bedrooms and two baths, a piano room, and an open floor plan living room with floor to ceiling windows that overlook the vast expanse of forest behind the property, Pearson House is like an ominous black castle, jutting up and over the expanse of a dark green kingdom.
The DeCloah National Forest butts up to the back acre of the house, across a deep ravine that runs southwest from the upper acreage.
So many of my childhood memories revolve around me playing pretend at the edge of those woods, daydreaming and imagining myself as a dark woodland fairy princess. I would crawl over logs and sing soft incantations aloud. Make friends with the spiders in their webs.
