They exchange a look and shake their heads with disapproval.
“Would you like to move back in?” Mom asks, her voice shaky. “Your lovely room is waiting for you. We missed you so much, sweetie!”
I train my gaze on her. “I’m not moving back in, Mom. I’m starting a job in Annecy after Easter. I’ll rent something on my own once I’ve saved up for the deposit.”
Her face falls.
“This was bound to happen, Yvonne,” Dad says. “She’s twenty-two. She craves independence.”
That’s unselfish of him.
He turns to me. “The only issue is, what happens if you have another episode despite your meds?”
I don’t answer at once, so he adds, “I do hope you’re as rigorous about them as before, now that you’re all independent!”
OK, I take back the unselfish.
“I have a new batch of fluoxetine and clonazepam for you,” Mom says to me. “But your father is right. They aren’t foolproof.”
My phone beeps again, and I ignore it again.
“It would be extraordinary,” I say, looking from Mom to Dad, “if Vitamin D and organic neutral tablets were foolproof against dissociative identity disorder!”
They blanch. Mom shoots Dad a panicked look. His eyes become shifty like when he’s thinking fast.
In my purse, my phone rings. I turn it off. It was Darrel, but I’m not letting anyone, not even him, interrupt this conversation. That would give Dad time to come up with some BS to explain away my fake pills.
I flatten my hands on the table. “You’ve been gaslighting me for six years. You made me think I was mad. You implanted a false memory in my mind to make me believe I’d killed a man in a fit of madness.”
Without uttering a word, their faces drain of all color as they listen to me intently.
“Why?” I ask. “Why would you do that to your child?”
Tears begin to run down Mom’s cheeks. They usually mellow me. But not today.
“Here’s a thought,” I say. “You did those things to gain total control of me.”
Mom shakes her head, sobbing, “No! We’d never! Stella, you don’t understand—”
“Explain it, then.”
They exchange more looks between them. More silence.
I lean forward. “You could answer another question for me. Why did you kill Ivo Georgiev?”
The shock on their faces at the mention of his name is telling.
“Who… what…” Dad sputters and then pauses, his face turning red. “Who gave you that name? The criminal you helped escape, Darrel Vlovsky? How can you trust him, Stella? Have you lost your mind?”
I smirk. “Quite the contrary! I finally found it. I’ve been to a real shrink who helped me remember the night you killed Ivo.”
We spend a few long moments in silence. Dad and I are engaged in a staring contest. Mom just whimpers.
I turn to her. “How good are you at hypnosis? Do you think you can reboot me all over again?”
“I believe I can, if you cooperate…”
Is she serious?“Maybe I will. But I need to know. I need to understand what happened to Ivo. Was it about your Ever Mage and your talisman like with Darrel? Or was it something unrelated?”
