I shrugged, frustrated with the psychobabble. I needed answers, not analysis.
“Disappearing can hurt as much as the thing that you are running from, don’t you think?”
Ouch. This was getting too real. I’d been living in the shadows for as long as I could remember. It wasn’t a quick stab of pain, but rather a long, slow numbing of the soul. Or it would have been, if I had a soul.
I leaned forward and tried to refocus her on the situation at hand. I wasn’t here to talk about my feelings tonight. I just wanted to learn the things I was expected to know, the things I couldn’t ask anyone else.
“I notice you are still talking about yourself in the third person,” Dr. Rosetti said. Her glasses had slid down her nose, and while she waited for an answer, she peered over the lenses instead of pushing them up. It was cute, one little imperfection.
There was probably no point in explaining, but I tried anyway. “Yes, I am. I am living Tiffany’s life, but I’m not her. I’m going through the motions, using her name and address, but I’m not the Tiffany Valentine remembers.”
She nodded as if I was confirming all her suspicions. “That’s a powerful statement, and I think we all feel that way sometimes. If you reconnect with yourself, you might find answers. Let people really know you instead of the Tiffany they expect.”
“I bought Tiffany’s identity on the black market. She is not me. I am not her.”
Dr. Rosetti squinted at her notebook and scribbled a note.
“Why do you think I’ve repressed this memory?” I asked, trying another tactic.
“You could be scared for any number of reasons.” She looked me in the eye. “Tiffany, did you see Jeff die? Did someone threaten you?”
I didn’t answer because I didn’t know.
My brief silence must have been enough to convince Dr. R that she had figured it out. “Watching your fiancé die would be extremely traumatic.”
I waited for her to go on, but my mind began to slip to my own past.
“Tiffany, what happened to you?” she said. “What did you see out there on the ice? Did you push him?”
“I don’t know, I was askingyou.” I didn’t know anything. I twisted the hem on my shirt in frustration.
“Did you see someone die?”
I capitulated. If she wanted to hear what I’d seen, then so be it. You don’t get to be as old as me without watching the life leave someone’s body.
“I did watch someone die. It was my fault.” I stared at my knees because it was too much to meet her eyes. “Such a senseless death.” I might not have rent her flesh myself, but I might as well have. If I had paid attention to the Vampire Code instead of gossiping and telling her everything, Alba would have lived to be an old woman.
Dr. R leaned forward. “Go on. Let it out.”
The number one rule of every secret club is to keep it a secret.Fight Clubdidn’t invent that. Vampires did. A vision of Alba’s last moments, her blood blossoming into a gory flower on her nightgown, her eyes staring without seeing—it was enough to send tears streaming down my face.
“So you watched Jeff die?” she redirected me.
Tears continued running down my cheeks, which she must have taken as a yes.
Dr. R moved a box of tissues across the coffee table toward me and took her questioning a step further. “Did you kill him?”
She saw me completely, but not at all. “I’m not talking about Jeff.”
“That’s right.” Dr. R nodded like she had me all figured out. “You didn’t kill Jeff because you’re not really Tiffany?”
Again with the psychobabble. “Like I said, I am not Tiffany with a -y. I am Tiffenie, with an -ie, an immortal, cursed vampire.”
“Tiffany, I think watching your fiancé die and believing that you killed him was more trauma than you were able to handle.”
My cheeks were still damp with tears, but a laugh escaped me.
“I believe that you have dissociated because of that.”
