The pinpoint of light winked out, and Derek Sullivan knew nothing more.
CHAPTER TWO
Seven days, Jenna thought, shaking her head.Only seven days since she had found Piper, and already the world had shifted on its axis, familiar landmarks vanished, new ones rising in their place.Jenna wondered if this was how it felt to wake from a twenty-year coma, everything both strange and achingly familiar.
The psychiatric wing of Trentville Memorial Hospital smelled of industrial cleaner and instant coffee.It was a scent Jenna had grown accustomed to over the past week, visiting every day, watching as her sister—her twin—slowly emerged from beneath layers of lost memory like a photograph developing in chemical solution: blurry at first, then incrementally clearer.
Sunlight streamed through the window blinds into Dr.Samantha White’s office, where Jenna was waiting.Diplomas and certifications lined the walls, testaments to decades of psychiatric practice.A bookshelf held medical texts interspersed with small ceramic figurines—birds in flight, their wings caught in eternal suspension.
She checked her watch.Nine-seventeen.Dr.White had said she’d return with the discharge papers by nine-thirty.Outside the window, Jenna’s car sat waiting in the hospital parking lot, ready to carry Piper home.
Home.The word still caught in Jenna’s throat.
The past week had unfolded in a blur of surreal moments.After finding Piper at Wendell Gillis’s cabin, Jenna and Jake had brought her straight here—following the ambulance through winding mountain roads, neither speaking, both understanding the fragility of what they’d found.Piper—or Emma, as she still called herself then—had been disoriented and frightened, reeling from Wendell’s death and the shock of strangers claiming she was someone she couldn’t remember being.
That first night, Jenna had stayed at the hospital until visiting hours ended, then returned to an empty house that suddenly felt too large, too quiet.She’d sat at her kitchen table until dawn, staring at old photographs spread before her—twin girls with matching grins and matching dresses, inseparable until one had gone missing.
The second day brought the first breakthrough.Mom had come to the hospital with Jenna.She’d approached Piper’s bed tentatively, as if her daughter might vanish again if she moved too quickly.
“Piper?”Mom had whispered.
And something had changed in Piper’s eyes—recognition flickering like a match struck in darkness.
“Mom?”The word had sounded uncertain, testing.Then firmer: “Mom.”
They’d embraced, Mom’s shoulders shaking with silent sobs, and Jenna had stepped into the hallway, her own tears falling unchecked.
Each day after brought more fragments: Piper remembering the house they’d grown up in, the treehouse Dad had built, the old golden retriever named Sandy.But the twenty years between her disappearance and now remained largely blank, with only scattered images emerging.
And always, when pressed about why she’d left, why she’d never contacted them, Piper’s face would cloud with confusion and fear.
What Jenna hadn’t shared with the doctors, with anyone except Mom, Jake, and Frank, was what had been happening in her own dreams.Three nights after finding Piper, Wendell Gillis had appeared to Jenna in her sleep.The man who’d died was not a memory or a figment of her imagination, but a visitation as real as any she’d experienced since her gift first manifested.
He’d stood in her dream-space, more vital than she’d seen him in life, his eyes bright with urgency.“She’s still in danger,” he’d said, his voice echoing as if across a great distance.“The darkness—”
And then he was gone, ripped from the dream before Jenna could question him.Each night since, he’d returned, always with the same incomplete warning, always vanishing before he could finish whatever he was trying to tell her.
The office door opened, interrupting Jenna’s thoughts.Dr.Samantha White entered, a manila folder tucked under one arm, her silver hair caught in a neat bun at the nape of her neck.Despite her sixty-five years, she moved with the energy of someone decades younger, her posture straight, her steps purposeful.
“Sheriff Graves,” Dr.White said, settling into her chair.“Sorry to keep you waiting.Hospital bureaucracy moves at its own pace, I’m afraid.”
“No problem,” Jenna replied.“How is she today?”
Dr.White placed the folder on her desk, opening it to reveal neatly organized paperwork.“Physically, she’s in good health considering the circumstances.Underweight, some vitamin deficiencies, but nothing that can’t be addressed with proper nutrition and supplements.”She removed her reading glasses, meeting Jenna’s gaze directly.“Psychologically, it’s more complicated.”
Jenna nodded, bracing herself.“The memory issues?”
“Partly, yes.Her amnesia appears to be dissociative in nature—a protective mechanism rather than the result of physical trauma.She remembers you, your mother, some aspects of her childhood.Those memories are returning steadily.”Dr.White tapped a pen against the desktop.“But that’s not my primary concern.”
“The visions,” Jenna said quietly.
Dr.White’s expression remained carefully neutral.“She calls them ‘communications.’Vivid sensory experiences involving other people.Some from her past, others she claims she’s never met in life.”
“Do you mean hallucinations?”
“That’s the clinical term, yes.”Dr.White’s tone was measured.“But I’ve been practicing psychiatry in Trentville for thirty-five years, Sheriff Graves.Long enough to develop a certain...flexibility in my thinking.”
Jenna waited.
