My eyebrows scrunch together. “I mean I tried to kill someone last weekend.” Her eyebrows rise, asking for more. I worry that she might now think I’m dangerous enough to report. “Well, I couldn’t do it. I wanted to, but I couldn’t.”
“Let’s dial back a little. How did this decision come about?”
My mouth twists. “I’ve been feeling…unsettled since this whole business with James and the letters. And our sessions, I know they’re helping me on some level, but they’re also making me feel worse. I came away from the last one feeling…feeling like a monster. I thought that if I didn’t channel my anger and my hunger somewhere, I’d hurt James.”
“And you don’t want to hurt James?”
“No.” Have we been wasting the time we’ve spent together? “No. I love him.”
“I’ve upset you.”
I look over her shoulder, focus on the tree. She doesn’t fill the silence—she rarely does. My eyes flit back to hers and I speak. “What is it you’re trying to get from me? Just ask.”
She smiles, a kind warmth flushing her cheeks, and this irks me further. Her kindness is polyester against my skin right now, chafing. “I’m asking,” she says. “Let’s try this; talk me through the day you tried to kill someone. Was it someone you knew?”
“No, a stranger.”
“And how did you meet the stranger?”
And I tell her the story of my evening out. Of cocktails and cocky corporate bros. The words spill out of me. It’s like I’ve snagged the hull of my guts on the sharp edges of her patient inquisition, and the black oil of my confession is purging itself from my belly. It leaves the room, our conversation, feeling slick with the shame of it. I am ashamed. But I can’t stop.
“Obviously, I wasn’t thinking clearly. I hadn’t thought any of it through. That’s not like me, you know? But if I had, and if I’d known what that guy was going to try to do to me…If I’d had the means, I think maybe I’d have hurt him worse. And I’d have felt better for it.”
Somewhere outside, a driver thumps down on their horn. Once, then twice more.
“What makes you so sure you would have hurt him worse?”
It doesn’t make sense that I flinch, but I do. “It’s what I do. Someone takes something from me, something bad, and I have to take something back.”
“By ‘take something back,’ do you mean their life?”
The walls seem to darken. I’m silent.
“Natalie, I’m not sure it helps us to keep talking in code.”
I can’t speak. Can only see the cage drawing around me.
“Natalie?”
“You already know I feel responsible for my exes’ deaths. We acknowledged it in our first session. It’s all in Dr. Foster’s notes.”
Dimple sighs. I’m not being as explicit as she wants, but this is as good as she’s getting for now.
“This transactional revenge you’re describing…I’m just not entirely clear on why you wouldn’t have hurt this stranger worse if it were that simple.”
“Well, I don’t fancy spending a life sentence behind bars. Chances are, I would have been caught if I did.”
“Let’s take a moment to consider Marc and Luca. Where were you when they died?”
My nose twitches. “What do you mean?”
“On the nights they died, where were you?”
“Well—” I take a moment, seeing where she’s nudging me. “We were at parties.”
“So, chances are, you could have been caught?”
“Caught doing what?”
