“Who must come play? The lady who was singing?”
No, no, no... Angie’s chest tightened. Her head felt as though it was going to explode. She shook it from side to side, getting more and more violent. Her legs were pumping, grasses and brambles scraping her skin open. She thrashed through the bushes, into the trees, then onto a cold street with snow, and there were Christmas lights ...flee, run, run!Snowing. She began to pant rapidly.
“What’s happening?”
“He’s coming. The big red man and the other ones. Chasing.”
“Where are you running to?”
“Dark. It’s dark. Go. Get inside! I have to get inside and stay quiet like a mouse!”
“Okay, get inside, and tell me what you are getting into.”
She shook her head, tears streaming down her cheeks now. She couldn’t breathe. “A big shiny silver knife—he’s got a knife ...”
She screamed. Her hands went over her ears. Pain sliced across her face. “Blood! Everywhere—blood!”
Vaguely she heard a word.Three.Then louder.Three!
Two.
One.
“You’re coming up, Angie,” he said. “Waking up. Nice and easy. Comfy in the chair. You’re in Alex Strauss’s house. Safe. All safe.”
Her eyes flared open. She stared at her hands. And the blood that had covered them all sticky and hot and wet was suddenly no longer there. Slowly, she glanced up at Alex.
He looked shaken.
Her hand went to her lip. “My mouth,” she said. “I was cut. By a knife.”
“Who?” he said quietly. “Who cut you?”
Her breath was shaky. Perspiration dampened her upper lip. “I don’t know, Alex. I don’t know what’s going on. I was always told I was cut in the car accident.”
He made more tea. She sat for a while, staring at the dance of the flames in the fireplace, feeling exhausted, trying to make sense of what had just happened, where she had gone in her mind.
“You’ve had no memories like this before?” he said, handing her another cup.
“Just that little girl. But it was more like an hallucination than a memory.”
“And the woman, the songs?”
She shook her head. “Only those Polish words that come into my head when I see the girl in pink.”
“Something happened, Angie. Something when you were a child, the same age as that girl you are seeing in a pink dress.”
Her gaze snapped onto his. “You think my parents lied to me? About the accident?”
“Like I said, we construct our autobiographical memories anew each time we try to recall an event from the past, and sometimes false stories can be implanted, resulting in a false life narrative.” He paused. “And cognitive dissonance.”
She wiped her upper lip. Her hands shook slightly.
“We could always schedule another session, if you’d like. We could try to go deeper, for longer. But I did need to snap you out when I did. You were going into distress.”
Absently, she sipped her tea, thinking of what she’d been told of the car accident. Of Italy. Her mind went to the dates on the backs of the photos in the album. The uneasiness that she’d witnessed in her father’s features when she’d raised the discrepancies. Her mother’s strange words in that hospital.
“I don’t know,” she said softly. “I’d always thought my childhood was normal. And if this is happening, why now?”
