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“And how does that make you feel?”

I know how I felt in that moment, as my door shut behind him. I stayed on the floor for some time, curled over my LVAD as if it were my actual heart and needed protection. There was pain, but dull and far off, my broken heart keening elsewhere, the feeling barely reaching me.

“I can’t really feel anything,” I tell Amanda. “Not my feelings, anyway. It’s like Brandy’s phantom pain from her foot. My brain picks up signals from it still, but they’re very weak. She told me about this mirror therapy thing they did to show her the inverted—”

“Yes, I know about mirror boxes,” Amanda interrupts, putting her pen down. “And you came to this conclusion concerning signals from your heart after talking to Brandy about her foot?”

“Yes. I’d never considered it before, but it makes sense. Shanna’s feelings take precedence because her heart is here, inside me. And my own is gone, a phantom heart.”

“So what would you see if you looked into a mirror box?” Amanda asks.

It’s a good question, and I give it time to circulate. “Well, it’s not quite the same thing,” I say. “I can’t put Shanna’s heart in there and see my own reflected back.”

“No, you can’t,” Amanda agrees, but in a way that makes it sound like her question still stands.

“Do you know the difference between the mind and the brain?” I ask.

Amanda blinks quickly a couple of times, and I can’t tell if she’s surprised that I know to ask in the first place or insulted that I am putting the question to someone with a degree. An associate’s degree, anyway.

“Yes, I know the difference,” she says. “Do you?”

“Your brain is an organ. Your mind is your consciousness, your thoughts, the definition of who you are.” I close my eyes, hoping that the words are right, the logic inside of me finding a channel out that others will comprehend. “The brain is a physical thing, but a mind is separate and indistinct. Like a soul. An identity.”

“Okay.” Amanda nods.

I keep my eyes closed, the darkness helping me draw sense into my words. “So . . .” I go slowly, not wanting to confuse Amanda. “I have Shanna’s self inside of me, wrapped up in her heart. If I look at an inversion of myself, like the mirror box, I guess . . . I guess I’d see her.”

It feels right, like I’ve done it. Unwound another problem put in front of me and come up with the answer. I open my eyes, and Amanda stares back at me so long I have to resist the urge to tell her that her glasses are crooked.

“I spoke to your mother yesterday,” she finally says.

Amanda is smarter than she looks. This is her first non-question, and she vocalized something meant to throw me off guard.

“Okay” is all I say.

“She’s made some progress in therapy sessions with her own doctor.”

I keep my face stiff, hoping she can’t tell I didn’t know Mom was in therapy. Ever since Dad cut his losses with me he’s re-upped his investment in her, which I imagine is where this is coming from. I picture them stopping at Starbucks on the way home from her appointments, sitting by the lake in the park we used to picnic in together. Except now there’s no space between them on the bench where I used to be. It would almost be romantic if it didn’t leave me stranded.

“She said I could share some things with you that you might find helpful. Would you like to hear them?”

I try to want to. I think Sasha Stone would want to. Somewhere, her heart cares that her mother has been destroyed by this, and that the little pieces are being put back together by a stranger while she’s being sidelined. As if Sasha Stone were an impediment to her own mother’s improvement.

“Yes, tell me,” I say.

Amanda flips some pages in her notebook, and I wonder where the demarcation is between the pages that are about me, the pages that are about Shanna, and the ones about my mom, and if the ink bleeds through, one page to the next.

“She told her doctor that she was worried about weight gain when she found out she was pregnant with twins, and that she was determined to remain active throughout the pregnancy. But that she may have overdone it.”

“Okay,” I say again, keeping my face blank while Amanda waits for me to interpret.

“Sasha, your mother blames herself for your sister’s miscarriage. She always has.”

I nod to encourage her to go on, not because I agree.

“Your mother has been carrying the guilt for years, and the chance to right the wrong to the unborn child inside her living daughter made her want to believe you.”

Amanda leans forward in her chair, which should be dramatic but she loses her balance when it rolls a little.