My feet drag toward Dr. Calloway’s office.
Evelyn is with Susan and I don’t care.
I don’t care.
I really don’t.
Does that make me a terrible mom? Absolutely.
My mind feels like a fighter in the ring being hit over and over with words and explanations. It is bruised and battered and very close to breaking.
I knock once before I enter Calloway’s office. The door shuts softly behind me. I sit across from Calloway, my hands laced in front of me. The nervous energy is impossible to contain. It hovers around me like a swarm of bees, threatening to attack me at any second.
“You look tired, Victoria,” says Dr. Calloway. “Are you not sleeping well?”
“I’m sleeping fine,” I mumble. It’s a complete lie, but how am I supposed to explain that the voices inside my head are getting louder, more aggressive, more demanding as time goes by?
It’s simple: I can’t.
“Where is your baby today?” Dr. Calloway asks. I see a trace of concern in her eyes.
“She’s with Susan.”
“That’s good.”
“How so?”
“You’re getting a small break,” she explains. “Some breathing room.”
I snort. “If you say so.”
“Everyone needs time to themselves,” Dr. Calloway says. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“Everything is wrong with that.” The words tumble out before I can process them. After that there’s no controlling what I say; I have to get it off my chest. “Good moms love and protect their child. No matter how they’re feeling.”
I watch Dr. Calloway carefully, looking for any trace of judgment. But there’s nothing.
“You don’t feel like you’re protecting your baby? I promise you that Susan will take good care of her.”
“It’s not that. It’s just…it’s…”
“It’s what?”
In frustration, I close my eyes, rub my temples, and take a deep breath. I try to sort through my thoughts and feelings so I can adequately explain myself.
“It’s just that lately, my daughter can’t stand to be around me,” I finally confess.
“What makes you think that?”
“All she does is cry.” I tuck my hands one beneath the other to stop myself from picking at my nails. “No matter how hard I try she doesn’t calm down. It’s like…it’s like she hates me.”
Dr. Calloway sits back in her chair. “I’m sure she doesn’t.”
Abruptly, I stand up and start to pace the room. “But she does. Lately, whenever I stare into her eyes, I see no acknowledgment. It’s like I’m a stranger to her.”
“How does that make you feel?”
“Awful!” I explode.
“What I mean is, do you feel yourself becoming distant from her too?”
I stop walking and turn to face Calloway. “Yes.”
“And it makes you feel like a bad mom,” she says.
Anxiously, I nod my head. “Yes, absolutely.”
“There’s nothing to worry about.” I give her a dirty look. All she does is smile. “I mean it. You’re under a lot of pressure right now, experiencing pieces of your past that aren’t always easy to experience a second time.”
I drag my fingers through my hair. I want to scream. I want to cry. I want to laugh. I want to do anything and everything and nothing all at the same time.
It doesn’t make sense, but nothing about me right now makes sense.
Dr. Calloway turns a paper and slides it toward me. The dates and words blend together. I can decipher nothing. What I know with a certainty is that this time line is insanity by numbers.
Why did I do this? Why did I open Pandora’s box? Is my life here truly that bad that I willingly put myself through this torture?
There are so many questions and I can’t give a single honest answer.
“I’m losing it. I’m really losing it,” I say into my palms.
After a moment of silence, my hands drop to my sides. I lift my head.
Dr. Calloway doesn’t say a word. Her eyes are blank. No judgment. No pity. But honestly, on some level she has to think I’m insane. Just like the other doctors.
“Do you think I’m crazy?”
“Absolutely not. No one’s crazy. But the world is. Everything has a label and a place. But it’s impossible to group everyone’s feelings and reactions into boxes. Especially reactions. Everyone is different and everyone will react to situations differently. You’re being incredibly hard on yourself. If anyone were to travel back through their past, forced to watch the good, the bad, the ugly, they would easily be feeling the same way.”
She may be humoring me. She may be doing reverse psychology on me. Right now it doesn’t matter. “You think so?” I ask.
Dr. Calloway nods. “Of course. To be honest, I think you’re holding up pretty great.”
I want to believe her so badly. But I’m scared.
“You can keep doing this,” she says gently. “You’ve survived your past before. You can do it again.”
I find myself nodding. I find hope that’s been dying inside me slowly come back to life.
“More pictures?” she asks tentatively.
“More pictures.”
The first one is of a positive pregnancy test. It seems ridiculous—bordering on silly—to take a picture of a thin stick. For a second, I’m pushed back into the moment. The test was balanced on my knees. My hands were shaking so badly I had to take multiple pictures before I got one that wasn’t blurry.
The third is of my mother and me sitting at a table at what looks like some kind of event. My cheeks are rosy and even sitting down it’s impossible to miss my burgeoning belly, straining against my dark purple dress.
The pace picks up. Dr. Calloway moves the pictures so rapidly that one picture falls out of the stack and flutters to the floor. I break my concentration and bend to pick it up. When I turn it over I scream.
At least I think I do.
My ears start to ring and my blood runs cold. My mind is begging for me to look away, but I can’t. The dead body is all I can see. It’s lying flat on an embankment, with water lapping at the grass. The body is badly decomposed. Any skin that’s left is brown, looking as rough as tree bark. It’s impossible to distinguish any features. It’s like the lake and fish joined forces to eat the body down to the bare bones. Where the eyes should be are two black pools of nothing.
My hand shakes as I wave the picture in Dr. Calloway’s face. “What is this?”
Dr. Calloway stands. She snatches the picture out of my hands. When she gets a good look, her face goes pale. “I don’t know how this got in there.”
I know that this is the photo that makes everyone assume Wes is dead. Can I blame them? The clothes are the same ones he always wears when he visits me, but in the picture his white shirt has tears in it. The sleeve of his jacket is torn, hanging off his arm. One of his shoes is off.
“Why would you have that?”
“Victoria, I’ve looked at this stack of pictures a handful of times. I’ve never seen this before.”
“It’s not him.” Rapidly, I shake my head. “It’s not Wes. That’s not him.”
Dr. Calloway nods and slowly walks around her desk. “Just take a few deep breaths.”
“He’s doing this to me. He set this up!”
“Who?”
“WES!” I scream out his name so loudly, my ears start to ring.
“Just take a few deep breaths,” Dr. Calloway repeats.
Doesn’t she see that I’m so far past the point of deep breaths? I hunch over, my hands resting on my knees, and gasp for air. I see the pictures in perfect order and the crazy part is that it makes sense. It fits. But there’s not a single part of me that wants to admit that maybe everyone is right.
Maybe my husband has been dead all this time and I’ve been talking to the ghost of him.
Maybe I really do belong at Fairfax.
The pictures are a distant thought, but the wheels of the past are set into motion. I’m not eased slowly into the memories, as I usually am. This time they hit me so hard I fall to my knees and drop my face into my hands.