“How about some TV?” Angelo asked.

He got up and brought me the remote from the cabinet on the opposite wall.

I couldn’t answer. There were no words to explain how I felt. A heavy weight pressed down on me, pushing me into the mattress. It kept getting heavier and heavier. Soon I would fall right through the bed, through the floor, through the earth. I’d come out on the other side of the globe and float away into space.

I didn’t want to watch TV at a time like this.

I needed to see Sophia. And if I couldn’t do that, what the hell was I supposed to do? I woke up a different person in this hospital room. Everything changed. I couldn’t just sit around and watch bad morning television.

There seemed to be nothing to do, really.

Other than talk about it all.

“I’ll tell you,” I said in a shaky voice. “About why I had a panic attack.”

Angelo froze with the remote in his hand. He set it back down and hurried back to his seat next to the bed.

“Yes. Of course. If you want to.”

“Yeah. I do.”

I looked down at my clasped hands. Were they always that white?

“I don’t know where to start,” I said in a voice so small I barely heard it myself.

“That’s okay. Wherever you want.”

“That photo...”

Angelo’s head cocked. “What photo?”

“That’s where it started. There’s a photograph in your house. My parents were in it. I saw it and I remembered...” Panic fluttered in my chest, half as real as it was that day so long ago.

A heavy minute passed.

Angelo spoke in a soft voice. “Is this about your parents’ deaths?”

“Yes.” I gathered my courage and tried again. As hard as it was to not talk about all of this, talking was just as hard. It was like pulling out a thorn. You knew you needed to do it, but the truth was that it hurt to let the thorn stay in and it hurt to take it out. One way or the other you were screwed.

“I was home,” I explained. “When my parents were murdered.”

Angelo said nothing. I turned my eyes from the wall to take in his face. He sat passive, not betraying anything.

“It was just me and Mom and Dad. Sophia was off somewhere. Probably at a friend’s house or something.”

Angelo’s hand scooped up mine. I squeezed it lightly.

“You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to.”

I ignored his offer. I needed to get it all out. Needed to dispel the poison that had lived in me for too long. All this time this sick memory had been lurking inside me and I didn’t even know about it.

“Mom and I were in the back. Dad answered the door and we heard voices. They got kind of loud. Mom looked so scared...” I swallowed hard, seeing her pale face.

The face that was just as pale as my hands were now.

“She made me go into the false wall behind the closet in her bedroom. It was this small standing up place. There were a couple little holes in it, though, so you could see out a bit.”

I’d always wondered why my parents had that false wall, and thought they were just paranoid. Soph and I knew about it our entire lives. Mom and Dad always said that if something happened, if someone broke into the house, we were to go and hide behind it.

I took a moment. Telling the story, feeling all these things again, had me faint headed.

“She was starting to leave the room…but these men came in, pushing Dad in front of them. They had guns, and they said a couple other things, but I don’t remember what it was. They shot Mom and Dad. Right there.”

I shut my eyes, trying to escape into the blackness behind my lids. “I almost screamed out loud. I had to cover my mouth with my hands. It happened so fast. They left really quickly after that.”

Angelo’s hand tightened on mine. “Paige… I’m so sorry.”

My eyes fluttered open. It took some effort, but I managed to look him in the eye.

“What did you do next?” he asked.

“I stayed there. I was frozen. I couldn’t move. It never occurred to me that Mom and Dad might be alive. There had been so many bullets and there were no sounds. The men left right away. And then, I don’t know how long after, the police came. The neighbors called them after they heard gun shots.”

I gulped. “Even when the cops came I couldn’t get myself out of the closet. I couldn’t move my legs. One of the police officers heard me crying, I think. That’s how they found me.”

Angelo’s face was stony, his eyes cold. “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe you had to go through that.”

I shrugged. What was there to say to that?

“I never remembered it.”

“What’s that?”

“I forgot all about that day,” I said. “I didn’t remember anything about it until today. I thought… I always thought I wasn’t home. And Sophia and I never talked about it.” My heart rate picked up. “But you know, I never remembered just where I was.”

“It sounds like you repressed the memory. People do that sometimes after traumatic events.”

“But Soph had to know I was there,” I murmured. “The police must have told her.”

“Yes, but she saw what it did to you. That’s why she never brought it up.”

“That’s why she let me think I was somewhere else when it happened,” I added, putting it together as I spoke.

“I don’t get why it would come back to you today though. You keep photos of your parents, right?”

“Yeah, I do. I have one in my bedroom. It was the shirt.”

“Huh?”

“The shirt Mom wore in the photo. It was the one she wore when she was killed.”

I remembered seeing that shirt through the hole in the wall, the fabric she loved so much stained with bright red blood. I saw it as she crumpled to the ground, her legs giving way and sending her crashing to the carpet. After that I didn’t see much of anything else.

In fact, I don’t know just when I started functioning properly.

Hell, maybe I never did.

“No one ever suggested this to you?” Angelo probed. “No one ever said, hey, you’re blocking out part of your memory?”

I thought hard. “Maybe. But it’s been years. It wasn’t like I had anyone to talk to. Not about the murder, anyway. I mean, what’s the point?”

“What about therapy? Did you get any of that?”

“Yeah.”

I tried to think back, but just the effort made my head hurt. Slowly the memories trickled in. I’d been to a few different therapists over the course of several years. Though they were all only faint memories, I got the feeling I didn’t really remember the first one.

“I don’t think it helped,” I told him simply.

Angelo sighed. “I’m sorry it didn’t.”

“I didn’t speak for six months. That much I remember.”

Angelo ran his hand up my arm, attempting to comfort me.

“And the nightmares...” I took in a shuddering breath. “Those I remember. I kept seeing the murder happen over and over again. Sometimes Sophia would walk in and they’d get her too. Always there was just me left.”

“I can’t imagine,” he murmured.

“I bounced around to a few different therapists, but nothing really seemed to help. I had bad anxiety and depression for years. I got a prescription to help deal, but eventually the doctors told me I was not clinically depressed.” It took some effort to smile. “I can’t say that I had a problem with that diagnosis. I hated all those pills.”

“But what changed? Something had to change? You don’t seem depressed and anxious today.”

“Mostly, it was my writing that helped. And going to college. It got me in a new headspace. Being responsible for readings and projects got my mind off of being down all the time. And the people I met in college didn’t know about my past. That made a difference. It was a fresh start, you know?”

He nodded. “Do you remember any more about what happened since that day?”

“Bits and pieces. I mean, those first months are blurry… but after that, yeah. I think I do.”

“Maybe you suppressed that one memory to cope. Maybe not right after the event happened, but at some point. That could explain why you don’t remember everything from before.”

I stared at him, hating how true the words probably were.

Just how much of my life did I know nothing about?

How much of myself did I not know?

“I guess that’s why I didn’t recognize you or Franko.”

He tilted his head. “Don’t beat yourself up over it. Time does that to the best of us. I didn’t immediately recognize you either, for the record, when I saw you in the coffee shop that first time. I just thought you looked familiar.”

“At least you remember most of the details of your life before you were fifteen.”

“Yes,” he slowly said.

“I barely do.”

His jaw clicked.

“You look angry,” I stated simply.

Angelo ran a hand along his jaw. “I am. Just at the fact that you had to go through this.”

“Well there’s nothing to be done about it now.”

He didn’t look at me, instead seeming to be off in his own world.

“I also didn’t remember anything about Dad’s job. I mean, about...”

Angelo looked back at me. “His involvement in the mafia world?”

“I knew he was a tailor, but I didn’t remember he had… dealings.”

“He was kind of my family’s tailor. He did civilian work, but I don’t think he worked for any of the other families.”

“And you don’t know why they might have been killed?”

“No,” he frowned. “I’m sorry.”

I bitterly clicked my tongue. “I’m worthless.”

“Don’t say that,” he fiercely said. “The past isn’t who you are anyway.”

I studied his face and decided he meant what he said. It helped some.

“Anyway,” he went on, “Now that this has happened you might start remembering other things.”

“Maybe.”

Hopefully any other repressed memories were better than the one of that fateful day. Not likely, though. Wasn’t the point of repressing memories that you wouldn’t have to think about unbearable things?

“You should sleep.”

“Can’t. It’s just not possible.”

“All right,” he conceded.

“Has Sophia called back?”

He checked his phone. “No.”

I sighed and dropped my head back against the inclined bed. “TV it is, I guess.”

Angelo got the remote again and clicked through the channels, finally settling on a rerun of some old black and white show from the fifties. I did my best to pay attention, but the reality of everything that had happened was still there.

The memories. The fears. They seemed just as real as ten years ago.

I couldn’t help but think maybe I’d been better off in the dark.