Chapter Nine
Lily
“So what’s on your mind, Lily?”
Dr. Steinberg peered at me, one hand holding a pen and the other a notepad. She was an old-fashioned kind of therapist—handwritten notes, a leather sofa for me to lie back on, and so on—but she knew what she was talking about, and she’d really helped me in the past.
I hesitated before answering her question. There was more than one thing on my mind right now, but I didn’t know exactly how to bring up my current crush. What could I say?
Dr. Steinberg, I’m madly in lust with a man twice my age. All I can think about is sleeping with him, even though I have zero sexual experience, so I don’t know how or why these feelings are happening. I almost got sexually assaulted on the edge of a road earlier tonight, and even directly after such an awful incident, all I could damn well think about was kissing him. Oh, and he’s the old boyfriend of the woman my mother murdered…you know, the root of all my issues?
Yeah, there was a lot to unpack there. Too much. Instead, I told her what I’d originally come here for.
“The nightmares have started again,” I admitted. “They’re worse now.”
“How so?”
I ran her through the dreams I’d been having recently, and she frowned and nodded. “That does sound worse than the ones you used to have. Clearer. More eventful. Do you have any idea what it could all mean?”
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
“I can try. But not yet. It’s helpful if you tell me your thoughts on it. You always know more about yourself than anyone else, Lily. Including me. The solution might already be in your mind, and we just need to coax it out if it’s there. So why do you think these dreams are happening? Your answer might not be right. But it’s a start.”
I nodded. “Okay, I see what you mean. I guess….I guess I’ve been worrying that the reason the dreams are happening is because….”
I hesitated, and Dr. Steinberg leaned forward. “Yes?”
“Because maybe I have more memories of that day than I originally thought. Maybe it’s just taken this long for them to start coming back.”
She nodded slowly. “That’s a possibility. But Lily, your dreams—from what you’ve described—make it seem as if you were responsible for Jenna’s murder. Now, we know you aren’t.”
“Do we?” I cut in.
“Well, we can be quite certain. It’s an open and shut case with the police. Your mother did it.”
“Quite certain isn’t certain,” I insisted.
Dr. Steinberg sighed. “Okay, for argument’s sake—let’s say the police are wrong, and maybe there is a chance your mother did not murder Jenna Potter. So what then? Why would it be you who did it? And where is your mother now? If she wasn’t guilty, why did she pack her things, clear out her bank accounts and go into permanent hiding, ostensibly to avoid prosecution?”
I shrugged. “Maybe I went crazy and did it, and she decided to cover for me.”
She tapped her pen. “All right. We’ll come back to that in a moment. But first, I have a theory. Something I think is far more likely. I’d like you to hear it.”
“Okay.”
“I think perhaps part of you feels responsible for what happened back then, even though you weren’t literally responsible for it. That’s manifesting itself in these dreams, where you seem to be literally carrying out the murder. You see, you blame yourself for your mother snapping the way she did. You think maybe you could’ve helped her. Done something. Something to stop her from losing it, for want of a better term. Maybe that would’ve prevented Jenna’s death. But you feel as if you let this happen. You feel as if you didn’t do enough to stop it. And therefore you feel responsible. Does that sound like it could be true?”
I nodded reluctantly. “Maybe. But I don’t know.”
“If it is true, then you need to know something, Lily. There wasn’t anything you could’ve done. Your mother…she was disturbed. It’s not your fault she killed Jenna. You aren’t responsible for Jenna’s death.”
“Okay. But what if it’s not just some weird mental analogy thing? What if I actually had something to do with her death, and I blocked it out until now? Maybe that’s what the dreams are—I’m remembering what I did.”
“Lily, do you really think that as a thirteen-year-old girl you went and shot a woman to death?”
I hesitated. It did sound ridiculous. But the dreams were so intense. Seeing all that blood…smelling that coppery scent so clearly….surely my imagination couldn’t conjure all that up. I had a deep gut feeling that I’d really been there that day, and I couldn’t make it go away no matter how much I told myself it was illogical.
“You might be correct about memories finally returning,” Dr. Steinberg went on. “But you’re making far too big a leap from that. It doesn’t necessarily mean you killed Jenna. Perhaps you saw more that day than you initially recalled. Or heard more. Maybe that’s what is returning to you in your dreams. Do you think that could be possible?”
“I suppose so,” I said quietly. “Like, maybe I was actually at Jackson’s house for some reason that day, and I saw the murder. And I’ve blocked that out for some reason.”
“Exactly. Can you think of a reason why you might’ve been there that day?”
I shook my head. “No. I was sick that day. And when Dad came home—after the cops told him what happened—he found me in bed. So even if I was there at Jackson’s and saw what Mom did, I apparently came straight home and got into bed instead of calling the police. Why would I do that?”
“Perhaps you were traumatized. Confused. There’s any number of reasons, Lily. You were so young at the time.”
“Thirteen isn’t that young,” I insisted.
“I’d like to try something with you, if that’s all right,” Dr. Steinberg said, smoothly avoiding an argument with me. “Hypnosis is a pretty old technique, and most therapists wouldn’t employ it nowadays. But I’ve found it to be effective with some patients.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Really? Hypnosis?”
She nodded. “Usually I’d use it as a trick for cessation of smoking or other negative habits. But it can be used to travel back to old memories, in a sense. What would happen is: I place you under and tell you where and when to go, and you tell me what you are seeing. You won’t remember any of it when you wake up, but I can record it and play it back to you so you can hear what you said. Would that be okay with you?”
I nodded. “Sure, if it might help me regain these memories, or whatever they are.”
“Okay. Let’s get started then. I want you to close your eyes and start counting slowly backwards from one hundred. Listen to my voice, and try to block everything out.”
I did as she said, and within moments, I was feeling drowsy. I needed to sleep so badly…just a few minutes wouldn’t hurt…
Suddenly I was wide awake again, and I sat up. Dr. Steinberg was still in her seat, and her eyebrows were raised slightly despite the fact she was obviously trying to keep a neutral expression on her face. I knew immediately that something had happened. I must’ve said or done something bad while I was under the effects of the hypnosis.
“Is it over?” I asked tentatively.
She nodded. “You were under for five minutes. You said a lot of things. Some more…relevant than others.” Her voice sounded troubled, and my heart began to pound as she took a long pause. “Lily, you said something about a man. Perhaps he’s the same man you mentioned being in your new nightmares earlier.”
She pressed play on a recording device, and I listened closely.
‘Lily, where are you right now? What’s happening?’ Dr. Steinberg was saying.
I heard my own voice a minute later. ‘I’m here. At Jackson and Jenna’s house. He’s here too. I hear him.’
‘Who’s ‘he’, Lily?’
‘He’s saying that I did it. He’s asking why I did this. Oh god, there’s blood everywhere. I have the gun…oh no. I think I did this. I did this!’
I cringed as I heard myself say those things on the recording. Jesus. Maybe I was losing my mind.
Maybe I already lost it years ago.
Maybe I really did kill Jenna….
Dr. Steinberg pressed pause, and I knew what she was thinking. She was thinking that it was looking more and more likely that I had something to do with Jenna’s death, but of course she couldn’t say that. “Do you think that’s the same man?” she asked.
I nodded, hands shaking. “Yes. That’s the man I keep hearing in my dreams. He always says ‘why did you do this, Lily?’ when he finds me with the blood everywhere.”
“Again, this doesn’t necessarily mean you did anything,” she said. “As we discussed earlier, it’s likely just feelings manifesting themselves as events in the dream. Events that might’ve never happened. But on the chance that it’s a real memory coming back to you…do you have any idea who the man is?”
I shrugged. “No idea. He says other stuff too. In the dream, I mean. He comes to me at the start, or sometimes at the end, and he says everything will be okay. But I think I know who that is. I think that’s actually a different man.”
“Who?”
“My dad,” I replied. “In real life, after he came home and found me asleep that day, he hugged me and told me everything would be okay. He told me that the other day.”
She nodded. “In dreams, real memories of events are often interspersed with imaginary ones. So that likely is your father’s voice you hear telling you everything will be okay.”
“And the other voice? The other man? Who could he be?”
She was silent for a moment. “I have some homework for you, Lily. Are you going to be coming in for another session this month?”
“If I can get some more money together,” I said.
“Okay. Well, I’d like you to. But even if you can’t, I have something I want you to do, like I said a few seconds ago. Every night before you go to sleep, I want you to try and think about who this other mystery man could be, and why he would be at Jackson and Jenna’s house that day—if he really was and if it’s a real event you’re remembering. We often dream about things we were thinking of right before we fall asleep, so if you keep concentrating on this man’s voice, you might dream about him again. More and more. This might help reveal his identity, and that can help us figure out these dreams in turn.”
I nodded. “Okay. I’ll try.”
Even right now, I was trying to think of who this mysterious man could be. But try as I might, and despite everything that’d just happened….there was only one man I could think about right now: the man who’d just rescued me from a horrible assault only an hour and a half ago. The man who comforted me, talked to me and made me feel safe afterwards. The man who made me feel….everything.
The man I had to have.
The man I was going to have.
Jackson.