1. Miles #2
"Dr. McCabe, you don't know me, but we must talk about Iris Delacroix. About what really happened at Riverside. About why she's not the only one."
The phone nearly slipped from my fingers.
My blood turned to slush.
Iris… Iris Delacroix.
I hit replay, my thumb shaking against the screen. Surely I'd misheard. It was a call intended for someone else, some other Dr. McCabe dealing with a different crisis.
I listened again. Whoever it was had planned the call down to the digital distortion that made them impossible to identify.
They knew about Riverside.
The full conversation with Iris returned. It was 2:30 AM, eighteen months ago, a voice so thin and shaky I'd barely recognized it as the woman who'd been making such progress in our sessions.
"Miles, I shouldn't have gone there. Something's wrong. Something's really wrong."
"Where, Iris? Gone where?"
"Riverside. The place they told me about. They said it would help, said it was the next step, but Miles — "Her voice cracked. "They're doing things. Things that aren't... this isn't therapy. This isn't helping."
"Iris, slow down. Tell me exactly—"
"No. No, I can't. I signed things. Legal things. But Miles, promise me you won't write this down. Promise me you won't put this in my file."
God help me, I'd promised. She'd sounded so broken and terrified. I thought I was protecting her.
I'd kept that promise even after they found her body on the pavement outside her apartment building a week later, even when the police asked if she'd mentioned anything unusual in her last session. When her sister called, desperate to understand what had driven Iris to jump,
I'd kept my word and hated myself for it every day since.
The phone screen blurred. I gripped the porch railing so hard my knuckles bleached white, my breath coming in short, sharp bursts that fogged in the cool air.
About what really happened at Riverside. About why she's not the only one.
The caller knew something I didn't. Something about Iris and the place that had broken her so severely she'd rather die than live with whatever they'd done to her.
And they had my number. My professional number was the one I gave to clients in crisis.
Which meant they knew precisely who I was.
I hit replay again. Then again.
It was a blocked number. The caller hadn't gotten that far by being careless. The implications crashed over me in waves.
Someone had been watching. Listening. Waiting.
For eighteen months.
I was sweating despite the cool air. The familiar sounds of my family filtered through Ma's kitchen window—the clatter of dishes and Michael's low rumble of laughter.
It was a world away from where I was standing.
Why she's not the only one.
The words echoed in my head. Other clients? Other people like Iris, broken by whatever happened at this place I'd never investigated, never questioned, never—
You failed her.
The thought tore into every tender spot. I'd had pieces of the puzzle—Iris's panic, her fear, and her insistence that something was fundamentally wrong with the treatment program. And I'd done nothing.
I'd kept her secret, yes, but I'd also let her disappear back into hell. A week later, she was dead.
How many others had there been since? How many clients had I failed to protect because I focused on honoring confidentiality instead of asking the hard questions?
Through the window, I glimpsed Ma moving around her kitchen, probably wrapping the leftover roast in enough foil to survive a nuclear winter. Marcus gestured about something. Matthew laughed at whatever Michael had just said.
They had no idea their baby brother stood ten feet away, drowning in the implications of a thirty-second voicemail.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Pocket the phone. Go back inside.
I couldn't—yet.
Someone out there was waiting for my response. Someone who knew things about Iris's death that I didn't, and who might have answers to questions I'd been too afraid to ask.
Or someone who might be the reason those questions needed to be asked in the first place.
My hands shook as I saved the voicemail.
The familiar sound of Ma's laughter, drifting through the window, carved its way between my ribs.
Everything had changed. And I was the only one who knew it.
When I pushed through the back door into Ma's kitchen, the warmth was foreign, like walking into someone else's life.
"There he is," Matthew said, looking up from where he was drying a serving platter. "Everything okay out there? You look like someone walked over your grave."
Three pairs of eyes turned toward me. Marcus paused in his systematic organization of Ma's silverware drawer. Michael straightened from where he'd been loading the dishwasher. Ma emerged from the pantry with a container of something that would become tomorrow night's dinner.
"Work," I said. "Crisis doesn't take weekends off."
They were cardboard words. Familiar shape, hollow inside.
"Anything serious?" Ma asked.
"Nothing I can't handle." I moved to the sink, taking the platter from Matthew's hands, and focused on the simple task of putting it away. Normal. Routine. "Where does this go again?"
"Same place it's been for the last twenty years." Ma smiled.
I sank back into the cleanup rhythm, but everything was wrong now. The familiar was completely different.
"You sure you're okay?" Michael asked quietly, appearing at my elbow as I reached for another plate. He pitched his voice low enough that the others couldn't hear.
"Yeah," I said, not looking at him. "Tired. Long week."
It wasn't entirely a lie. I was tired. Bone-deep, soul-deep exhausted. It was a byproduct of carrying other people's trauma around in my chest.
Alex bumped my shoulder and offered, "Text if you can't sleep." I swallowed hard, wishing it were possible. Wishing my ghosts would fit inside a text.
After drying the last plate, I put it away in its designated spot, and looked around at Ma's kitchen—James labeling leftovers, Alex stealing a kiss from Michael, and Dorian trading quiet jokes with Matthew. Clean. Organized. Safe.
I wanted to stay in the moment forever. I wanted to live in the space between the voicemail and whatever came next, where the worst thing I had to worry about was Matthew's questionable taste in hockey teams.
I couldn't. Somewhere out there, Iris's ghost was waiting for me to finally do what I should have done eighteen months ago.
The unknown caller wouldn't wait—and I couldn't pretend I hadn't heard them.