14. Laney
I’ve come to see the therapist Reed has organized for me.
It’s a woman called Sharon Tharp. I’m glad he chose a woman. I don’t think I’d have been able to speak to a man.
Sharon is in her forties, at a guess. She’s perfected the smart-casual look, in a pair of loose cream pants and a white blouse. Even her jewelry is both understated and expensive.
I feel young and impossibly scruffy in her company. I’ve slipped off my sneakers and sit with my feet tucked up under me.
We’ve already gone through what happened during the crash, and the month after in the cabin.
I’ve told her about the terror I’d experienced believing we weren’t going to survive, and how I’d thought we were all going to die at various moments during our hike to safety.
She’s listened intently, asking questions, and nodding at the right times.
The therapist leans forward slightly, her hands wrapped around the knee that’s on top of her crossed legs, and offers me a sympathetic smile.
“I’ve been doing this job a long time now,” she says, “almost twenty-five years, and I can tell when someone isn’t being fully honest with me. You have secrets, Laney, I can see it in your eyes.”
I close the eyes that have betrayed my inner thoughts, trying to hide them from her.
“I don’t know what happened to you out there, Laney. I can’t pretend I’m not concerned. I’ve worked with a lot of women who’ve suffered trauma from abuse, and I’ve got to say you’re showing all the signs. I know you were in that cabin with your stepfather and two stepbrothers…”
I can see exactly where she’s going with this. “No! Whatever it is you’re thinking, stop it now. Nothing like that happened. They’re good men. They’d never hurt me.”
She jerks back at the force of my words. Does she think they groomed me? That I’m some victim because of them?
“There’s a psychological response called Stockholm syndrome,” she says.
My jaw drops. Has she listened to nothing I’ve said?
“It’s not like that!”
She holds up her hand. “Just listen to me, please. It’s more common than you think, and many victims of kidnapping or abuse don’t see it in themselves either.
They believe that how they’re feeling is real, that their love for their kidnapper or abuser is as real as any other, when actually it’s a coping mechanism to get them through their experience. ”
“They didn’t kidnap me or abuse me.”
She tilts her head. “Are you sure about that?”
I grind my teeth. “One hundred percent.”
“You understand that everything said in this room is confidential.”
I jump to my feet. “They didn’t fucking abuse me! I thought you’re supposed to be a therapist. Aren’t therapists supposed to listen, ’cause it seems to me like you’re just creating a whole imaginary situation that never even happened.”
The worst thing is that she’s also right, just not in the way she thinks.
She’s right about the abuse, just not the identity of the abusers.
I’d always been scared of this happening.
By keeping the existence of Smith and his friends a secret, any revelation of the rape I’d suffered would automatically be pinned on my stepbrothers and stepfather.
After all, we were alone in the wilderness. Who else could have been responsible?
“Laney, please, take a few deep breaths and sit back down. I never meant to upset you, but burying things you’ve gone through and refusing to speak about them isn’t going to help either.”
My reaction probably makes me look even guiltier.
But how can I tell her the truth? If she knows we abandoned three men to die, won’t she be compelled to do something about it?
It doesn’t matter what those men have done.
We’re not the judge, jury, and executioners.
We shouldn’t be the ones who get to decide if they live or die.
But that’s exactly what we’ve done, and I don’t regret it for a second. I want Smith, Axel, and Zeke to be dead. I want them to never be able to hurt another person.
By staying quiet, I might be hurting myself, but I’m protecting the people I love the most.
This was a mistake. I want to walk out, to never come back to another session, but I’m worried about the consequences. If I do, will that make Reed and his sons look even guiltier? Will it break the patient-doctor confidentiality and send the therapist to the cops with her suspicions?
I need to find a way out of this.
Instead, I lie, or at least I tell a half truth. I sit back down and bend my head, unable to look at her in case she sees the misdirection in my eyes.
“I did suffer a sexual assault, but not when you think. Before my mother died, when I was still a child, she had boyfriends. Bad men. They didn’t seem to care that I was only thirteen years old. Most of the time, they were drunk or high. I wasn’t sure they even realized I wasn’t my mother.”
She gives me that same sympathetic smile, probably congratulating herself on the breakthrough.
“I’m so sorry, Laney. Thank you for talking about this. Did you ever tell anyone? Did your mother ever know?”
“No, I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t have anyone to tell. And no, I don’t think she knew, but she was always too out of it to understand what was happening.”
“How did it make you feel?”
“Angry, lost, betrayed, hurt. Like my body wasn’t my own anymore.
Like I wanted to tear off my own skin and crawl out of myself.
” Now I’m not lying. It’s exactly how I feel.
“I keep wanting to somehow turn back the clock and go back to the person I was before. It’s like I don’t understand how that isn’t possible, even though I know it’s not.
” I cover my face with my hands. “I know that sounds nuts.”
“It doesn’t. Not at all.”
“I’m angry, too. Angry that—” I catch myself. I’d almost said ‘they’ instead of ‘she.’ “Angry that she didn’t stop it, even though I know she was incapable. Now she’s dead, and I don’t want to still be angry at her.”
Sharon angles her head to one side. “Sometimes anger can be a necessary emotion. Your mother was the person who was supposed to protect you, and she failed. In fact, she didn’t only not protect you, she brought the person who assaulted you into your life.
But she’s gone, and you have no one to aim that anger toward, so instead you’re letting it eat you up inside. ”
“It feels like everything is eating me up inside. Like I’m a hollow shell of a person, walking around, trying to look like I’m still whole.”
“You won’t always feel that way. You will heal.”
I wonder if I’ll stand a chance of healing before that thing eating me up makes me vanish for good.
I glance down at my hands and note how my nails are chewed right down to the beds. The skin around them is a combination of raw and dry, and they’re like an outward sign of my tortured interior. I shove them between my thighs, out of view, though I’m sure they’ve already been noticed.
I don’t tell her that I’ve still got my mother’s ashes sitting in the trailer, and that I have no idea what I’m going to do with them.
She watches me, and I can tell she knows that, despite my revelation, I’m still holding back.
She lets out a sigh, as though I’m disappointing her.
I cringe inside. Why should I even care about that?
I’m paying her—well, Reed is paying her—to help me.
I shouldn’t feel guilty that I’m not living up to her expectations.
“I have a suggestion,” she says. “If there are things you don’t think you can tell me, how would you feel about writing them down?
If you used a password protected document on a computer, so you know no one else can read it, you can get out what’s inside of you without worrying about anyone else finding out. ”
“Writing it down?” Immediately, all my self-doubt floods back to me.
“I’m not exactly a good writer. I never even finished school, and when I was there, I didn’t pay much attention.
” I was too busy being hungry, or trying to ignore the kids who were laughing at my dirty, too small clothes.
“My spelling and grammar aren’t exactly great. ”
She smiles at me. “That doesn’t matter. It’s only for your eyes, remember? No one else is going to read it, so no one else will judge.”
“What’s the point of writing something no one else will read?”
“It can be therapeutic. Help you work through the things you don’t want to say out loud.”
I consider this. Writing down everything feels dangerous. What if someone else comes along and reads it? But then she’s right about me being able to lock it behind a password. Besides, who would even want to read it?
I think of the hordes of journalists. Actually, lots of people would. Even with my shitty grammar and spelling, it is one hell of a story, and not only that, it features Darius Riviera.
Maybe I can write what happened but make out like it’s fictional.
I’ll change our names and ages, maybe even change how we get stranded, write it as a boat sinking, and us ending up on a deserted island instead.
But the rest of it will be true. I can write about how it felt to lose my mom, to find out about the family I barely knew existed.
I can write openly about how our relationship changed over time.
It’s not as though I expect anyone to ever read my story, but I’ll still feel I can be more open by changing the details. I won’t feel the need to censor myself.
It feels like a good compromise, and one I’m safe with.
“Okay,” I say slowly, “as long as you promise I won’t have to show it to anyone, I think I can work with that.”
Her smile widens. “That’s wonderful, Laney. I do think it’ll help. You might find yourself able to open up more in these sessions, too.”
I highly doubt that, but I don’t say so.
She glances at the clock on the wall. “That’s our time up for today. We can chat some more about things when I see you next.”
I nod and get up from the chair.
Will I even book another appointment? I’m not sure. I do feel a little lighter, though, from talking.
I gather my belongings and leave the office.
I realize I don’t actually have anything to write on. I have my phone—the one the airline bought me—but it’s not going to be convenient to write anything on at length. I need something with a proper keyboard.
For the first time in my life, I have money, so, on my way home, I go to an Apple store and buy myself a MacBook Air using the card the airline supplied as part of their compensation.
It’s the most expensive item I’ve ever owned by far, and bizarrely I fight against a wave of guilt about the purchase. I don’t deserve it.
I get home and shut and lock the door behind me, fearful that someone will have spotted me with the expensive box and want to steal it. I place it on the fold-down table and unbox it, lifting the machine from inside. I stroke the silver casing and carefully open the screen.
It’s a thing of beauty.
I spend some time getting the MacBook set up and finding some software I’m comfortable to write with.
“Where do I start?” I say to myself.
The answer comes to me right away. The beginning. The moment in my life where everything changed—the day I came home to find my mom dead on the toilet.
I open a new document, the page completely blank, and start to type.