29. Julia
Julia
Friday morning arrives with absolutely no regard for the fact that my psychiatrist turned out to be the masked man who had been stalking me, fucking me and betraying my trust in the most twisted way imaginable.
There should be some kind of allowance for that.
A federally mandated personal day, perhaps.
Instead, my alarm goes off at six-thirty, my phone lights up on the nightstand with three emails that came in overnight, and somewhere down the street a garbage truck makes enough noise to suggest the entire neighborhood has agreed life will continue whether I participate in it or not.
I lie there staring at the ceiling until the alarm begins its second round.
The other side of my bed is empty. That shouldn’t be the first thing I notice but it is, and I hate myself for it immediately.
Not because I expect Kai to be there. I told him never to come near me again, and despite everything else he has done, there is a part of me that believes he listened.
Ghost listened whenever I gave him a boundary.
Apparently the irony of that is going to keep finding new ways to make me furious.
Still, my eyes move toward the place where he slept. I remember the weight of his arm over my waist and the quiet warmth of his body behind mine. I remember waking after the first night and finding him gone, then walking into the kitchen and seeing the note he left behind.
I liked holding you afterward.
My throat tightens.
“Fuck you,” I whisper into the empty room.
I’m not entirely sure which version of him I’m aiming at, but it has to be both. They are one and the same, at last.
I force myself out of bed. The shower is too hot, my coffee tastes wrong even though I make it exactly the way I always do, and I spend almost ten minutes standing in front of my closet before realizing I have been staring at the same three blouses without actually seeing any of them.
Eventually I choose navy because it requires no thought.
I stand in front of a mirror. I am wearing makeup, my hair is done, my laptop is in my bag and I look exactly like the version of Julia Hayes who walks into work every morning with an answer for everything. I almost admire her. She is a phenomenal liar.
The drive downtown is uneventful, which feels offensive.
Traffic moves, people change lanes badly.
A man in the car beside me drinks something enormous through a green straw while singing with enough enthusiasm to make me wonder whether he has ever experienced betrayal in his entire life.
I park in the garage beneath the building and sit behind the wheel for another minute after turning off the engine.
Then I go upstairs because that is what I do, I go to work.
I answer emails, correct an error in a filing that would have become everybody’s emergency by lunch, sit through a meeting where two attorneys spend fifteen minutes disagreeing over wording they eventually change back to what I suggested in the first place, and return three calls without once thinking about Kai for almost twenty consecutive minutes. That may be a record.
Daniel appears at my desk before noon, takes one look at me and lowers the folder he is holding.
“You look like shit.”
I look up from my screen. “Good morning to you too.”
“It’s twelve-fifteen.”
“Then your observational skills are slipping.” Normally that would earn me something dramatic.
Today he keeps looking at me. I know exactly what he sees. Concealer can hide a bad night or the fact that I cried myself to sleep, but apparently not whatever has settled behind my eyes since yesterday afternoon.
“You okay?” The question makes something inside me pull tight.
For one awful second, I hear another voice saying the same thing. Kai standing beside the cabinet with his sleeves rolled up.
You okay?
I look back at my screen. “I had a rough night.”
Daniel waits. He is good at that when he decides to be.
“I don’t want to talk about it yet.”
His expression softens immediately, and the absence of pressure almost undoes me more effectively than concern would.
“Okay.”
Daniel giving me the right to pick and choose the time I wanted to talk about things that were bothering me had aways been one of his personality traits that I loved most about him.
He places the folder on my desk. “This can wait until the end of the week.”
“I can do it.”
“I know you can.” He pushes it farther from my keyboard anyway. “That was not the question.”
I look at him.
He gives me a small smile. “Eat something.”
Apparently every person in my life has formed a committee about whether I consume lunch.
The thought brings Kai’s last note back so quickly that I have to look away.
Drink plenty of water, eat something that qualifies as an actual meal.
My eyes burn. I hate him. I hate that he cared. I hate that I still believe he did.
“I’m getting lunch in ten minutes,” I tell Daniel.
“Excellent. I’ll alert the media.” He leaves before I can throw anything at him.
I sit very still until the pressure behind my eyes passes. Then I get lunch.
The first email from Mara arrives that afternoon.
I nearly delete it without opening it. Her name in my inbox feels like an extension of him even though I know that isn’t fair, and for several seconds my finger stays frozen over the trackpad while anger does something hot and unreasonable behind my ribs. Eventually I click.
There is no message from Kai tucked inside it. No apology passed through her or a suggestion that I need to reconsider. Mara keeps it completely administrative, which I am grateful for even though gratitude feels like another thing I don’t want connected to that office.
She tells me my care with Dr. Blackwood has ended effective immediately and provides four referral options, all outside the practice.
Two women, two men. Different locations.
Trauma experience listed beneath each. She says she can transfer my records to whichever provider I choose, or send them directly to me if I would rather handle it myself. At the bottom is one final line.
“You don’t owe me a reply until you’re ready.”
I stare at that for longer than the rest. Then I close the email without choosing anyone.
The idea of sitting in another therapist’s office makes my stomach turn.
Therapy helped, it really did. That is the worst fucking part.
Kai helped me. There is no comfortable way around that truth.
He gave me language for things I had spent years blaming myself for.
He sat across from me while I told him about eighteen and did not let me minimize what happened.
He challenged every apology I offered for simply existing in the room.
He taught me to notice how quickly I made myself responsible for everybody else.
And while he was doing all of that, he was watching my house.
Both things are true. I don’t know what the hell to do with that.
The envelope arrives Saturday morning. Not black.
For some reason that matters more than the color of the envelope should matter to anyone.
I find it in the mailbox with two pieces of junk mail and a utility statement, cream paper inside a plain white envelope with my full name written across the front.
Julia Hayes.
Not Little Ember. I know the handwriting anyway. For a second I can’t breathe. He promised no more letters. Then I remember what I actually said.
No coming near my house. No watching. No bike. No checking on me through Mara.
I never specifically said no letters. Of course the psychiatrist would find the one technical opening I left behind.
Anger comes fast enough to steady me. I take the envelope inside, drop everything else onto the kitchen counter and stare at it as though it might explain itself if I wait long enough.
I nearly tear it in half without opening it.
Then curiosity wins, which pisses me off even more.
I read the entire thing standing at the island.
By the time I reach This is the last letter I will ever send you, I already know I should stop.
I read on. About his mother, about the way she used to disappear while still moving through the world, insisting she was fine because people preferred the easy answer.
I read the distinction he makes immediately, almost desperately, that I did not remind him of his mother.
The expression did. The vacancy. The lie wrapped inside “I’m fine.
” I read about the night he followed me after I dissociated.
I read where he admitted that the first time he followed me was out of concern, but everything after was a conscious choice.
That he stayed when he should have left, how he returned when he had no right, wrote because he wanted me to know someone had noticed me and then kept writing because he liked the woman who answered.
I sit down somewhere around the part where he admits he didn’t want to lose Thursdays.
That line hurts more than it should. My fingertips rest against the edge of the paper while I stare at his handwriting and remember every Thursday afternoon I spent wondering why the hour passed faster than it should.
Apparently he wondered too. That doesn’t make anything better, it only makes it sadder.
By the time I reach the end, my anger has become something less useful — not forgiveness, nowhere near it. Grief, maybe. For Ghost. For Kai. For whatever I believed I had with both of them before one tattoo ripped the wall down between them. I read the final lines again despite myself.
You once asked whether I would ever let you see me.
I wish I had understood then that the mask was never the thing keeping you from doing that.
Goodbye, Little Ember.
—Kai
My vision blurs.
“Asshole.” The word shakes when I say it.