Chapter 24 #2
“It would be better to just stop playing this game,” Dr. Radley tells me coolly.
“But I can’t force you.” Suddenly she’s on her feet, and I jerk to mine as she strides past, though she doesn’t stop.
She just goes to the wall, pulling off one of the framed photos I noticed before.
Coming back to me, she shows the photo to me, all but thrusting it under my nose.
It’s the same one I looked at before, and it only confuses me more as I wonder why she’s showing me a happy photo of her, her sister, and their parents outside of a cabin in the woods.
“This was the last summer I ever got to spend with my sister Mikaela,” Dr. Radley tells me in a soft, serious voice.
“She’s eighteen here. I’m twenty. We stayed at this cabin with our parents every year; this was the last one.
” Pulling the photo back, she drags her fingers over it affectionately, eyes dulling as she’s lost in the memory.
“She developed a crush on some boy she met on the trails. He was so charming, she said. Mysterious, too, she never found out where he lived.” For a few moments she’s silent, and it scares me to think of all the directions this could go. Somehow, I doubt I’ll be surprised.
“And then he wanted her to stay. They always want you to stay once they get attached, Fern.” She sets down the photo, and her eyes pin mine before I can look away.
“Do you know what it means to stay? Mikaela didn’t.
Not until it was too late. They don’t take no for an answer.
” Her voice turns grim, and my heart sinks.
When Dr. Radley steps forward, I step back and my knees hit the chair, causing me to sit unsteadily.
“The last thing she ever told me was how he wanted her to eat someone with him. Just once . How if she were hungry, really hungry, she’d understand.
Does that ring a bell?” Dr. Radley’s voice is tight, and I have to fight back any kind of comprehension on my face, considering what Cairo told me last week.
She’s too close to his story to be wrong, but he certainly hasn’t done that with me. I take a breath and clutch the arms of the chair. “You’re scaring me, Dr. Radley,” I murmur quietly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but?—”
“He took her,” she goes on, like I haven’t tried to stop her.
She leans over me, one hand on the armrest and her other on mine to keep me in place.
“He took her and kept her until she was starving. But she wouldn’t do it.
She couldn’t. I found her when she was dying, with a broken hip and having not eaten in days.
She told me she was starving,” the therapist whispers, too close to my face.
“But when she wouldn’t join him, he left her there to die.
Now tell me, Fern.” Her gaze holds mine, angry and fevered.
“What makes you think it’ll go any better for you?”
“Because I know what I’m doing, and I know what he is.” The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them, and Dr. Radley jerks upright, her look morphing to confident pleasure at the confirmation.
Fuck.
I walked right into that, and now all I can do is kick myself for not realizing where her words were leading.
“Oh, you do?” she challenges, and moves to put the photo back on the wall with meticulous care so it lines up perfectly.
“Do you think Mikaela didn’t? Do you think a monster can ever love you unselfishly?
Or is he just looking for an end to his own loneliness?
I don’t think they’re made to be alone. They’re always hunting, always hoping.
But you’ve heard them mimic human voices with their throats.
You’ve seen the way they can look like us.
But has it ever occurred to you…?” she trails off and walks back to lean against her desk, gazing once more out the window.
“What if he’s also mimicking your affection for him?
Who’s to say it stops at voices and looks?
My sister was a lot like you, Fern. Stubborn, independent.
Anxious.” She eyes me and I look away at the accusation.
“Always needing approval and reassurance. She needed someone to tell her it was alright. Is that what he does for you? Does he keep you in the dark, only showing you what he wants? Does he disappear when it’s no longer convenient for him and give you just enough to keep you interested? Tell me.”
Again she gazes out the window, and I struggle to find an answer for her, thinking she’s done.
“He told you he’s the one who saved you that night, didn’t he? But if he was really interested in your wellbeing, wouldn’t he have warned you in the first place?”
The question hits something raw and sharp in me. A weakness I didn’t know I had until right now. All of a sudden, my doubts unleash themselves, and I struggle to my feet across from her in the room, though I don’t say a word. This time, she doesn’t push me.
She doesn’t need to.
Dr. Radley has finally found the thing to shake me to my core, to open up Pandora’s Box of doubts about Cairo’s intentions.
But that was her intention all along, I try to remind myself.
She’s not doing this for me. She’s doing this to confirm what she already knows.
I have to keep telling myself that, otherwise I’m going to do something stupid like fall apart in her office and tell her all the things she’s looking for.
I won’t be the one to do that to Cairo. Or Agatha.
Or even Hattie.
“I’m sorry about your sister.” My words come out measured and soft.
I pick up my styrofoam cup, shaking the liquid around inside with nervous, jerky movements.
My heart is racing just as if I’ve run a mile from one of the cursed, and my adrenaline is going the same way.
This woman is dangerous, and I shouldn’t spend a second longer here than I have to.
“And I appreciate everything you’ve done to help me through what happened that night. It really urged me to come a long way.”
She doesn’t respond or even look at me. She doesn’t need to, and that frustrates me more than it should.
“Goodbye, Dr. Radley.” My words are full of finality and forced calm, but when I get to the door, she finally speaks again.
“They’re starving, Fern.” Defeat laces her voice, and when I glance at her, she’s still watching the storm.
“But don’t mistake that as a hunger just for food.
He’ll do anything to get you to join him, to sate his hunger.
” Finally she turns, meeting my gaze with flat, tired resentment. “Even kill you.”
I don’t say a word. There’s nothing to say to her, really. But I hold her gaze, studying the look there, before turning and fleeing. Allowing the heavy door to slam behind me as thunder rumbles closer outside, a herald of the impending storm.