Chapter 23 Now
Now
Dimple
It’s a sunny view I’m treated to in Dimple’s office today. The trees beyond the window look particularly verdant and lush. I’m decidedly more on edge.
“I’m in a funny sort of mood,” I announce, fingers stroking across peach fuzz.
“How so?” she asks.
“I think I get it. My impulses, I mean.” My mouth twists at the euphemism.
Say what you mean and mean what you say, after all.
“I have a better understanding of why I hurt people. It’s always been obvious with the others that they’ve pissed me off in some way.
But it’s not just that. It’s not just annoying me, or even betraying me.
It’s about power. It’s about injustice. It’s about them taking something from me and me needing to take something back. ”
Dimple makes a movement of her head that could be agreement or a simple checking of her notes. “What makes you say that?”
I consider her for a moment, whether I’m still prepared to embrace this unbridled honesty I’ve decided will help her help me. Well, I do want to be helped…
“I tried to kill someone last weekend.”
She blinks once, twice. Her mouth flops open and then clamps shut. An involuntary shake runs through her head as she readjusts her glasses, readjusts her whole body in her seat. “Could you please talk me through what you mean when you say that?”
My eyebrows scrunch together. “I mean I tried to kill someone last weekend.” Her eyebrows rise, asking for more. I worry that she might now think I’m dangerous enough to report. “Well, I couldn’t do it. I wanted to, but I couldn’t.”
“Let’s dial back a little. How did this decision come about?”
My mouth twists. “I’ve been feeling…unsettled since this whole business with James and the letters.
And our sessions, I know they’re helping me on some level, but they’re also making me feel worse.
I came away from the last one feeling…feeling like a monster.
I thought that if I didn’t channel my anger and my hunger somewhere, I’d hurt James. ”
“And you don’t want to hurt James?”
“No.” Have we been wasting the time we’ve spent together? “No. I love him.”
“I’ve upset you.”
I look over her shoulder, focus on the tree. She doesn’t fill the silence—she rarely does. My eyes flit back to hers and I speak. “What is it you’re trying to get from me? Just ask.”
She smiles, a kind warmth flushing her cheeks, and this irks me further. Her kindness is polyester against my skin right now, chafing. “I’m asking,” she says. “Let’s try this; talk me through the day you tried to kill someone. Was it someone you knew?”
“No, a stranger.”
“And how did you meet the stranger?”
And I tell her the story of my evening out.
Of cocktails and cocky corporate bros. The words spill out of me.
It’s like I’ve snagged the hull of my guts on the sharp edges of her patient inquisition, and the black oil of my confession is purging itself from my belly.
It leaves the room, our conversation, feeling slick with the shame of it. I am ashamed. But I can’t stop.
“Obviously, I wasn’t thinking clearly. I hadn’t thought any of it through. That’s not like me, you know? But if I had, and if I’d known what that guy was going to try to do to me…If I’d had the means, I think maybe I’d have hurt him worse. And I’d have felt better for it.”
Somewhere outside, a driver thumps down on their horn. Once, then twice more.
“What makes you so sure you would have hurt him worse?”
It doesn’t make sense that I flinch, but I do. “It’s what I do. Someone takes something from me, something bad, and I have to take something back.”
“By ‘take something back,’ do you mean their life?”
The walls seem to darken. I’m silent.
“Natalie, I’m not sure it helps us to keep talking in code.”
I can’t speak. Can only see the cage drawing around me.
“Natalie?”
“You already know I feel responsible for my exes’ deaths. We acknowledged it in our first session. It’s all in Dr. Foster’s notes.”
Dimple sighs. I’m not being as explicit as she wants, but this is as good as she’s getting for now.
“This transactional revenge you’re describing…I’m just not entirely clear on why you wouldn’t have hurt this stranger worse if it were that simple.”
“Well, I don’t fancy spending a life sentence behind bars. Chances are, I would have been caught if I did.”
“Let’s take a moment to consider Marc and Luca. Where were you when they died?”
My nose twitches. “What do you mean?”
“On the nights they died, where were you?”
“Well—” I take a moment, seeing where she’s nudging me. “We were at parties.”
“So, chances are, you could have been caught?”
“Caught doing what?”
Dimple takes a moment to consider her notebook.
Her thick but elegant fingers flick through pages.
For a fleeting moment, I want to be annoyed that she needs to check her notes, but then I remember that she has many other clients.
It’s not fair for me to expect her to have everything committed to memory.
“You’ve never quite finished telling me what happened with George.”
Another unexpected blow. “I don’t like talking about it.”
She gives me a look that says, What do you think we’re here to do?, and I feel like burying her pen in her eye.
“Okay.” I sigh, steel myself. “What do you want to know?”
“Take me back to the moment you realized he was dangerous. I’d like us to follow the weeks leading up to ‘the Big Fallout’ you’ve alluded to. Can you do that for me?”
“Every time you ask me to revisit something I don’t want to, I end up feeling worse.”
She shrugs. “I don’t know how to help you if you hold things back from me.”
“And this? We have to go back to this?” A beat. “And how can I really trust you?”
She doesn’t answer, simply prods me for more. “Feel free to have a drink of water. Start in your own time.”
I do as instructed, shaking inside. As the water slides down my throat, I steady my nerves and prepare to talk about the worst day of my life.