LITMIR.BIZ

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mind that way.”

      “That bothers you?”

      “Of course it does! You’ve always done that, and it drives me nuts.” Rachel paused, then laughed. “I guess that’s not the sort of thing to say to a psychiatrist.”

      Victoria smiled. “We’ve known each other a long time, Rachel. You should know by now, you can say anything to me.”

      Rachel hugged herself with her arms, feeling cold even though the room was warm. “I just think it’s silly, Vicky, my parents getting all worried like this. I warped back into the past for a few minutes when I saw that tree on the floor. Doesn’t everybody do that sometimes?”

      “Your mother said you were up pacing all night, and you didn’t eat any breakfast this morning.”

      “Well, duh! I was upset, for heaven’s sake. I’m over it now.”

      “Are you?”

      “Yes, dammit!” Rachel gave the therapist a mutinous glare.

      Victoria laughed. “I haven’t seen that look since you were…oh, seven or eight.”

      The glare faded into a grin.

      Victoria reached behind her chair and took a plate from a low mahogany filing cabinet. “Cookie?’

      “Geez. I can’t believe you’re still plying patients with chocolate-chip cookies.”

      Victoria smiled. “It seems to work.”

      Rachel took a cookie. “This is supposed to make me more willing to open up, right?”

      “Right.”

      She rolled her eyes. “Does psychiatry still work, even when the patient is smart enough to figure out all the moves?”

      “Only when the cookies are merely a distraction, to keep the patient from figuring out the real moves.”

      “Is that what you’ve been doing to me all these years?” Rachel asked. “Playing mind games?”

      “Why would you see it as mind games?” Victoria asked. “Why not simply as a way to help you? A way to get to the truth?”

      Rachel snorted. “That assumes there’s any such thing as truth.”

      “Are you saying there isn’t?”

      Carefully Rachel set the cookie back on the plate. “Let’s approach this from another direction. Do you think you’ve helped me over all these years?”

      Victoria hesitated. “I…well, you’ve been going to college, preparing for the future. I certainly think you’re better now than you were when you were sixteen, for instance. Or right after Angela left.”

      Rachel’s mood changed in an instant. Jumping to her feet, she clenched her fists at her sides. “Angela left? For God’s sake, Vicky, my sister did not leave! She was sent away—returned to the store, like a defective toaster oven. Why does everyone say she left? Does it make it easier somehow to sweep the truth under the rug?”

      “So we’re back to truth,” Victoria said calmly, leaning back in her chair and folding her arms. “What is your truth, Rachel?”

      Rachel threw up her hands. “How the hell do I know?”

      “Do you want to know?”

      “I…of course I do!” But she had paused before answering, and Victoria picked up on it quickly.

      “What are you afraid of?” she asked.

      Rachel sat again, rubbing her face and taking a deep breath. “I don’t know. I think…I think I’m afraid of Angela. Of what I might find out if I saw her again.”

      “Have you been wanting to see her again?”

      “I haven’t even really thought much about her since I’ve been away at school. Then all of a sudden, I thought for sure she was there, and it all started up again.”

      “What started up?”

      Rachel gave Victoria a shaky smile. “The fear. It was like déjàvu. It just washed right over me, like some awful wave. I started to shake, and I actually thought—”

      “What? What did you think?”

      “It’s…it’s silly.”

      “Nothing about fear is silly. Remember when I taught you to turn around and face the monster in your nightmares? What happened?”

      “It went away,” Rachel admitted. “The nightmares stopped.”

      “So you know you can trust me, right?”

      “I guess.”

      “Then tell me, Rachel. What did you think when you saw—or thought you saw—Angela?”

      “I guess I thought, what if she came here to kill me?” Rachel said, looking down at her hands again. They were shaking.

      Victoria rested her chin on tented fingers. “And how does it feel now that you’re home? Safer?”

      “God, no! It feels worse. Vicky, I keep thinking something awful is about to happen. And my parents—” She paused.

      “What about your parents?” Victoria pressed.

      “Oh, hell, they aren’t even here anymore. They’re both doing their own thing, and they hardly talk to each other.”

      “I see. When did you first feel this about them?” Victoria asked.

      “Last summer, I guess. It was so weird, I couldn’t wait to get back to school.”

      “So let’s think about this. Do you feel your parents are no longer around to protect you?”

      “I don’t know. Maybe.”

      Victoria was silent. Finally, she said, “Rachel, let me pose a theory. You’re feeling vulnerable, unprotected, exposed. That could bring up old memories of the night when Angela—”

      “Don’t say it,” Rachel interrupted. “I don’t even want to think of it.”

      “—when Angela tried to kill you,” Victoria finished, ignoring her. “Look at it, Rachel. See it. Remember it. Then you can let it go.”

      Rachel flushed. “You think I haven’t been remembering it all these years? For God’s sake, Vicki!”

      “No, what I think is that, as you’ve gotten older, you haven’t been remembering it the right way. We need to work on that.”

      “So what you’re saying is that I imagined I saw Angela, because I’m feeling afraid again? My fear conjured her up?”

      “Not her, Rachel. A woman who looked like her—” Victoria broke off. “Not even like her, for that matter, since you don’t know what Angela looks like now. Perhaps just some of the same qualities you remember from childhood. Rachel, what does that sound like to you?”

      Rachel closed her eyes. “Like I imagined the whole thing. It wasn’t Angela, and she hasn’t come back to try to kill me again. There. Is that better?”

      “You tell me.”

      “I don’t know!” Rachel’s eyes flashed, and the mutinous glare came back. “Why do I have to do all the work? You’re the one getting paid for this!”

      Victoria shook her head and smiled. “You may be a beautiful, grown-up twenty-one-year-old, Rachel. You may be smart, intelligent, all those good things. But I’m still seeing shades of that little girl in front of me. The one who stuck her chin out and told me to go to hell when she was ten.”

      Rachel hesitated, then laughed. “I did do that, didn’t I? God, I must have been a handful.”

      “Still are, apparently,” Victoria said with a smile. She

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