Before You Knew My Name (41)

Yet.

Small things have started happening, see. Important things. At first, they seemed like little accidents. But now, if I concentrate hard enough, it seems I can drop the beginnings of a thought into Ruby’s head, cause her mind to ripple. It happened with that PTSD article. Just a small nudge, but she felt it, followed it. Noah told me all about trauma. Explained it almost as well as that Boston doctor. Back when we were talking about shaking memories loose, and I imagined a body full of holes. He told me there’s a chance we inherit trauma, that bad memories can get passed down from one generation to another, and I thought about my mother at the time, all the things I never knew about her. But now I wonder if I’ve somehow passed my memories on to Ruby, accidentally pressed them into her bones. The way Noah made it sound—

But that’s enough talking about Noah. My crow, my death bird. I don’t want to think about him, don’t need to, now that I’ve got Ruby. I should have paid more attention to the things he told me, yes. But that won’t do me any good these days. Besides, when I do remember him clearly, I feel a pain as sharp, as awful, as anything I ever experienced when I was alive.

And what’s the point of being dead if they can still hurt you from the other side.



It’s as if they have forgotten me. The others.

Him.

The problem is, if I don’t fully understand how I manage to push through sometimes, I understand even less about why. Most of the time, it’s like I’m a silver fish, darting through a wave, a shadow too quick to catch. But there are times, when I see them up close—Noah shutting the door to my bedroom; Tammy checking her phone; Mr Jackson hiding a box of photographs in his closet, in the space where the Leica used to be—that the waves get too big, they toss me around, batter me against something hard and unyielding, and the water rushes in.

Is it them or me turned upside down when that happens?

All I know for sure is that Ruby is my only calm sea. When the others make me feel as if I’m dying all over again.

Or worse. As if I never existed at all.



We are getting closer, the quote says.

In the accompanying black and white picture, O’Byrne stares out, looking stern and assured. Looking like the kind of man who is used to being listened to.

Consider yourself warned, the quote goes on. You will be found. We are learning more about you every day. It is only a matter of time.

O’Byrne is bluffing, I want to say as Ruby reads this official statement over and over, her heart thumping. He’s trying to lure him out from wherever he is hiding. Trick him into coming forward. They don’t really know anything about him at all.

I too have tried to get close to him. But the man who murdered me only has to think about what he did that morning for those wild waves to start up again, drag me under the roiling water. It feels like its own kind of warning, every time I come near. That while he is out there, going about his life like nothing has changed, he still has the power to destroy me. To take away what little I have left.

Is that how it happens, after they kill you? They keep on living their lives, keep getting up for work and eating breakfast and checking the weather and saying please and thank you and you’re welcome, and they smile at their own reflection in mirrors and store windows as they walk down the street. Hiding in plain sight, if they bother to hide at all.

Thinking no one has the power to stop them. Not the girl then, or anyone now.

It’s only a matter of time.

Before they find him? Or before he gets the chance to do it again?





THIRTEEN

‘SIX OR SEVEN PEOPLE COME ALONG, MOST SESSIONS.’

Larry from the welcome email is talking to Ruby over his shoulder as he sets out a series of colourful cushions on the floor of the community centre. He makes a circle of them, ten large pillows in total. He knows some members of the group will prefer to leave a space between themselves and the next person; then, too, there is the small hope that more people will show up tonight. Find shelter at this meet-up, instead of wandering out there, confused and alone. Larry has been facilitating these support sessions for two years now. It is, as he has now told Ruby multiple times, his ‘life’s calling’—staying open to the many, many ways trauma can present itself, and finding ways to heal the damage that PTSD can cause. It’s a job that never gets old for him. Not when you consider all the ways humans can hurt themselves, and each other, let alone the surprises an impartial planet can have in store. With his own life seemingly safe as a box, he is constantly amazed at what people are asked to endure.

Congratulations! Know it takes courage to make the first step in your healing process. You should be proud of yourself. We would love to have you attend our group session, where you will have a chance to talk about what is holding you back from living life fully. After twenty years in my own practice, I know that my life’s calling is helping people heal from their trauma to become their best selves.

Best selves. Life’s calling. To Ruby, that first email was so … American, and she is not at all surprised to discover Larry looks like a magazine ad from the 1950s, with his straight white teeth, and his sandy blonde hair touching the sides of bright green eyes. He looks like a clean slate, something fresh and open. Like all the dirt has been scrubbed away—or deliberately swept out of sight. That’s the other side of America, after all. A country whose history is shiny on the outside, a glossy front, until you realise only one version of the story is being told.