One of Those Faces (102)

Wilder’s hand in all these cases had made such a mess of those issues, and now that he was dead, we’d likely never know the whole truth.

Dr. Linda tapped her pen against the notebook in her lap. “How are you feeling about the attack now that you’ve had some time to reflect on it?”

Reflect?

I remembered staring, unblinking, into that rearview mirror until my eyes hurt. I remembered the shape I’d been waiting for appearing, frantically running toward the taillights of the car, gun drawn.

He’d thought I would run, drive away while I had the chance. And I could have.

I stared at her. “I think I’ve made peace with it.”

She leaned forward. “What do you mean by that?”

Wilder’s eyes had glowed red in the lights as I switched into reverse. There had been an instant when I saw a flash of fear as he realized what was happening before his body disappeared with a thud of the bumper. The heavy sound of grinding tires, the pulling of the undercarriage over flesh.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s hard to explain.”

“So,” she continued, pressing the bridge of her glasses. “From what you’re telling me, you seem to be moving forward. How are you feeling overall? How are you sleeping?”

When I could get to sleep, my dreams were where the darkness still enveloped my life. I’d tried everything, but Iann put up with my erratic screaming and even when it came to blows in my sleep. “Still not great.” Instead of just Issi, there was now a full cast in my nightmares.

She frowned. “Are the dreams still violent?”

“Yes.” Sometimes it started with violence against me. Sometimes I was the aggressor. But it always ended the same way. “This morning I woke up kicking and screaming at Iann in bed.” In my dreams, I woke up covered in blood, standing over Erin. Jenny. Wilder. Bug. Danny.

“But you’re not sleepwalking anymore?”

“Not that I know of.”

“That’s good,” she said. “Whenever you wake in a panic like that, don’t forget to do your counting exercises. That should help.”

It did help usually. For some reason, counting my heartbeats seemed to focus enough of my nervous energy until I calmed down.

“How is your friend doing?”

My heart sank at the thought of Danny.

“You seem upset by that question,” Dr. Linda said when I didn’t answer. “Can you tell me why?”

I leaned forward in the chair, the leather squeaking from the fabric on my jeans. “I feel guilty.”

“Why?” she asked soothingly.

I was glad for the help, but it was annoying sometimes how she insisted that I walk her through everything. She knew why. It was in her stupid little notes somewhere. “He’s in there because of Wilder. Because of me.”

“We’ve been over this,” she started slowly. “I know it’s hard to accept, but it was just an unfortunate accident.”

The police had looked into Danny’s accident after I’d connected the dots for them about Wilder. They couldn’t find any proof that Danny and Wilder had ever interacted since Evanston. They couldn’t even establish that Danny knew Wilder was in town. Danny had kept the case file in his notebook for a long time. They figured he’d had it with him all these years, hung up on my disappearance. That thought broke my heart.

Moreover, they couldn’t find any tampering with Danny’s car. I had briefly doubted the connection myself. But I was certain.

I nodded. There was no use arguing with her over it. Even after my story, she still implicitly trusted the police.

“Is everything still going okay with the detective on your case?”

“Yeah.” Detective Dowdy was definitely an improvement over Wilder. She was smart, and more importantly, she was angry. She had been on to Wilder for misconduct for years, but finding out that he’d been stalking me since I was a teenager sent her over the edge. To say nothing of the bribe from my father and uncouth moonlighting as a private investigator in a missing person’s case all those years ago. I didn’t blame her for not tying Wilder to the other cases. There was a lot of information I’d never shared with her. And I never would. I would never tell her about my strange nighttime habits. I would never tell her about my obsession with Jenny. Jenny. The nightmares about her were the most vivid, the look in her eyes replacing the ghost of Issi.

“You’re thinking about Danny, aren’t you?” Dr. Linda leaned toward me slightly.

“They said there’s still a chance he’ll wake up. I feel like I’m giving up on him by leaving.” I looked down at my hands folded in my lap.

“You’re not. You’re doing the best you can. In this case, you need to get out for your own sake.”

I still had hope that she and Iann were right. Maybe the nightmares would go away once we’d left Chicago. Maybe I could really start over this time. Maybe I could forget about that night at Jenny’s and the grip of my hand on the knife. Maybe I could forget about Wilder too.



I paused in the doorway of the hospital room. Danny’s mom looked exhausted. She was keeping up the rent at Danny’s apartment but barely slept five hours there each day. “Hi,” I said, stepping inside.

She looked up from the book she was holding and removed her glasses. “Oh,” she said with a smile. It was Danny’s smile. It didn’t hold anything back. “I thought you’d already left us.” The words pricked me, but I knew she didn’t mean anything by them.