Secluded Cabin Sleeps Six(55)

This has to stop.

I couldn’t agree more. All of it has been so much harder than I imagined.

That’s how it is when you strike upon an idea, something huge, something you imagine will change your life and change the world. There’s a fantasy element to that type of thinking. There has to be, otherwise we’d never embark on the big journeys.

But when you’re in the thick of it, with so many mistakes behind you, and so many uncertainties again, there’s an inevitable dark night of the soul where you’re being swallowed by the morass of self-doubt.

And this one has so many layers, so many well-constructed masks, one sluicing off only to reveal another. Things have gotten complicated. And the truth is, I’m tired. I’ve lost my way. I almost answer that text, my finger hovering when it pings again.

Let me help you, okay?

Shit.

I almost answer: Come get me. I’m lost. I’ve lost my way.

But I don’t, of course.

Sometime after my father died, I started cutting myself. I’m not even sure how it started. My sadness, my grief was a balloon inside me. It swelled and expanded sometimes until I felt like it was crushing me, suffocating me from within. I couldn’t breathe.

In the bathroom, I found one of my dad’s old razor blades and felt compelled to put its edge to the flesh on the inside of my thigh. The pain was a release, a trade. A visible cut that bled, thick and red, drew my rapt attention from my own inner misery to the outer wound. Physical pain is easier to bear than psychological pain, far easier. It’s a wonderful distraction from the inner swamp of our thoughts. It took my mom a couple of months to notice. First a drop of blood on the bathroom floor, then on the inside of my jeans, then a confrontation.

After that tearful discovery, it was right to therapy for me. Which helped. Some.

“You can bring yourself out of your thoughts and into your body anytime,” said Dr. Rowen. “You don’t need to self-harm to do it.”

“How?”

“When you focus on your breath, the activity of the mind will lessen.”

Initially it did sound like bullshit. But it turned out he was right. It was slower, too, more discipline required. Took some effort to learn how to do it.

“Count your breaths. Notice the presence of each object in your field. What do you smell, hear? Ground yourself in this place, this moment.”

I still repeat that to myself now when the stress becomes too much. I remember his soothing voice, his kind eyes, the way he would touch the gold frames of his round spectacles. Like now. I look at the crooked posters, the rickety chairs, the foggy window. I draw a deep breath, release it.

It was Dr. Rowen who suggested an Origins test. He thought it would just give me some extra data on my heritage, something interesting. He wondered if a new knowledge of myself would help me deal with the grief of losing my dad.

The technology was still new back then. Today, millions upon millions of people have submitted their DNA to Origins and other companies like it. Chances are that, even if you haven’t, someone you are related to has already done this. There’s no way to know how the data being collected by private genealogy companies will be used in the future. It’s the Wild West.

But back then, when I sat in Dr. Rowen’s office, it was new. It was long before the Donor Sibling Registry or the Facebook DNA Detectives page, forensic genealogy, or any of it.

Of course, Dr. Rowen didn’t imagine the road it would lead me to wander. He thought I was just a grieving girl in pain. He didn’t know that I would discover poison in my DNA, or how it would inspire me.

Now Joshua and I lock eyes. There’s a connection there, something true and deep. Something powerful. He’s hooked into me for all sorts of reasons, but that connection which reaches back through time is not the least of it.

He is about to say something. But then he stays silent, just glances haunted into the middle distance. Outside, a skein of lightning slices jagged and electric in the distance. There’s a storm coming tonight. No one can make it rain, but I’m very good at knowing when the rain will come.

My phone pings again; I glance down at the message on my screen.

You don’t have to do this.

That might be true. But it’s far too late.

“I’ve been thinking,” Joshua says.

“Don’t think,” I say. “It’s not a good look for you.”

I feel the heat of his gaze.

“What’s the point of this?” he asks. “What’s the endgame? How do we walk away from this?”

“Don’t worry about that now,” I answer.

It’s a five-mile run into town where my car is waiting. That’s how I’ve planned my exit. But my endgame may not include him, depending on how this goes. No need to get into that now.

“I mean,” he says. “They’re not bad people. They’re not.”

“You only think that because you’re a bad person. Your perspective is skewed.”

“Mine is?”

He hasn’t pushed back like this before and it’s bad timing. I pin him with my most menacing gaze and he looks away. But then instead of cowing, he moves toward me.

“I’m leaving,” he says. “I’m getting out of here.”

I almost feel sorry for him. He’s not a good man, but he’s not a truly bad one either. He’s made big mistakes, and committed some petty crimes. But his heart, it’s not irredeemable, not like some of the men I have known. Honestly, he’s just bad enough to use for my purposes. Like most, he’s been driven by fear of the things I know about him, and therefore malleable, easy to control.