The Girl Who Survived(8)

Dr. Zhou’s eyes were assessing. She leaned back in her chair, tapping a pencil to her lips. As if she didn’t believe her patient. “What about the feeling that you’re being watched? That someone might be stalking you?”

Kara lifted a shoulder. “That’s better, too.”

“Is it?” More disbelief as she dropped the pencil into a cup on a small table.

“Yes!” Kara said.

Frowning thoughtfully, the little lines appearing between her eyebrows more distinct, Dr. Zhou said, “Look, Kara, I know this is a rough time of the year for you, and that makes my going away for the holidays difficult, but you’ve got Dr. Prescott’s number and my cell if it’s an emergency.”

“Isn’t it always an emergency?” Kara asked, half joking. She wasn’t going to call a different psychologist, wasn’t going to have a session with a new person in a new office. Wasn’t about to start over, or bring Dr. Zhou’s associate up to speed. No, she was comfortable here in this room with its icy green walls, soft furniture and framed watercolors of fields of flowers. And with this shrink. Finally. She’d gone through her share of others.

“Comes with the territory.” Dr. Zhou stood and stretched out a hand; then when Kara tried to take it, Zhou hugged her instead. The doctor was a few inches shorter than Kara, but that didn’t stop her from patting Kara’s back. Then she straightened. “I’ll see you January seventh. Yes?”

“Unless I’m all better.”

“Uh-huh.” There was more than a note of sarcasm in the psychologist’s tone. They both knew that not only were the holidays the worst time of the year for Kara, but this year there was an added wrinkle: Jonas, her surviving brother, was getting out of prison. In two days.

Oh. Joy.

“Merry Christmas,” Dr. Zhou said.

“Merry Christmas to you, too.” Kara’s voice caught and she felt she might break down, so she gathered her coat and scarf and left rapidly before the stupid tears fell. As she hurried down the carpeted hallway, past a few other doors with nameplates for a variety of medical offices, she slipped her arms through the sleeves of her long coat and wrapped her scarf quickly around her neck.

She pushed her way through the glass doors of this building, originally a three-story house, and crossed a small parking lot, where her dirty Jeep was waiting near an ice-crusted pothole, and unlocked her SUV remotely.

The snow had been shoveled and salted away, but now the sky was threatening again, the clouds overhead turning steely and dark, night fast approaching. She checked the interior.

No one hiding.

Once inside, she fired up the engine. By habit, she locked her doors, then checked her mirrors. No one appeared in the reflection, no deranged killer out to get her, but she did catch sight of her own worried eyes, a hazel color that threatened to fill again with tears. “Stop it!” she said, then turned her iPhone off of silent mode, set it in her cup holder and hit the gas. The Jeep squirreled backward before she rammed the gearshift into drive.

Her cell beeped and she glanced at the screen.

Aunt Faiza’s name popped up on the screen.

“Nope,” she muttered, “definitely not now. Maybe not ever.” She wasn’t going to deal with the woman who had so eagerly agreed to raise her only to tap into her inheritance—an inheritance that she would finally be able to claim when she turned twenty-eight in two weeks’ time. Nor did she want to hear any of Faiza’s nosy questions or her wearisome recriminations. That part of Kara’s life was over. The fact that Auntie Fai still lived in the family home, a mansion in the West Hills overlooking the city of Portland, should have bothered her; by rights Kara would inherit it. But she didn’t care. The grand home with its seven bedrooms, sweeping staircase and breathtaking views was only a painful reminder of a life of which she’d been robbed. Aunt Faiza had been her appointed guardian, and she and her musician boyfriend had taken over the place to care for Kara, but their lack of attention had been palpable, and Kara had spent most of her growing-up years with Merritt Margrove and his second wife, Helen. Their small home on the east side of the river, a bungalow tucked into the narrow streets of Sellwood, had been more of a home than the big house on the forested hills.

Hitting the gas, she sped into the flow of traffic and cut off a lumbering pickup. For her efforts she earned an angry shake of the red-capped driver’s fist and an angry blast of his horn, but she didn’t care, just kept driving. The phone rang again. Aunt Faiza wasn’t giving up.

“Great.” She took the next corner at the last minute, backtracking slightly to wheel into the crowded parking lot of the liquor store. “Bad idea,” Kara said under breath, but cut the engine, stepped out, locked the car and pocketed her keys as she walked inside.

The territory was familiar, the transaction easy.

Two bottles of Merlot and, for good measure, a fifth of vodka.

After all, the holidays were fast approaching. And her brother was being released from the big house. Time to celebrate, and God knew Kara needed a little Christmas cheer. Well, make that a lot of Christmas cheer.

The woman at the register was in her fifties and smelled of cigarettes and breath mints. Her face was lined prematurely, and her orange-tinged hair was partially covered by a jaunty elf’s cap complete with a bell that jingled as she moved her head.

Merry Christmas.