The House in the Pines(69)

“She never wanted to go back to the real world. She’d spent her whole life trying to escape it. First it was through her painting—she taught herself when she was a kid. Said when she painted, the canvas would turn into an escape hatch. Come to think of it,” he said, as if he’d just thought of it, “she kind of reminded me of you in that way. The way you would disappear into your father’s book.”

“Leave him out of this.”

Frank acted as if she hadn’t spoken, which made Maya wonder if she really had or if she’d only thought it.

“Then she discovered drugs,” he said. “And getting high was an easier escape. More fun. Or so I’m told . . .” There was that smile again, the one that made her feel like they were in on the giddiest joke together, but now she knew this had never been the case. The joke had always been on her. She might have laughed if she wasn’t struggling to hold her head up.

“The problem,” he said, “is that you always have to come down. That was the part Cristina couldn’t handle. Her heart. Her head. She felt everything too much—this is what that asshole Steven didn’t understand. Cristina was always going to be looking for an escape, right up until the ultimate one. She was never at home in the world. Begged me not to make her go back to it, every single time, so I told her to prove it to me. Prove she wanted to stay here forever.” He leaned across the table. “And she did.” He ran a finger down the inside of Maya’s wrist. “She tattooed the key to this place . . . right . . . here. She did it to herself, right in front of me.”

“I don’t believe you,” Maya said. But a part of her did.

“It was her idea to die on camera at the diner,” he said, “so that the world would see I never laid a hand on her. Because she knew how important my work is, how much my patients need me. I guide them back to the homes they carry inside. I help them build that space from the ground up.”

She recognized these as words from the Clear Horizons website and understood that Dr. Hart was indeed Frank. She thought of the testimonials on his website and felt a flicker of hope—plenty of people had survived Frank’s “treatment.” They even said it helped them.

“Cristina knew this,” he went on. “She didn’t want me to get in trouble. Look, I don’t have to tell you this, and I definitely don’t owe Steven any explanation. But you should know that what happened at the diner was her final wish. I only gave her what she wanted.”

Maya’s head tipped forward, and she lacked the energy to haul it back up. “Please,” she whispered. Her voice sounded far away. “I won’t tell anyone, I promise.”

“It’s too late. You never should have come here tonight.”

“Can’t you make me forget?”

“Some part of you would always remember.” His voice was thick with regret. “I know that better than anyone.”

She sank further. Frank was right: he had won. But he was wrong if he thought she was just like Cristina. Maya might have shared Cristina’s affinity for imaginary worlds and, yes, for getting high, and maybe it was true they both had been looking for an escape. But if there was one thing Maya knew—even if it had taken her until this moment to figure it out—it was that her home was with Dan and her mom and everyone she had, or ever would, love. Home would never be another world, some perfect cabin in the clouds, and Maya only hoped that if she ever made it back to where she belonged, she’d remember this.

“You’ve been suffering,” he said. “You know you have, I can see it. You’re tired of fighting.”

She was tired of fighting. She felt her body slowing down.

“Close your eyes.”

Her eyes fluttered shut.

“Listen,” he said.

And she heard. The crackling fire. Babbling stream. The sound of water over stones. And beneath that sound, she heard something else, a sound she hadn’t noticed before. Almost like a woodpecker pecking at a tree, but faster, and there was something unnatural about its cadence. In her usual state of mind, Maya would have known the sound at once, even if her age meant she knew it mostly from movies. But now it perplexed her, distracting her from the buried voice within. Drowning it out.

“Look,” Frank said.

His word was her command. Her eyes opened. Her chin lifted. He was smiling at her, and it was as if the past seven years had never happened. He looked handsome again, and full of life, suffused with that beautiful light that she’d only ever seen in his cabin, and in Cristina’s final painting.

The door at his back was open now, and moonlight spilled through the crack. The sound was coming from outside. Something drew her to it, a longing she could neither explain nor act upon in her current state.

“Go on,” he said kindly.

Her heaviness lifted and Maya rose from her seat. She felt like she was floating as she moved toward the door, passing Frank, who stayed seated at the table. She left him behind. The moonlight beaconed, prismatic, alive. She wasn’t afraid as she reached for the door to the cabin. The sound grew louder.

The wooden porch creaked beneath her feet as she stepped into moonlight. The snow was gone, the surrounding forest lush with leaves. A summery breeze rustled by. She saw two rocking chairs made of the same gnarled pine as the rest of the cabin. A man sat in one of them, a typewriter balanced on his knees.