The Night Bird (Frost Easton #1)(27)

She ran so fast that she sprinted right by the man on the bench.

Among the blur of faces, someone was watching her. By the time she passed him, she realized that his face was familiar. It took her brain a moment to catch up, and then she knew who it was. She stopped and reversed her tracks, walking back toward the bench, breathing hard. He waited for her.

Frankie put on a neutral smile. “Todd.”

“Hello, Dr. Stein.”

She was going to comment on what a surprise this was, but she didn’t think it was a surprise. You could always run into someone you knew in San Francisco, but she saw in his face that he’d been expecting her. She felt paranoid, but it was only because of the strange e-mails she’d received. Looking at Todd, she couldn’t remember now whether he was one of the patients with whom she’d shared her personal e-mail address.

Frankie sat down next to him. “It’s been a while.”

“Five months.”

“And how are you?” she asked.

“Honestly? Not so good.”

Frankie didn’t say anything immediately. She let her breathing return to normal. The pedestrians came and went on the trail, ignoring them, but she spoke softly. “I’m sorry to hear that. Why don’t you call and make an appointment next week, and we’ll talk.”

“No, I can’t do that,” Todd said. “I can’t go to your office.”

“Why not?”

“Because you take notes. You have to do that legally, right? But I don’t want anything written down.”

Frankie leaned forward with her hands on her knees. She stared at her sneakers. “So this isn’t an accident. Did you follow me?”

“No, I—”

“Because I have to be honest with you, Todd. I don’t like being stalked, and that’s what this feels like.”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Dr. Stein. I didn’t follow you. I just remembered that you told me how much you liked running this trail on the weekends. And I thought I would take my chances.”

Her instinct was to get up and walk away. Todd wasn’t the first patient to cross the line between personal and professional. She’d had patients show up at her home, and invite her to Thanksgiving, and make clumsy passes at her. The thing to do was to shut them down calmly and politely. Even so, she didn’t. There was something in Todd’s voice that made her stay.

His full name was Todd Ferris. He was in his late twenties, tall and bony. He had a wistful face, with faraway eyes, a feminine mouth, and a soft-spoken way of talking that made her lean in to hear him better. A gathering of longer hairs along his chin line pretended to be a beard. He wore a navy wool cap, a gray Boomtown Casino sweatshirt, and jeans. A small loop earring hugged one ear, and a silver cross dangled on a chain around his neck.

He wasn’t one of her success stories. He’d come to her months earlier, troubled by memories of bullying he’d suffered as a child. The emotional trauma had worsened since he’d taken a new job at one of the large gaming companies, with a demanding and intimidating boss. He’d been unable to sleep or work. He’d started drinking heavily.

As a patient, Todd was hard to draw out. He was vague about whether the past abuse was sexual, which made her suspect that it was. He was reluctant to share details about his family and whether anyone else knew what his cousin had done to him. He’d grown up in a Nevada small town, and it was obvious that he still carried a stigma about therapy. Many people were like that. If you went to a psychiatrist, you were crazy or weak. She’d tried several approaches with Todd, but he was resistant to hypnosis, and he’d declined drugs to improve his suggestibility.

In the end, he’d thanked her and walked away. She didn’t think she’d helped him at all.

“So what’s going on, Todd?”

He stared off at the dark waters of the bay. His face twitched, as if his brain and mouth were struggling with what to say. “Something really weird is happening to me.”

“What is it?”

“I’m having strange memories,” he told her.

“Of your cousin?” she asked. “Of what he did to you?”

“No, this is completely different. I’m remembering things that never happened. And yet it’s like they did.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Yeah, me neither. I mean, it’s like waking up from a dream where you have flashbacks of what was in your head, but you can’t really put them together. I see things—I remember things—but only fragments. They’re disconnected. Like somebody snipped pieces out of a video. I’d swear they were dreams, but it doesn’t feel that way. It feels like I’m remembering something that really happened. I can’t explain it.”

Frankie was silent as she processed what Todd was saying. He went on in a voice that was so soft she struggled to hear him: “I was just wondering if this could be a side effect of what we did.”

“You mean the therapy?”

“Uh-huh.”

“No, I’m sure this is something else, Todd.”

“You mean I can’t remember false things? Because online, they talk about recovered memories that aren’t true. People will remember things that never actually happened to them.”

“I really don’t think that’s what this is.”