I hung up to read the text, also from a number I didn’t recognize, an unfamiliar 332 area code.
It’s your past calling. Almost all the way caught up to you.
I hit the side button on my phone and closed my eyes as the screen went black. No. I’d misread that. I’d misunderstood. And yet, my mind still flashed to the small pocketknife I carried in my bag all these years later for protection. I resisted the urge to dig it out.
And then I was there again, all those years ago, washing my hands again and again in the icy water in Haven House’s downstairs bathroom, trying to scrub clean the beds of my nails. It had been all over my clothes, too, soaked through my gauzy pink shirt. The blood was everywhere.
I bolted awake the next morning at the ping of a text. I was hoping it was Doug, explaining why he’d never shown up, but I was afraid it might be another ominous, anonymous message. Sent from, I’d since figured out, New York’s newest area code. Or, more likely, some kind of burner app. I’d seen enough client-related texts to know that the apps generated similarly random numbers, always brand-new area codes.
But it was Lauren.Call me when you’re up.
I dialed her right back.
“Don’t worry, I’m okay now,” I said groggily. I’d called her on my way home the night before. I’d ranted for a while about Doug and Janine, leaving out the part about the anonymous message.
“Kat, I have some … I think I know why Doug didn’t show up last night.”
“Because he’s a jerk?” I said.
“No. Are you sitting down? It’s not good.” Lauren’s tone was somber.
“What?”
“You can … Maybe you should read it for yourself. I’ll send you the article.”
Three little dots appeared and then a link to the morning’sNew York Post:“Bronxville Pharma Executive Dies in TragicAccident.” I clicked on it and then cupped my hand to my mouth. Fifty-two-year-old Doug Sinclair’s car had smashed into a tree on Midland Avenue near the Yonkers-Bronxville border. His twenty-year-old daughter, Ella, a junior at Amherst, was now an orphan. The pictures of the mangled car were horrifying. And so was the unavoidable truth: Doug was dead.
TRANSCRIPT OF RECORDED SESSION
DR. EVELYN BAUER
SESSION #1
EVELYN BAUER:
Do you know why you did it?
