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Alexis had hired us to work at Royaume’s satellite clinic here. She was a general practitioner and the town doctor—and, as we came to discover, Briana’s best friend and Neil’s ex-girlfriend. That was an interesting revelation. And so was the update we got via Briana a couple of days after we arrived. Apparently the last thing Mom did before disappearing was to burn Neil’s house down.

Briana said it was karma. She also said Neil didn’t seem to be too upset about it, so at least there was that.

Alexis came in holding a coffee. “Are you two going to be home for dinner?” she asked. “Daniel wants to know how many veggie burgers to grill later.”

“I’m going to the VFW with Doug,” Maddy said.

“So you won’t be home tonight.” I gave her a wry smile.

“No, I won’t be home,” she said. “I’m going to let that tall drink of water slam me like a door.”

Alexis sat in front of her charting computer. “I could have gone my entire life without that visual.”

I was laughing when Doug popped his head in the room. “Hey, babe, ready for lunch?”

Maddy skipped over to him and stood on her toes to kiss him. She was a full foot and a half shorter than him. He wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed her back a little too enthusiastically, and Alexis and I shared an amused look.

Maddy broke away and grinned up at her boyfriend. “Let me run to the bathroom real quick.”

Doug watched her go as I collected my purse. “So, when are you two moving in together?”

“I keep asking her,” Doug said. “She tells me to shut up.”

Alexis snorted.

“That woman scares the absolute shit out of me,” he said, shaking his head. “I can’t get enough of her.”

“I think the feeling is mutual,” I said. “She’s only scary when she cares.”

Alexis was laughing.

A minute later Maddy came back down the hall and Doug took off his jacket and put it around her shoulders before they walked out.

I’d never seen Maddy like this for a guy. And I realized now that was partially my fault.

It wasn’t easy to have a relationship when you moved every few months. And I knew now that she’d done that for me more than for the adventure.

We’d had a lot of long talks since we’d come here.

She told me how much she’d worried about me over the years. How she had to stay with me because she knew if she let me go out on my own, I’d never come back.

She was right. I would have become Amber.

Only unlike Amber, self-preservation built me to be independent. So I never would have called for help or money. I just wouldn’t have called at all.

I would have distanced myself from her until I was so small there was nothing left of me and her. She knew this. And she loved me enough to keep it from happening.

I used to never be able to say I love you. It was something I was working on in therapy. To say it meant to give someone power over me and the ability to hurt me.

But I could say, with my whole heart, that I loved Maddy. She was one of the great loves of my life. And the thought that I would have given that up because of what Amber made me was a cautionary tale that I would never let myself forget.

I hoped Maddy moved in with Doug when she was ready—that she knew I was ready to have a normal life now and it was okay to let me go a little because I wouldn’t disappear when she did. I would never get that small again. I might fall back on old coping mechanisms from time to time. I would always have to work on it. The urge to isolate would always pop up when I got scared or stressed or hurt by someone. But I had the skills now and I knew what to do when I felt myself shrinking.

I’d done three months of CBT and I had a talk therapist I really liked who specialized in trauma. She had me do a once-a-week drive down to Rochester to meet her for EMDR treatments for my complex PTSD—another thing I hadn’t known I’d been dealing with but made sense to me once I was diagnosed. I’d talked to Doug, who also dealt with it, and he’d said EMDR really helped him. So I’d tried it and it did help, tremendously. A few weeks into therapy I asked Daniel to put my luggage in the attic. I didn’t want it under the bed ever again.

I felt stable for the first time in my life. Steady. Like I could stay somewhere, be someone who people got to know and depend on. I was capable of that now. It didn’t scare me.

Well, it did. A little. But I was still ready for it. And that wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t come to Wakan. Maddy had been right about that, like she was right about most things.