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“Would you recognize it if you saw it again?”
“I think so.” I looked around her office, thinking, until my gaze settled on the globe atop her desk. I shot upright. I grabbed the globe and brought it over to her, pointing to North America. “Texas. It looked like the state of Texas.”
“Exactly like the state of Texas?”
“Of course not. But it reminded me of that. All I could think of when I was in the flashback was that I had seen the shape before or something like it before.” I pointed again. “And this is it.”
“All right. Where was this birthmark?”
“His upper arm, on the inside, almost to his armpit.” I put the globe on the coffee table in front of us. “Why didn’t I ever remember that?”
“Talon, you blocked a lot of this out. It was only recently that you remembered one of them was missing a toe. That’s completely normal.”
“But if I blocked that out, why couldn’t I block out the worst? Why do I remember every single time they came to me, every single time they hurt me? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to block that out?”
“The mind is a unique thing, Talon. I can’t tell you why you remembered some things and not others. What I can tell you is that during the time you were in captivity, you were hurt. You were hurt a lot by three deranged masked men. You were a ten-year-old boy. All you thought about was that you were hurting. There was no reason for you to notice anything else.”
Perhaps she made sense. I didn’t know at this point. And besides, how was I going to find a guy with a birthmark that looked like Texas? Of course, I had found a guy with a phoenix tattoo and a guy missing a toe. And even though chances were good that they weren’t the right guys, I had a strong feeling they were.
Especially now that both of them had disappeared.
“How will I find that third one?”
“I wish I could tell you. I wish I could guarantee you that every criminal who ever did something heinous to a child would be brought to justice. But unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world. Many of them go free, and many of them are never caught.”
I knew the truth of her words all too well. “I can at least look for the other two.”
“Yes, if that will give you peace, by all means, try to find them. But don’t let that control your healing. Your healing has nothing to do with them being caught. Remember that.”
We had been through that before. “I’d like to believe that, Doc, but if I could beat those two into the next century, I think it would feel pretty damned good.”
“And then you’d spend the rest of your life in prison. Is that what you want?”
I shook my head. My whole life up until now had been a prison. And to be locked up? After what I’d been through? Oh, hell, no. “No. I want to live. I want a life. I want a life with Jade.”
“Then I think it’s time we discussed one other thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Have you thought about telling Jade? About what happened to you?”
I raked my fingers through my hair. Hell, yes, I’d thought of telling Jade. But it had been hard enough to tell Marjorie. And to see how it affected her. “I don’t know. My brothers and I just told our sister, and it didn’t go so well.”
“What you mean by that?”
“The way she reacted.”
“You mean she wasn’t supportive?”
“No, nothing like that. She just feels terrible about it. That’s the point. She’s been sad for days. Tiptoeing around me, like she doesn’t know what to say to me or how to act. Which is exactly what I was afraid of.”
“That’s a normal reaction. She’ll be fine. Just give her time.”
“But I can’t have Jade acting like that around me. Have her feeling sorry for me… God, Doc, I wouldn’t be able to take it.”
“Who’s to say she’ll react the same way?”
“You just said it’s a very normal reaction.”
