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“You okay?” asked Brian, shaking the pen.
“I, uh—” She stopped when she thought she heard another scream.
Brian held out the vape pen. “I know we’re not supposed to have stuff like this, but I needed it. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to get the damn thing to work all week.”
When Josie didn’t respond, Brian added, “It’s juvenile, I know.”
“No,” Josie said, still listening for more screams. “It’s not. I get it.” There had been many times that week that she’d wished for a shot of Wild Turkey, even though she had given up drinking years ago. Sandrine had offered them a wide range of methods for destressing, and for processing trauma, some of which were relaxing, like guided meditation and yoga, but they were still there to do difficult emotional work.
Brian nodded, seeming relieved, and used a palm to hit the end of the vape pen. He squinted at it as he then tried to slip his nail under the cover to the slot where the vape cartridge went. “I can’t even get the damn thing open,” he mumbled. “Although I couldn’t get it to charge either so maybe it’s totally shot.”
Josie noticed he wasn’t wearing his coat, hat, or gloves. He hadn’t worn them all week, in spite of the freezing weather. He was dressed as he always was—in a T-shirt, basketball shorts, and a pair of beat-up sneakers. His brown hair curled at the ends, no two strands moving in the same direction. He looked chronically unkempt.
He reminded her of a high school boy, but he was in his early forties. He was the only man at the retreat, not counting Cooper, and he’d come with his wife, Nicola. There were only six of them in total on the retreat. They had daily group sessions in which they’d gotten to know one another somewhat. Sandrine’s only caveat during those sessions was that they weren’t required to give much biographical information other than their names and why they were there.
All Josie knew about Brian was that he had had a rough upbringing in a group foster home that had eventually burned to the ground. That wasn’t the only reason he was there, though. He and Nicola were there because they’d lost a child in one of the worst ways imaginable. Their five-year-old daughter had been abducted while playing in front of their house. A week later, her battered and broken body was found in a drainage ditch a mile from their home. The perpetrator turned out to be a man who drove an ice cream truck through their neighborhood each day in the summer. The abduction hadn’t happened in Josie’s jurisdiction. The Davies couple were from New York.
During every single one of their group sharing sessions, Josie had had to hold herself back from peppering them both with questions about their daughter’s abduction and murder. A man in an ice cream truck abducting a little girl. Josie immediately began to wonder if there were more victims out there. During one chat, she’d overstepped, and Sandrine had pulled her aside to remind her that she was not a police officer right now. She was just a woman at a retreat, and she was there to process her various traumas.
“Seriously,” Brian said, giving up on the pen and sliding it into his pocket. “Josie. Are you okay?”
“I heard screaming,” she said. “But it seems to have stopped.”
Brian laughed. “You forgot, didn’t you?”
Josie jammed her gloved hands into her pockets. “Forgot what?”
“Sandrine was holding a rage-room session today.”
Josie fought the urge to face-palm herself. She had forgotten. One of the things Sandrine had offered them that week were sessions inside the “rage room” she and Cooper had created in the red building. It was a large space filled with furniture, small appliances, glassware—anything breakable. They donned thick protective suits and goggles and then used baseball bats to smash everything in sight. Sandrine had cautioned them that not all therapists believed in its benefits, but in her experience, it was a way for people with a lifetime of repressed feelings to finally get in touch with their unexpressed anger. For others who were already in touch with their rage, it offered a safe environment in which to vent it. For both types, Sandrine had explained, it could be a good outlet. Josie had participated in the rage-room session on Tuesday, along with everyone else, and had declined to do it again. Although Josie had enjoyed the freedom and abandon of the rage room, smashing things had not been as cathartic as she had hoped. She’d watched the faces of a few of the other members of the retreat, seen the relief and invigoration in their expressions, and realized she hadn’t quite gotten what she’d expected from it. Sandrine said it was because she had pushed her anger down so far that she’d lost touch with it altogether. Just like all of her negative feelings. She was a work in progress.
“You didn’t want to go again?” Josie asked.
He shook his head. “No. I didn’t really want to do it the first time. I’ve seen rage. I don’t want to be close to it again.”
Josie nodded. “Understandable.”
Brian lifted his chin in the direction of the rage room. “You didn’t want to go again either?”
Her right hand closed around the contraband cell phone in her coat pocket. “I just didn’t feel up to it,” she lied. She took a few steps back, ready to be on her way now that she knew there was no emergency.
“Josie,” Brian called.
She turned back to him.
“Can I ask you something?”
She tried to calculate how much time she had before they would all have to meet for lunch and their afternoon sessions, but time was meaningless here. They had no clocks, no phones, no electronics. They relied on Sandrine and Cooper to tell them when to be where. A new scream cut through the air. If they were still carrying on in the rage room, she’d have at least another half hour, maybe more. “Sure,” she said.
“Do you think this retreat has helped you?”
Josie took a moment to consider this. She’d been in therapy for over three years, ever since her beloved grandmother was murdered. Dr. Rosetti had spent less time on her grandmother’s murder and more time unpacking her considerable childhood trauma. Noah insisted that it had helped, even though Josie couldn’t always tell whether or not it was making a difference. After Mettner’s death and the resultant insomnia, Dr. Rosetti had thought that this retreat—seven days of intensive trauma therapy in a secluded setting with a group of people who were also processing extreme trauma—would benefit her.
Had it, though?
She had slept well the first night there but then her insomnia returned. It wasn’t as bad as before, but it was still there.
“I don’t know,” Josie said honestly. “But I usually can’t tell with these things.”
