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“Hey,“ Rei says softly.
I pick up my head to look at him. “What?“
“Her mother is nothing like yours,“ he says.
I shake my head, my mouth dry. I really don’t want to have this conversation. He pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “I didn’t say she was.“
“I know, but I’m just saying, you don’t have to be scared of Aura,“ he says. “Or what she’s going to do to Trine. She’s just talking to her.“
I try to swallow down the knot in my throat, my arms still crossed over my chest. “Fine, okay,“ I reply. “So she might not hurt her. Fair enough. Do you actually think she will help?“
Rei sighs, his shoulders slumping. “I have no idea,“ he says. “But none of this is ideal. I wish we’d managed to do it in a clinical setting.“
“I don’t think she’d have let you do any of this in a clinical setting,“ Salinas says. “And, anyway, as long as she helps, it doesn’t matter where we are, right?“
“Right,“ Woods says. It doesn’t entirely sound like he believes him.
I say nothing, watching the yellow house instead, all while we wait for something to happen.
I just really hope that Trine is alright.
TRINE
When I was a little girl, I used to sit in the same room as my mom worked. I would listen to the clacking of the keys as she wrote her books, and every now and then, she would look down at me and hum a song or ask me if I needed anything.
It felt great, existing in the same bubble as my mom did.
When my parents got divorced, that was the part I missed the most. Simply existing in the same space as my mother. This doesn’t feel like that. This feels like we’re about to have a confrontation, one I’m not emotionally equipped to handle.
My mom is clearly just as uncomfortable as I am, because she’s now drinking from what I’m almost entirely sure is a completely empty coffee cup.
“I’m going to start from the beginning,“ she says. “I don’t think you’re going to want to hear a lot of this, but I’m going to say it all, no matter how much it hurts. I just want to be clear that I’m doing it because I think it’ll help you. I wish I could make the things I’m about to say more palatable for you…“
I finish my bottle of water.
“But I can’t, so I’m just going to go into it. Before I met your father, years before, I was working as a regional project manager for a tech company,“ she says, leaning back on the sofa and crossing her legs. “I was working very hard and decided that it was time I took a breather, so I booked a hotel room in a city nearby and decided that I was going to get some rest.“
“Right….“
“This was, like I said, years before you were born. I had corporate aspirations. When I was there, I met this guy. And he was gorgeous. He was this smooth talker with perfect arms. He asked to come back to my room that night and I let him. And it was, honestly, the best sex I’d had in my entire life.“
“Ew.“
“What?“ she asks, smiling at me. “You’re a grown-up. You can handle this.“
“I guess,“ I reply. “Okay, so you hooked up with a super hot stranger in a hotel, which is wildly irresponsible, and then what?“
“And then nothing,“ she says, ignoring my snarky remark. “He gave me his card, but there was nothing on it. He said I could reach out whenever I needed to, but I didn’t understand how. When I went to sleep, sometimes, I would think about him. The dreams would start, but they felt like memories. Time passed, I met your father. We got married, had you. The dreams happened every now and then, and every time, it felt like this dream man I’d had a one-night stand with was embedded in my veins. Like every dream I’d had with him in it was this indelible memory. But I got busy. It turns out that I had always had a knack for domesticity and I decided to quit my job so I could spend more time with the two of you.“
“Right…“
“You got a little older and I had more time,“ she says. “I always wanted to write that novel, you know? And the dreams, I don’t know, the man from the dreams started to fill them in. With information. With things I felt like I shouldn’t have known. Every day, I woke up itching to write. To get it all out. I didn’t think it would go anywhere, I was only doing it for myself. I sent it to a friend from my former job and she said it was fascinating. Her cousin or something…I can’t remember exactly, but he worked in publishing. She asked me if I wanted to submit my manuscript. I never expected them to say yes, but apparently, it was compelling…“
I’ve heard versions of this story. Bits and pieces; things about how lucky my mom was to send her story to Patricia, how unlikely it was that the manuscript was going to turn into anything. How it changed my mom’s entire life. I’ve read her work–it would be hard not to, growing up in a house full of books–even when I was too young for it. But I didn’t know that it came from sex dreams, and the very thought of it makes a shudder run down my spine.
I’ve never asked the man in my dreams for his name. It has never felt necessary. Fuck, I don’t even know how I’ve managed to speak in the dreams where he’s with me. I definitely haven’t asked him any questions about himself.
It hasn’t ever occurred to me. But fuck, the guy from my dreams…he looked exactly like the therapist I went to see at the crisis center. So if my mom had a similar experience, maybe the therapist is a demon himself.
