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“Stockholm syndrome is a bond with one’s captor. That happens too. But what you experienced is called shared trauma. Or unit cohesion, as it relates to war. And I don’t believe it would be going out on a limb to say you survived a war of sorts, would you?”
Evan thought about that for a moment. The unrelenting fear, the isolation, the constant threat of physical harm, the helplessness. Yes, he supposed they had been to war. An atypical one, but a war all the same. “Yes,” he said. “I would say that.”
“Shared trauma bonds are very, very strong because for a time, they mean survival. Even brothers and sisters living under extreme abusive conditions experience this bond and find it difficult to leave it behind even when the abuser is no longer part of their lives. It complicates relationships in a very profound way. Sometimes that bond is even mistaken for deep love, but it’s a love that feels desperate and possessive.”
Evan sighed, taking his bottom lip between his teeth. “So it’s not really love, then, even though it feels like it?”
“No one can tell you whether you love a person or whether what seems like love is solely a shared trauma bond. What I’m saying is that it would be more likely that the desperation you described was the latter.” He sat forward slightly. “Unit cohesion serves an important purpose when you’re at war, Evan,” he said. “It’s a necessary support system that makes it possible to survive more trauma. The trauma bond outside of war, however, serves no real purpose, as ongoing trauma is no longer a reality, nor should it be. I sense that you felt that. You and Noelle both.”
“We did. We knew it was unhealthy. We just didn’t know how to pack it up. We didn’t know how to stopfeelingit.”
“And so you parted ways.”
“Yeah.”
“Perhaps for the best.”
“Perhaps.”
“But ...”
Evan let out a laugh that was mostly breath. “But I wonder. Because sometimes I ... miss her.”
“Do you? Are you sure?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, did you get a chance to really know who she was during that time? Did she come to know you?”
He thought about that. “I’m not sure. Do you know someone more or less when you’ve been to hell with them? I have no idea what it’d be like to go to a movie with her. I don’t know if she likes butter on her popcorn or if she prefers comedies to dramas, but I know that she’s the bravest person I ever met and that she’d march straight into a fire rather than let someone else be burned.”
The ghost of a smile floated over Professor Vitucci’s face. “A person is a compilation of so many experiences and qualities,” he said. “But, yes, perhaps you do know things about her that other people never have any occasion to learn about another, and good for them.”
Yes, good for them. That was for sure.
“This has all been on my mind recently because I’ve been looking into some similar situations of people who were abducted and caged. I found a man in Texas who has a similar story.”
The professor’s dark brows raised. “I see.”
“I think there’s a high likelihood that what we experienced might still be going on. Or ... it was anyway, as of a couple of years ago. I only have his testimony, and the police already looked into it but ...”
The professor watched him for a moment, a look of concern in his eyes. “You have ways to access information others don’t,” he said. “So I understand why you’d be tempted to pick up the investigation. Just be careful,” he cautioned.
“In what way?”
“That you don’t immerse yourself in something that you need to be distancing yourself from. That you don’t become stuck again.”
Evan nodded. He’d thought the same thing. But how could he not at least try if there was the slightest chance that others out there were—or would be—victimized in the same horrific way? “I keep coming back to one thing,” he said, thinking aloud now. It helped having someone to be a sounding board as he verbalized all the thoughts that had been rattling around in his head, disorganized and half-formed. “And that’s that Noelle and I knew each other. Our fathers had a connection.”
“Ah, yes. Remind me.”
Evan did, summing up the affair his father had had with Noelle’s mother, the stalking, his father accidentally killing her, and the court case.
“Yes,” Professor Vitucci said, “it’s coming back to me now. It is interesting. I believe I thought so at the time too. But the FBI didn’t uncover anything that might have explained that connection.”
“No, they didn’t uncover much,” he murmured. “But it’s the origin story here, and I think it might be important.”
“Ah, yes. Those tell a lot,” the professor said. “If you can access them.”
