“So this is the bird garden,” I said, coming up behind him.
Heath twisted around. “You weren’t in the room, so I figured you went for a hike. Luca brought us lunch, just in case I ran into you.”
He smiled at me, and I couldn’t help it—I pictured Instagram Annalise, her apartment filled with smashed glass. Cowering in fear before her boyfriend. I blinked the image away.
“That was nice,” I said. “But aren’t we supposed to take our meals in our rooms?”
Heath shrugged and removed a lid. “So we get a demerit. Who cares?”
I took in the bird garden. A stand of mature redbud trees formed a ring around the small, smooth lawn where we sat. The trees’ heart-shaped leaves had gone bronze, and each branch was trimmed, like a Christmas tree, with dozens of wooden birdhouses. The houses were hopping, quite literally, with activity. Birds popped in and out, flying off in search of nest-building supplies or worms or whatever they ate, and returning. A giant avian-party apartment complex.
I inspected one of the houses hanging on a low branch. Its walls had once been painted with a detailed purple-and-green-and-gray paisley design. Miniature birds made of tiny dots marched in a circle around the base of the house. It must’ve been painted long ago. The mountain weather had faded the colors so much they were only visible if you got close.
“Come eat,” Heath said.
I joined him on the bench and dipped into a bowl of thick butternut squash soup. “Was it bad? Your session?”
He shook his head. “Not particularly.”
I thought of what I’d overheard Dr. Cerny say in the office. Do you think having her here was really a good idea? I tucked my legs up under me. It was perfect here in the garden, sun shining in dappled splotches through the trees. The whistles of the birds. You could only see a red smudge of the house from here, high on the hill above us. I tried to let the peace soak into me. Tried not to think about Cerny talking about me. Or what Annalise had written in her email.
“He asked me about my memories,” Heath said. “My first day of college. How strange it felt to be sitting in a classroom the size of a theater with all those other students. The papers shuffling and pens scratching. The smells of other people’s laundry detergent.” He seemed far away, staring past the trees and the swaying birdhouses. “I was just so glad to be there. To be lost in the crowd, one in tens of thousands. It was good to talk about it, which was a surprise. Easier than I thought.”
He went back to his food. “I also told him about my mother.” He hesitated. “I told him that I wanted, more than anything, to be able to forgive her.” He paused.
I knew what he was doing. He was giving me a chance to engage in his therapy. To help him in his search for closure. I forced myself to speak.
“What do you have to forgive her for?”
He got very still. A chill brushed my skin.
“Were there boyfriends?” I asked.
He put down his fork. “No. What I have to forgive my mother for was something different. Something I’ve never told you.”
I gripped the edge of the bench with both hands, my knuckles gone white. What a fool I’d been, thinking I could control any of this, that I could somehow manage the way the truth came out. This freight train was coming, hard and fast, and I was tied to the tracks.
He went on. “My mother was single when she had me—and older, past forty. She’d been hustling a long time . . . She was a dancer before I was born. And probably more than just a dancer, even though I didn’t have any proof of it. After she aged out of that career, she got a job at some taco place. Sold weed—and probably harder stuff—to the rich kids in the suburbs.” He let out a long breath. “She’d grown up Catholic enough to feel guilty that she wasn’t giving me a fair shot at life. So when I was still very young, she gave me away—to a couple she met. Well, not gave exactly. I’m fairly certain money changed hands.”
So it was basically what Annalise said. He’d told each of us a portion of the truth.
“From the time I was three or four years old, I lived with them.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “They were an older couple. And they wanted me—not because they wanted to be parents, but for other reasons. Disturbing reasons.”
His words washed over me, and I started to go numb.
“They owned me. Not to physically abuse. There was no sexual abuse, either, nothing like that. It was . . .” He scanned the woods beyond the garden. “Mind games.”
“You don’t have to talk about it.”
He gave me a quizzical look. “I know, Daphne. But they were my parents. The people who raised me most of my life. I want to tell you about them.”
I laid down my spoon, my appetite gone. I shook my head, once, then twice, like some crazy windup toy.
“Daphne,” he said. “There’s nothing to be scared of.”
“It’s just, I don’t want you to feel any pressure.”
He laughed in disbelief. “I lied to you, Daphne. I made up an entire story about growing up with my mother. About her having two jobs, us being poor, and all these guys she brought around that roughed me up. Doesn’t that bother you? Don’t you care?”
“I do. It’s just—” I stopped.
This is the one place I’m afraid to go.
The one place I can’t go.
“You’re afraid I’ll push back,” he said. “Expect you to tell me about your past. Isn’t that right?”
“I just think you should focus on your sessions with Dr. Cerny right now, that’s all. That’s why we’re here. That’s the whole reason we came up here.”
He pressed his lips into a thin line. “You’ve told me you lived in a house at a girls’ ranch. You said you had surrogate parents there and other girls you lived with and that they got you a scholarship to art school. That’s it. That’s all I know. You’ve never told me anything more.”
My face felt hot. My whole body felt engulfed in flames. “Because you didn’t want me to!” I practically yelped. “Because we agreed the past wasn’t worth rehashing!”
He inhaled and let it out slowly. “You’re right. We did agree, but I was wrong, Daphne. It was a bad idea for us to pretend certain things didn’t happen. That certain events didn’t change us. The things that happened to me did change me. They . . . poisoned me, in a way. And I’m afraid if I don’t talk about what happened—if I don’t get the poison out—it will kill me.”
My eyes burned and I felt tears welling. Shit. Shit. I couldn’t refuse to listen, couldn’t watch him suffer like this. I had to fucking pull myself together and be here for the man I loved.
I sniffed. “So tell me. Get it all out.”
“Really?”
I nodded.
He looked down at his hands. “I don’t know how to describe it exactly. It was lonely and isolated, so lonely that sometimes I thought I was going crazy. No one ever came to the farm to check on me, no police, nobody from child welfare. I wasn’t adopted legally, of course, but who cared? Nobody knew, and honestly, how difficult could it be to buy an unwanted toddler off a half-starved crack whore?
“After I ran away, I was so traumatized, I couldn’t bring myself to report them. I believed they could somehow find me, take me back to that place.” His voice trailed and he shook his head. “I’m glad they’re dead now. I’m just sorry I wasn’t able to tell you the truth.”
“They’re dead?” It was the only question I could think to ask.
He faltered. “I mean, I assume they are. They were old when I was a child. I haven’t heard from them since I left.”
We were quiet for a moment, then I spoke. “What about the mirror?”
“What mirror?” he asked.