‘Josiah Blackthorn is alive.’
Dr Mehta spooned spices from various pots into her pestle and began grinding them with the mortar. Her office filled with the familiar pungent fragrance, making the air heavy and sharp. It took ten minutes to prepare a traditional chai, five minutes to let it cool, and another fifteen for her to drain the entire pot while I pretended to sip my single cup. That was a half an hour, measured in blisteringly bitter tea, for our monthly ‘check-in’ sessions.
‘That’s why Lucas keeps trying to escape. It’s not just leaving Congdon, it’s not just the Boundary Waters: He’s trying to get back to his father.’
‘Believe me, Maya,’ she poured the spices into an electric tea kettle and set a timer, ‘no one is more gratified than me to hear Lucas has trusted you with this information. The US Forest Service is making renewed efforts to locate Josiah and any information from his son will help. They’ve canvassed the western area closest to Ely by both water and air, trying to find any trace of him but so far have turned up nothing.’
‘What about Quetico?’ The rangers wouldn’t have any authority to search the Canadian reserve, which extended the wilderness by almost another two thousand square miles.
‘To my understanding, they’re working in tandem with the Canadian authorities and’ – she cut over my attempt to ask another question – ‘we’ll go over this in detail, I assure you, but right now we’re here to discuss Maya Stark, not Josiah Blackthorn.’
I dropped into my usual spot in one of her overstuffed chairs and stared at the moss-eaten trunk of an old oak outside the window. Dead leaves circled the ground around it and its branches curled naked into the sky. ‘There’s not much to say. My boss trusted me with a challenging assignment and it’s taking over my life.’
‘What did you do this weekend?’
I’d spent most of it replaying my last conversation with Lucas over and over to the beat of Jasper’s paws hitting the boards of the lake walk, but she didn’t want to hear that.
‘I went to the hardware store. The nickel handles I put in the bathroom are all wrong. Copper would be perfect with the wood tones and the floor, but then I’d have to get new fixtures, too.’
‘Is it possible,’ she ruminated while pulling out two squatty brown cups, ‘that your fixation on this bathroom allows you to avoid other areas of your life?’
‘Like remodeling the kitchen?’
‘Like making friends. Socializing. Pushing yourself out of your avoidant attachment style and opening up, building relationships and trust. It all starts through meaningful interaction with someone outside of Congdon.’
‘I signed up for three different social media accounts in the last week. My phone’s been going crazy.’ The notification buzzes had made my pocket vibrate all morning. I pulled the phone out and she came over, donning her glasses to examine the screen.
‘ “Stephanie posted to Lucas Blackthorn’s timeline?” “Lake Superior and 5K others liked @therealblackthorn’s tweet?” ’ She handed it back. ‘The lake liked it?’
‘It’s got an account, too.’
‘Of course it does.’ Dr Mehta perched in the chair across from me. Behind her head hung a framed quote that had been in this office for as long as I’d known her. It read, What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. Dr Mehta had spent eight years and counting trying to counsel what lay within me.
‘I said meaningful interaction, Maya. I don’t imagine you’re contributing to these conversations, as it would violate HIPAA confidentiality.’
‘No, but some of these people are obsessed. And I’m talking the clinical definition.’ I pulled up one of the apps and scrolled through the comments. ‘They’re reposting all the photos of Lucas, turning them into memes and artwork.’
I showed her a picture of Lucas’s face – captured when they were transferring him to Congdon – superimposed over a forest. Another version showed him half in shadows with the bottom of the frame bleeding into red. Someone posted one last night of Josiah fractured into a broken tile mosaic of greens and blacks, and the amount of detail and painstaking nuance must have taken hours, even days.
‘They’ve divided into camps, people sympathetic to Lucas who are outraged that he’s here, and the others who want him to rot in prison for what he did to the Andersons. They think he killed his father and buried him somewhere in the Boundary Waters.’
The timer beeped and Dr Mehta returned to the tea, stirring in milk and sugar with unhurried strokes.
‘Haven’t you noticed the people outside?’ I peered beyond the oak branches toward the entrance. Something moved near the guardhouse. It was too far away to identify, but the lurkers were out there. I’d seen evidence of them online: pictures of the front entrance and even blurry shots of patients walking through the grounds, which prompted rabid speculation on whether any of them could be Lucas.
‘Yes, the guards are aware of the issue. We’ve temporarily doubled security at the gate. Lucas has accumulated a large amount of fan mail – and some hate mail – as well.’
‘What?’ My spine straightened.
‘Which is all the more reason’ – she brought two mugs over and handed one to me – ‘to get him to talk. The sooner the better. We need him to tell the authorities his story before the public superimposes their own. Eventually Lucas will be rejoining this society and we want him to be positioned to successfully engage with it, not recoil into a protective shell and redo his bathroom for the rest of his life.’
I swallowed the tea without tasting it, but the astringency still puckered my tongue. ‘Someday you have to teach me that trick where people think you’re nice.’
‘Happily.’ Smiling, she inhaled the steam from her cup. ‘How about the day when you don’t try to divert attention to someone else during your therapy sessions?’
When I didn’t reply, she took a sip and settled more comfortably into her chair. ‘Now, shall we discuss your progress in letting yourself form attachments? Or would you rather talk about your fears of the Ely police?’
Shifting, I took another bracing mouthful of tea.
Twenty minutes later the ‘check-in’ was over and Dr Mehta kept her promise to tell me the details of the search for Josiah. The police wanted to talk to Lucas as soon as possible. Once winter came, the lakes would freeze over and any search parties would be fighting subzero temperatures on snowshoe or by dogsled, and without Lucas’s help they’d be searching blind.
I’d been shaking my head long before she finished. ‘He won’t talk to them. He said he’d rot in here before turning his father over. Doesn’t that sound like his father committed a crime?’
‘The police haven’t mentioned any outstanding warrants.’
‘What else could he mean?’
Dr Mehta set aside her cup and laid a hand on my arm.
‘You’re doing a wonderful job with him, Maya – and I know this is frustrating – but you have to focus on reaching Lucas. His health is our priority. Work on gaining his trust, acclimating him, and hopefully we can get him to speak with the police soon.’ She turned back to the window. ‘It seems the path to the father is through the son.’