‘It’s against policy, it’s dangerous, and to be completely honest I’m more worried about the consequences for you than for Mr Blackthorn.’
‘This is insane.’ I launched myself out of the chair and paced behind it. ‘In the eight years I’ve known you, all you’ve ever told me is that I need to let myself connect with people, to open up to love and loss again and all that crap. Then you force me to work with Lucas against my will and outside my professional scope. And now you’re upset because I’m too close to him?’
She steepled her fingers under her chin, undisturbed by my outburst. On the scale of emotional incidents around here, we might as well be having a sedate tea. After a moment’s consideration, she nodded.
‘I’ll authorize you to continue your sessions for the time being, but I’ll be monitoring your work closely. And please know, Maya’ – she stopped me as I headed for the door – ‘I believe in you.’
Belief is a powerful thing. It grabs you, unmakes you, changes the tilt and angle of everything around you into an entirely different geometry. You see the world in a new shape and no matter how horrible the belief, no matter what awful things it makes you do, a part of you is still grateful for the structure.
I’d believed a lot of things in my life, most of them about my mother.
I’d believed in Santa Claus until I found the frosted animal crackers I only got once a year in my stocking, tucked away in Mom’s sock drawer. They were brittle cookies, animal shapes coated with a careless icing like snow drifted into patches along back alleys, and the ones I found were leftovers, crumbled into tiny rocks at the bottom of the bag. She cried when I brought them out, perplexed by my discovery, and after she broke down I immediately wanted to hide the bag, to bury it at the bottom of a snowbank that would never melt. I’d believed our rock garden would make her happy, and that if I could memorize just one more mineral her eyes would blink into focus again and she would hug me with pride. Later, when she left us, I believed every word of her goodbye letter. Everything shifted into place: the jobs she could never keep, the long silences when Dad was gone, how her sadness swamped her at the strangest times – in the grocery store or walking me to school. I’d look up and her face would be wet, eyes averted and unwiped. If I tried to hug her, it seemed to make her worse. If I ignored it, the gap between us only widened. She hadn’t wanted me, hadn’t wanted this life, and disappeared like the Bannockburn before I could demand a reason why. To ask what I’d done that was so intolerable.
Sometimes I even wondered if I’d studied speech so I could dissect my memories of her. I played old videos of us over and over but could never find any hint of her intentions. I hated the counselors who pulled me into their offices, the words that came so easily to them and had been impossible for her. The thing no one understands, when your parent abandons you, is that it doesn’t happen just once. They leave every day, every moment that you remember them is a door slamming shut in your face. And with every slam, you believe – a little more each time – that you probably deserved it.
My belief about Lucas Blackthorn was nothing like that creeping kind of blame. It didn’t gradually take root in my consciousness over years; I woke up this morning with a certainty flowing through me that not even Dr Mehta could derail. I hated myself for lying to her – sane Dr Mehta, sober Dr Mehta, a woman who had faith in the faithless and confidence in the worst people you could imagine. After all, she’d hired me. She’d challenged me, elevated me, believed in me, but now I wondered how much she really understood me. If she did, she never would have given me this assignment. Before I met Lucas, I don’t think I’d even understood myself.
This is what I knew now:
A father had disappeared. A son was desperate to find him.
And I would tell a thousand lies if it brought him one step closer.
The path before me seemed so clear and it gave meaning to every-thing I’d survived to get to this point. I had to help Lucas find his father. No matter what Josiah had done, no matter what had driven them into the Boundary Waters, they needed to find each other and I was possibly the only person in the world who understood how much. But the clock was ticking. Every day the winds blew harder and colder, the gales raged in a losing battle against the coming winter. Soon the ice would win, soon Josiah might be dead, and we’d be out of time.
I gathered up my session supplies and jogged up the stairs to ward two. I could feel the organs in my body pumping, expanding, the excitement set loose in every nerve ending, flashing with a life I hadn’t known was even inside me. Without any premonition of what lay ahead, I badged in to ward two and caught a flash of -Lucas’s face before the world jerked sideways.
13
A crushing weight knocked me to the ground, sending the air whooshing out of my lungs. Several people yelled my name, the loudest one right in my ear.
‘Tag, Maya! Tag, Maya!’ the voice shouted gleefully.
I twisted around and pulled his skull into a headlock as Lucas appeared above us, grabbing a massive arm and ripping it backward. Big George shrieked in pain.
‘Back off, Lucas! Now,’ I managed to order as two nurses came to pry our tag player off me. After we got untangled and de-
escalated the situation, the other staff and I led Big George to his favorite squishy chair and sat him down. He held his arm and rocked, refusing to make eye contact with anyone. I nodded to the nurses and they gave us a little distance, returning to the bustle of the adult men’s common room. Most of the other patients watched us to see how the show would turn out, but when nothing more exciting happened than Big George sniffling into the crook of his arm they gradually resumed their card games, books, and TV programs. Faces turned away from the window of the classroom, where one of the life skills coaches held up a rainbow-colored chart. Lucas paced behind the row of sofas in front of the TV, and even though he didn’t look over once I knew I had his undivided attention.
Big George was holding his throat now and he’d gotten himself into a loop, repeating ‘Ow’ over and over.
‘What hurts, George? Tell me.’
Instead of verbalizing, he pointed to his arm and neck and then, as he always did when something ached, he doubled over and pressed his palms against his head.
Big George had lived at Congdon for twenty years, ever since he and two friends robbed a grocery store at gunpoint in Cloquet, loaded up trash bags with cash and food, and met a squad car on their way out. The other two began shooting at the police and were killed on sight but George was ‘lucky’; he’d been hunched over a box of Triscuits when they opened fire and the angle of the bullet through his brain missed every major artery. He had the aptitude of a four-year-old now, ate every meal as if his life depended on it, and was aggressively cheery unless he felt the slightest twinge of pain – reminding him a phantom bullet lived in his head – or if he saw anything resembling a tan, plaid square, which would send him spiraling into a meltdown. Triscuits were strictly banned in the men’s ward.
I gave him a second to work through his feelings and then doubled over my own legs, mirroring his pose. When I got his attention, I pointed to the ankle Bryce’s Taser had sprained.
‘I’ve got a place that hurts, too.’ As George reached out to tap my shin, I asked him. ‘Where am I hurt?’
‘Leg.’
‘This is my leg.’ I sounded as excited as anyone could about discovering a piece of their body and he caught on to my enthusiasm, pointing to his head.
‘This is my ow.’