“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” I respond in lieu of an answer to her question, and she gratefully accepts it, turning around to watch out the front window and forgetting altogether that we’re being trailed.
We drive down the neighborhood street. It’s quiet. The kids have returned to school after two weeks of winter break and no longer loiter in their front lawns building snowmen and tossing snowballs at one another with high, shrieking laughter, sounds that are foreign in our uncommunicative home. Christmas lights remain on homes, those inflatable Santas unplugged and lying dead in mounds of snow. James didn’t take the time to decorate the exterior of the house this year, though I went all out on the inside just in case. Just in case Mia came home and there was cause to celebrate.
She’s agreed to hypnosis. It didn’t take much coaxing. These days Mia agrees to most everything. James is against the idea; he thinks hypnosis is a bogus science, equivalent to reading palms and astrology. I don’t know what I believe, though I’ll be damned if I don’t give it a try. If it helps Mia remember one split second of those missing months, it’s worth the exorbitant cost and the time spent in the waiting room of Dr. Avery Rhodes.
What I understood of hypnosis a week ago was negligible. After awakening at night to research hypnosis on the internet, I became enlightened. Hypnosis, as I’ve come to understand it, is a very relaxed trancelike state similar to daydreaming. This will allow Mia to become less inhibited and tune out the rest of the world to allow herself, with the doctor’s help, to arouse the memories she’s lost. Under hypnosis, the subject becomes highly suggestible, and can recall information that the mind has locked in a vault. By hypnotizing Mia, Dr. Rhodes will be dealing directly with the subconscious, that part of the brain that’s hidden Mia’s memories from her. The goal is to put Mia into a state of deep relaxation so her conscious mind, more or less, goes to sleep and Dr. Rhodes can deal with the subconscious. For Mia’s sake, the goal is to regain all or some part—some minute details even—of her time in the cabin so that, through therapy, she can come to terms with her abduction and heal. For the investigation’s sake, however, Detective Hoffman is desperate for information, for any details or clues that Colin Thatcher might have aired in the cabin that would help police find the man who did this to Mia.
When we arrive at Dr. Rhodes’s office, I, at James’s insistence, am allowed inside. He wants me to keep an eye on the nutcase, what he calls Dr. Rhodes, in case she tries to screw with Mia’s head. I sit in an armchair out of the way while Mia, squeamishly, sprawls out on the couch. Textbooks line floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on the southernmost wall. There is a window that faces the parking lot. Dr. Rhodes keeps the blinds closed, allowing in only a scant amount of light, so there’s an abundance of privacy. The room is dark and discreet, the secrets revealed inside the walls absorbed by the burgundy paint and oak wainscoting. The room is drafty; I pull my sweater tightly around my body and hug myself as Mia’s conscious mind begins to get drowsy. The doctor says, “We’ll start with off with the simple things, with what we know to be true, and see where that leads.”
It doesn’t come back chronologically. It doesn’t even come back sensibly and, to me, long after we escape into the piercing winter day, it’s a puzzle. I had imagined that hypnosis would be able to unlock the vault and there, in that very instant, all the memories would topple onto the faux Persian rug so that Mia, the doctor and I could hover over and dissect them. But that’s not the way it happens at all. For the limited time Mia is under hypnosis—maybe twenty minutes but no more—the door is open and Dr. Rhodes, with a kind, harmonious voice, is trying to pry away the cookie’s layers to get at the cream filling. They come off in crumbs: the rustic feel of the cabin with the knotty pine paneling and exposed beams, static on a car radio, the sound of Beethoven’s Für Elise, spotting a moose.
“Who’s in the car, Mia?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Are you there?”
“Yes.”
“Are you driving the car?”
“No.”
“Who’s driving the car?”
“I don’t know. It’s dark.”
“What time of day is it?”
“Early morning. The sun is just beginning to rise.”
“You can see out the window?”
“Yes.”
“Do you see stars?”
“Yes.”
“And the moon?”
“Yes.”
“A full moon?”
“No.” She shakes her head. “A half moon.”
“Do you know where you are?”
“On a highway. It’s a small, two-lane highway, surrounded by woods.”
“Are there other cars?”
“No.”
“Do you see street signs?”
“No.”