“Detective Parsons?” I had him on the phone the moment I heard the door close.
I will not recount the conversation. Let’s just say that I betrayed my patient’s confidence and suggested Parsons confirm Bob’s alibi with the country club. He did not press me for details. Nor was he pleased that the case was not closed. Between my call and Tom with that cursed sweatshirt, I’m sure Detective Parsons was having a very bad day. That was not my concern.
Have you ever seen one of those acrobats who can walk a tightrope while spinning plates on two sticks?
Sean Logan came in later that afternoon. He was agitated.
“Has something happened? You seem upset.”
Nah. I’m all good, Doc. His tone was sarcastic.
“Sean. I know this is crossing some boundaries. And boundaries are important in the work we’re doing. But I feel I would be negligent if I did not address the things of which I am aware and which I believe have been bothering you for several days.”
Sean looked at me with the face of an irreverent teenager. Then he shrugged. Even just one day earlier, this would have made me feel sick. Physically sick. Seeing my patient, my beautiful wounded soldier, without his smile and his humor and his affection for me, well, it would have hurt me deeply. But today I was the rock. And I knew he would come back to me.
“Sean—I know you are very close with Jenny. I also know that she is in a bad place right now because of something she has remembered. Or thinks she remembered. And because she’s frustrated that I am worried about that memory being real.”
Sean started to heave in and out. He was still so quick to anger, all that guilt, the ghosts, roaming inside him.
Doc, I gotta tell you. I don’t know why this fucking monster isn’t behind bars. I don’t see how you can sit there, knowing what you know and what you’re not telling me you know with all your fancy bullshit talk, and not have that man arrested and locked away with the rest of the scum on this planet. Is there anything inside you besides this bullshit? Is there one fucking emotion about what this poor kid went through?
I sat back in my chair, my heart beating just a bit faster. His anger was finding something to attach to, something not innocent like his wife and young son. Something that would not cause him to move heaven and earth to contain it.
“I do have emotions, Sean. I work very hard to keep them from interfering with my work, with my patients. With you. With Jenny.”
I let out a sigh and looked away. A pained expression washed across my face, the kind I have seen so many times, it is now second nature to me.
“And I have Jenny’s best interests at heart. In my heart,” I said through my pained face. “This memory and the person in the memory who is being investigated—I won’t say more than that, because it’s not my place—but my job is to make damned sure it gets done correctly. He’s not going anywhere. There’s no harm in taking the time to do things correctly so that if, and it is still a big ‘if,’ he does turn out to be the perpetrator, then he will not walk away on bad evidence.”
Sean looked up at me again, this time with a softer expression.
“You know how easy it would be to corrupt your memories of that dreadful day in Iraq, right? Think about how careful we are when we reconstruct the events, the surroundings. When your brain starts to pull out the file—that process is so precarious. So vulnerable. I fear Jenny’s memory has been corrupted that way.”
She doesn’t think so. She’s pretty certain.
“And yet when she thinks about this person, have you noticed? There is no fear or rage or sadness. There’s just a bland, flat intellectual response.”
Sean considered this. He knew I was right. I could see it. He exhaled loudly. His body relaxed against the cushions. Fuck.
“You want it to be this man, don’t you?”
Fuck yeah! She needs this to be over. You know that. She needs to move on. To live in the future.
“She needs to remember. That’s the only way the ghosts will leave. And so do you. Should we get to work?”
I worked with Sean for two hours. We went back to the desert. We went back to the mission, the radio calls as his comrades were murdered one by one on the streets of that village. Valancia at his side. Seeing the red door, the locals who had not fled to safety. Women and children. An old man. His anger was deeper than usual. Jenny was in his head. And worse—she was in his heart. I believed he was calmer when he left. I believed I knew the extent of his anger and the power he had to control it. He was not a violent man by nature. But as much as I never forget he was a soldier, I somehow managed not to remember.
Chapter Twenty-eight