Kimble stopped walking and faced Rocco. His eyes suddenly looked a thousand years old. “I’ve seen those very angels.”
“When?”
He held up his bullet. “My night of hell.”
Rocco’s eyes watered. “You think they’re real?”
Kimble lifted a shoulder. “Real is a perception we each define differently.”
Rocco frowned. “Doc—”
“I’m serious. What does it matter if they were celestial beings or just figments of our own imaginations? The end result is the same. We’re both still here.” He met Rocco’s gaze. “What do you want them to be?”
“Angels. It felt as if they were outside of me.”
“So does everything you experience, but it exists as a perception in your brain.”
“So they weren’t angels?”
“What matters is that you have a second chance. What are you going to do with it?”
“Will it come back? The madness that drove me to the angels?”
Kimble started walking again. Rocco fell in step beside him. He caught a small smile from the shrink. “The mind is a ruthless thing, Rocco. It partners with your soul to teach you the lessons you have to learn. It cares nothing for your feelings or those of the people around you. Its single-minded goal is the lesson it has to teach, and it will use every tool available to do that.” He shrugged. “So will it come back? Maybe. But you’ve already been down that road before. It won’t be unfamiliar territory next time. You’ll know what to do. You don’t need to live in fear of it happening again.”
Rocco sighed, absurdly relieved.
Kimble looked at him. “You know what I’m curious about? Why did your wife blow herself and the village up?”
“She hated me.”
“Maybe. I don’t know enough to say if she did or didn’t. I wonder if she acted on her own or was under the influence of someone else. It’s extraordinarily difficult to violate our instinctual self-preservation and cause self-harm.”
“Lots of people hurt themselves. I almost did.”
“Lots. Sure. But that isn’t many out of the billions of us on this earth.” He looked at Rocco. “Kit said you were injured in the explosion.”
“I lost some memories.”
Kimble nodded. He paused and put his hands behind his back in a contemplative gesture. “I wonder if there’s more to the story of what happened that day than what you’re remembering. Why did you say she hated you?”
“Besides the fact that I used her?”
“Would that alone have caused her to hate you?”
“It’s enough, isn’t it?”
“Is it?”
Rocco sighed. “I ousted her fiancé when I infiltrated her village. Her father, the warlord I was after, gave her to me. She had no say in the matter.” Rocco thought back to the days before the explosion. Ehsan Asir had come back to the village. He looked at the shrink. Maybe he was onto something.
“I don’t feel as if you’ve recovered all of your memories of your tour of duty. That concerns me. I don’t want you to be afraid of them as they surface. Everything that’s happened is in the past. None of it can hurt you now. You can’t change what happened. It simply is. It becomes a part of the man you are.”
Rocco considered that. What if there were more terrible things he’d forgotten that were lying in wait to blindside him? “What do I do about it? I want to get married. Mandy’s already expecting our first baby. I want a future with my family.”
Kimble nodded. “I’m not saying there definitely is something more lurking in your mind somewhere. We all forget lots of things. Not everything forgotten is a caged predator waiting for a chance at us. I just feel that you aren’t at peace with what happened.”
Rocco sighed. “I’m not.”
“Good. Let’s work on that.”
“Okay.”
They were returning to Blade’s back patio. “Spend some time thinking about your experience. You can do it on your own, in meditation, write it to yourself in a letter, talk to someone you trust, talk to me. Ease up on that chokehold you have on your memories. Let them all through, the good and the bad. Just let them pass right on by. Don’t let them suck you back into the dark. They’re done and over. They can’t harm you anymore. In the process of letting go, we might discover some surprises that will help you feel you’re standing on a firmer foundation.”
Rocco nodded. Christ, he was fucked up. “Okay.”
Kimble touched his arm and smiled, his eyes kind. “You’re very close, Rocco. We’ll get to the bottom of this. Shall we chat again tomorrow at the same time? We’ll start working through your memories.”
“Yeah. Let’s do. Same time.”
“Good.”
Rocco held out his hand, glad to have a guide to bring him through his madness. “Thanks, doc.”
Chapter Ten