“Let’s start with the easy memories, Alice. It’s as I’ve said already, time is running out, but if it helps you face the truth of the memories that plague you, let’s start in a place that’s safe. A place that feels like home.”
Her lips rolled over each other, the chapped skin sticky as she opened her mouth to answer him aloud. “This was the only safe place I remember from my childhood. It’s probably the reason I sought you out. Although, for the life of me, I can’t remember the first time I came here. Not since I was young. Not after…”
Her voice trailed off, her eyes clenching shut now that she understood what she’d done.
Forcing herself to keep talking, she drew in a steadying breath and opened her eyes. “My mother brought me to you because of the sleep disorders, didn’t she?”
His voice patient and astute, he answered, “That was the reason she gave me on the day you first stepped foot inside this office. But after meeting with you several times, I knew there was more to your problems than either you or your mother would let on. You were a smart girl, Alice. Impressive, really, and I had to fight to keep you talking most of the time. You were protecting someone. I assume now that person was your father.”
Her head nodded in agreement with his assumption. “If I’d told you or any person about the abuse, it would have destroyed my family.” She laughed, a choked sound of hatred and regret. “Not that there was much to destroy as he grew worse over the years, but at least they were safe. I was the only target he seemed to care about.”
“You loved your family.”
Not a question, but a statement, and Alice wasn’t sure how to respond. When she didn’t answer, he filled the silence for her.
“But there was more to how you felt about them, wasn’t there? Something secret that made you feel ashamed? Frightened?”
With trembling hands, she pushed her hair away from her face, and then wrapped her arms around her body as if that would somehow protect her from the ugly truth of her life.
“I was jealous of my brother and sister. My sister, mostly. They were never forced to sleep in small closets, and he never seemed angry when they were in the room. It was only me that he hated. Only me that he wished had never been born.”
Giving her words a few minutes of consideration, the doctor spoke slowly when he replied, “It wasn’t your fault. You know that, right? The disorders, what your father did to you, or the jealousy you felt for your siblings as a result.”
Her fingers dug into her sides, her arms wrapped so tight around her abdomen that she could feel the pulse of blood beneath the skin. “I know that now, especially after everything I learned in college about the disorders. But that didn’t help me when I was a child. I had no way of knowing…”
“I tried to tell you in your sessions.”
“Yeah,” she argued, “but I thought it was just a bunch of lies.”
The air left her lungs on a rattle, her body buckling in the seat as she curled into a tight, protective ball.
“I think I’m ready, Doc. I think I’m finally ready to face everything.”
“Are you sure?”
Nodding her head so hard the hair bounced at the sides of her face, she bit her bottom lip and closed her eyes. Pulling herself out of the cocoon of her body she’d constructed to keep herself safe, she opened her eyes again and said, “All the pieces were there the entire time. All the memories. I’d just turned them into something else entirely because I couldn’t face what had become of me, what he had done to me so easily.”
Turning to face Dr. Chance, Alice pulled her arms from around herself and knotted her fingers together over her lap. “If dreams are just the mind’s way of processing memories, then why do they have to be so abstract?”
The leather chair groaned when he leaned forward, his own hands wrapped together where they settled atop his knees. “Perhaps you needed the abstraction so you wouldn’t break apart entirely. But the pieces were all there. I saw them. I have them written down. It’s time for you to take them and put them into some order so that you can put the entire picture back together. It’s time for the story to make sense.”
A shiver ran across her.
“I’m a bad person, Doc.” The confession stung as it crawled up from her throat to brush across her lips.
“You’re not a bad person, Alice. You wouldn’t be here if you were. People can do bad things and still be considered good.”
Annoyed by tears that wouldn’t stop falling, her lip trembled as her vision blurred. “Where do I start, Doc?” Her voice squeaked as she spoke, fear a creeping entity that threatened to pull her farther into its grasp. “Where can you start on a story such as this?”
He looked at her with shrewd appraisal behind his eyes, the time ticking between them so slowly until he finally opened his mouth and said, “Start from the only place that makes sense, Alice. From the beginning…and from the moment you first met Maximilian Frost.”