“Are you feeling lonely, Katherine?”
I open my eyes and drop my head again, not wanting to see any sort of pity in her gaze, not even a glimmer. She may remain stoic most of the time, but every once in a while her eyes give her away. Just for a second, almost as if I imagined it. “Sometimes,” I admit.
“You should try and get out more. Join a club or something,” she suggests.
I start to laugh but there’s no humor in it. “Right. A club. Which one should I join? Do you think a surviving victims of serial killers group exists?”
She ignores my sarcasm. “There are all sorts of support groups out there, Katherine. I’m sure you could find one that suits you and your needs. I have resources. Plenty of information I can send home with you.”
Information she’s tried to shove on me before. No thanks. Not interested. “I can’t go out in public right now. People might recognize me.”
“You’re the one who wanted to do the interview,” she points out, and that does it.
I’m sort of pissed.
“You’re right. I thought it would be therapeutic, considering these visits really aren’t.” I leap to my feet, my entire body shaking I’m so upset. “I should go.”
Dr. Harris looks up at me, one brow lifted. “Do you think that’s wise?”
“I don’t know.” I feel like I’m about to crawl out of my skin. “I don’t think it matters. I can’t help the way I feel.”
“You’re conflicted.”
“Always.”
“Why?”
I slump back into the chair, all the air leaving me, my lungs feeling deflated, my head spinning. “I don’t know. I want to live. I’d rather be dead. I want to be strong. It’s so much easier to be weak. I want to confront my fears and face them head on. I want to run away and pretend I don’t exist.”
“But you do exist. You’re trying your best to be strong.” She leans forward in her chair and I want to shrink into mine. “First thing you tackled was the interview. Telling your story.”
“So?” My voice is small and I curl my arms around myself, suddenly cold.
“So you did that. And you survived it. Came out on the other side. You should be proud of yourself.” Her voice is firm, as if she’s trying to parlay her strength onto me. “Are you?”
“Proud of myself?” I scoff. “No. What do I have to be proud of? All I did was survive.”
“You escaped. You identified a serial rapist and murderer, and thanks to you he was caught.”
“It wasn’t all me. I had help.” I think of him. Again. He crosses my mind more often than not lately. My guardian angel. I reach for the charm on my bracelet, running my thumb over it. “I had nothing to do with my escape.”
“You don’t give yourself enough credit.”
“I was twelve. Completely helpless. His son was the one who saved me. He took me to the police station.” He didn’t want to stay. Will had planned on dumping me off before going back. Back to what, I wasn’t sure.
Nothing good.
“You had the strength to testify,” Dr. Harris reminds me. “You spoke out in court and helped convict the man who kidnapped and raped you.”
Raped. I hate that word. It makes me feel like damaged goods—maybe because I am damaged goods. Who’d want me? I can hardly look a man in the eye, let alone talk to one. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
“Talk about what?”
“Him. What he did to me. How he raped me. How I’m ruined for any other man,” I spit out. It always circles back to this, to him, and what he did to me. They want all the gruesome details. A list of exactly what he did to me, where he touched me, how many times he . . .
I close my eyes and let it wash over me. What he did. What he said. The look in his eyes. The tiny bits of kindness he doled out to convince me he wasn’t so bad.
He was the devil.
“Do you believe yourself ruined?” Dr. Harris asks.
“Yes,” I whisper. “It’s why I sometimes wish I would’ve died. It would be so much easier, you know? I’d be gone. I wouldn’t have to deal with all of this.”
“Are you saying you feel suicidal?”
Always the same question, always afraid I’m going to harm myself. “Not at all.”
“Do you truly regret doing the interview?”
Opening my eyes, I stare at her. “No. It had to be done. I’m assuming this is part of the process.”
“I believe you’re right,” Dr. Harris says, her voice soft, her expression kind. That tiny glimpse of kindness reassures me and I sit up straight, my thumb still streaking across the silver guardian angel charm. “Talking about what happened after so many years is going to bring up a lot of difficult emotions. You’ve been taken back to when it happened and you’re having to deal with those feelings all over again.”
And I didn’t deal with them properly the first time around, not really. I had to pretend everything was okay, even though it wasn’t. “I should be stronger,” I say. “It shouldn’t affect me like this.”
“We all deal with trauma differently,” she starts, but I cut her off.
“I want to be stronger.”
“You’ll get there.” She smiles, this tight, close-lipped smile that is full of lies. “Someday.”