CHAPTER FOUR

When Avery walked into Dr. Higdon’s office, she felt like a cliché. Dr. Higdon herself was very poised and polite. She seemed to always have her head pointed slightly upward, showing off the perfect point of her nose and the angle of her chin. She was a good-looking woman, if not a bit overdone.

Avery had fought the urge to go to a therapist but knew enough about how the traumatized mind worked to know that she needed it. And that was excruciating to admit to herself. She hated the idea of visiting a shrink and also did not want to resort to calling upon the services of the Boston PD–assigned shrink she’d seen a few times over the years following particular tough cases.

So she’d reached out to Dr. Higdon, a therapist she had heard about last year during a case involving a suspect who had used her to get over a series of irrational fears.

“I appreciate you meeting with me so quickly,” Avery said. “I was honestly expecting to have to wait a few weeks.”

Higdon shrugged as she sat down in her chair. When Avery took a seat on the adjacent couch, the feeling of becoming a living cliché only intensified.

“Well, I’ve heard of you a few times just through news stories,” Higdon said. “And your name has come up when new patients have come in, people you’ve apparently crossed paths with in your line of work. So I had an open hour today and figured it would be nice to meet you.”

Realizing that it was unprecedented to get an appointment with a respected therapist just two days after making a call, Avery knew not to take the appointment for granted. And, never having been one to beat around the bush, she had no problem getting to the point.

“I wanted to meet with a therapist because, quite honestly, my head is just a mess right now. One part is telling me that healing is going to come from time off. Another part is telling me that healing is going to come from productivity and familiarity – which leads me back to work.”

“I know just the briefest of details about the healing you’re looking for,” Higdon said. “Could you elaborate?”

Avery spent ten minutes doing just that. She started with how the last case had unfolded and then ended in the death of her ex-husband and her would-be fiancé. She breezed over the part about moving away from the city and the recent fallout with Rose, both at her apartment and their run-in at Jack’s grave.

Dr. Higdon started asking questions right away, having taken down handwritten notes the entire time Avery had been talking. “The move to the cabin by Walden Pond…what made you want to do that?”

“I didn’t want to be around people. It’s more isolated. Very quiet.”

“Do you feel that you heal better both emotionally and physically when you’re on your own?” Higdon asked.

“I don’t know. I just…I didn’t want to be in a place where people had the ability to come by and check on me a hundred times a day.”

“Have you always had problems with people concerned for your well-being?”

Avery shrugged. “Not really. It’s a vulnerability thing, I suppose. In my line of work, vulnerability leads to weakness.”

“I doubt that’s true. In terms of perception, probably – but not in the actual state of things.” She paused for a moment here and then sat forward. “I won’t try to dance around topics and subtly lead you to the key points,” she said. “I’m sure you’d see it for what it was. Besides, the fact that you can admit to a fear of vulnerability tells me a great deal. So I think we can get directly to the point here.”

“I’d prefer it that way,” Avery said.

“The time you spent alone in the cabin…do you believe it’s helped or hindered your healing?”

“I think it’s a stretch to say it helped, but it made it easier. I knew I wasn’t going to have to deal with the onslaught of well-wishers to constantly check in on me.”

“Did you try reaching out to anyone during that time?”

“Just my daughter,” Avery said.

“But she rejected all of your attempts to reconnect?”

“That’s right. I’m pretty sure she blames me for her father dying.”

“If we’re being honest, that’s probably true,” Higdon said. “And she’ll come around to the truth on her own time. People grieve differently. Rather than escaping it all in a cabin in the woods, your daughter has chosen to assign blame to an easy source. Now let me ask you this…why did you resign from your job at all?”

“Because I felt like I’d lost everything,” Avery said. She didn’t even have to think about it. “I felt like I’d lost everything and failed at my job. I couldn’t stay because it was a reminder of how I wasn’t good enough.”

“Do you still feel that you aren’t good enough?”

“Well…no. At the risk of sounding conceited, I’m very good at my job.”

“And you’ve missed it over the course of these last three months or so, right?”

“I have,” Avery admitted.

“Do you feel that your desire to return there is just to fall back into what your life was once like or do you think there might be some actual progress to be found there?”

“That’s just it. I don’t know. But I’m getting to the point where I think I have to find out. I think I have to go back.”

Dr. Higdon nodded and scribbled something down. “Do you think your daughter will react negatively if you went back?”

“Undoubtedly.”

“Okay, so let’s say she wasn’t in the equation; let’s say Rose couldn’t care less if you went back or not. Would you have any hesitation?”

The realization hit her like a brick to the head. “Probably not.”

“I think you have your answer right there,” Higdon said. “I think at this point in the grieving process, you and your daughter can’t let one another dictate the way the other grieves. Rose needs to blame someone right now. That’s how she’s dealing…and your strained relationship makes it easy. As for you…I want to say returning to work might just be the thing to help push you along.”

“You want to?” Avery asked, confused.

“Yes, I think it makes the most sense, given your history and track record. However, during all of this time alone, isolated away from everyone, have you ever had suicidal thoughts?”

“No,” Avery lied. It came easily and without much regret. “I’ve been low, sure. But never quite that low.”

Yes, she had omitted her near-suicide. She had also not mentioned her package from Howard Randal as she had recounted the last several months. She didn’t know why. For now, it simply felt too private.

“That being the case,” Higdon said, “I don’t see the harm in returning to work. I do think you should be partnered with someone, though. And I know that could be touchy given who your last partner was. Still…you can’t be released into high-stress situations on your own so soon. I’d even recommend you do some light work first. Maybe even desk work.”

“I’ll just be honest…that’s not going to happen.”

Higdon smiled thinly. “So do you think that’s what you’ll do? Will you see if returning to work helps to get you over this self-doubt and blame?”

“Soon,” Avery said, thinking of the call from Connelly two days ago. “Yeah, I think I just might.”

“Well, I wish you the best of luck,” Higdon said, reaching over to shake her hand. “In the meantime, feel free to call me if you need to hash anything out.”

Avery shook Higdon’s hand and left the office. She hated to admit it, but she felt better than she had in weeks – ever since she had finally found a routine for exercise and sharpening her mind. She thought she might be able to think a little more clearly and not because Higdon had uncovered some profound hidden truth. She had simply needed someone to point out to her that although Rose might be the only person left in her life outside of work, that did not mean that her fear of how Rose viewed her should dictate what she did with the rest of her life.

She drove toward the nearest exit to head back to the cabin. She saw the high-rise buildings of Boston off to her left. The precinct was about a twenty-minute drive away. She could head that way, pay everyone a visit, and be given a warm welcome. She could just pull the Band-Aid off and do it.

But a warm welcome was not what she deserved. In fact, she wasn’t sure what she deserved.

And maybe that was where the last remaining bit of hesitation came from.

***

The nightmare she had that night was not a new one but it did present a twist.

In it, she was sitting in a visitation room in a correctional facility. It was not the one she had sometimes visited Howard Randall in, but something much larger and almost Greek-looking. Rose and Jack sat across the table, a chessboard between them. All of the pieces remained on the board, but the kings had fallen over.

“He’s not here,” Rose said, her voice echoing in the cavernous room. “Your little secret weapon is not here.”

“Just as well,” Jack said. “It’s about time to learn to solve some of the bigger cases on your own.”

Jack then passed a hand over his face and in the blink of an eye, he looked the way he did on the night she had discovered his body. The right side of his face was awash in blood and his face had a sort of sag to it on the right side. When he opened his mouth to speak to her there was no tongue in his mouth. There was just darkness beyond the teeth, a chasm where his words came from and, she suspected, where he wished her to be.

“You couldn’t save me,” he said. “You couldn’t save me and now I have to trust you with my daughter.”

Rose stood up at that moment and started walking away from the table. Avery stood with her, certain that something very bad would happen if Rose got out of her sight. She started to follow her but could not move. She looked down and saw that both of her feet had been nailed to the floor with enormous railroad ties. Her feet were shattered, nothing but blood, bone, and chunks of flesh.

“Rose!”

But her daughter only looked back at her, smiled, and waved. And the farther away she got, the bigger the room seemed. Shadows came spilling from every direction, descending on her daughter.

“Rose!”

“It’s okay,” said a voice from behind her. “I’ll watch over her.”

She turned and saw Ramirez, holding his sidearm and looking into the shadows. And as he so gallantly chased after Rose, the shadows started coming after him.

“No! Stay!”

She pulled against the spikes in her feet but to no avail. She could only watch as the two people she had loved the most in the world were swallowed by the darkness.

And that’s when the screams began, pouring out of the shadows, Rose and Ramirez filling the room with cries of agony.

Still at the table, Jack pleaded with her: “For fuck’s sake, do something!”

And that’s when Avery jolted upright in bed, a scream building in her throat. She turned her bedside lamp on with a trembling hand. For a moment, she saw that enormous room spread out ahead of her but it slowly dissipated with the light and wakefulness. She looked to the still-new cabin bedroom and, for the first time, wondered if it was ever going to feel like home.

She found herself thinking of Connelly’s call. And then of Howard Randall’s package.

Her old life was haunting her drams, sure, but it was also invading this new isolated life she had tried building for herself as well.

There seemed to be no escape.

So maybe – just maybe – it was time to stop trying to escape it.