“The analyst is quite confident in his findings,” Barter said.
“You believe him?” Mia said. “Why would I even do that? Who does something that crazy?”
Barter lifted a single eyebrow to suggest she knew exactly who would do something that crazy. “I don’t believe anything, Ms. Floyd. I am simply looking at the evidence presented to me.” She snapped her notebook closed, tucked it under her armpit, and stood to leave.
She pounded to the door and then paused, as though wondering if she should bother to continue, and then said, “I am not saying you wrote those notes with the deliberate intention of wasting my time. The truth of the matter, Ms. Floyd, is that you have been through an awful lot in the last four years. I am trying my best to be patient and empathetic here. Having said that, I think it would be wise and fruitful for you to find yourself a good therapist.”
Mia gulped dry, rancid air that stabbed its way down her throat. “You think I’m crazy and making this all up.” The sickening feeling in her stomach now churned and curdled with fear and self-doubt. She had never been gladder that she didn’t show the last note to Barter. This mortification was more than she could handle. “Does this mean you’re going to stop looking for Brendan? Are you going to close the case?”
“Believe you me, Miss Floyd, we are still doing our damnedest to find that boy and I, personally, will never give up until I find him,” Barter said with as much warmth as an ice queen could muster. “And I’m not saying the notes you’ve received aren’t very frightening to you. I am just now sure how they could be in your own handwriting. This is something I will need to investigate further.”
Mia absorbed the information, her heart sliding into her toes. She willed herself not to cry in front of this woman.
She had wanted to also tell Barter about the dream that she’d been having lately, that Brendan was waiting for her at her grandfather’s cabin in Blueflower. That he was begging her to meet him there on the anniversary of his disappearance. That maybe this dream was a clue the police could look into. Maybe they could go up there and see if he was there. Mia was not able to get to Blueflower by herself; one could only get there by helicopter or hiking, and even helicopters didn’t like going there due to the thick, dangerous fog this time of year. But now Mia considered how idiotic mentioning her dream would sound from Barter’s perspective, and she didn’t dare mention it.
Not now.
Not ever.
“Sometimes it’s helpful to have a support team to help you sort out what kind of…psychological reaction you might be having to residual trauma,” Barter continued. “Have a nice day.” Then she left the room and clipped the door closed, leaving Mia completely alone in numb silence.
Minutes later, the door popped open again and Barter cruised back in with a white cup of coffee in hand. She placed it and a handful of yellow sugar packets and creamers on the middle of the table, barely within Mia’s reach. “Your coffee. As requested.”
Mia stared numbly at the coffee. It smelled stale and acidic, and its jiggly black surface reflected the cold chrome fluorescent light fixture that dangled crookedly from the ceiling and the surveillance camera in the top corner of the room that watched her every move. “Thank you.”
“Think about what I said,” Barter said. “I heard there’s a great new therapist who moved to town. He is spoken very highly about and has one hell of a nice billboard. Maybe check him out? His name is Dr. Leo Lawson, I believe.”
Mia choked at the name.
Could this nightmare get any worse?
Against her better judgment, Mia reached hard across the table for the cup that Barter had refused to place closer to her. When she finally had it in her hands, she drew it to her lips. The coffee was barely lukewarm and tasted burnt. She took a long sip from it as she considered what Constable Barter was telling her. “I can’t see a therapist right now. But thank you for your suggestion.”
Barter’s face twisted from bland boredom to confusion and then to annoyance. “You do realize I am actually trying to help you here?”
Mia stared straight ahead, not daring to meet the cop’s eyes.
Awkward silence. Mia drained her cup dry, sip by sip.
“Whatever. Just get help, Mia,” Barter said, clearly too busy to deal with this nonsense any longer.
She left the room and sent in another cop to walk Mia out, as she did every week.
*******
Dream #1
She sees her son. There he is, after all these years, standing with his back to her, before a gray brick wall. Although it has been four years since he disappeared, he is still the same small eight-year-old boy, but she doesn’t question it or find it odd that he isn’t bigger. Maybe she doesn’t understand that ghosts don’t grow because she is too elated to see him again.
He is holding a paintbrush, painting a colorful mural in front of him. But his body is blocking it and she can’t see anything.
What is he painting? Horses? It looks like horses…
“Brendan…” She can hear the words in her mind, but only airy silence flows from her lips.
He finishes his mural and steps to one side to let her see it. But he has not drawn any picture for her today. He has only written words for her in flowing script.
At first, she ignores what he has painted and looks only to his face, desperate to see her baby just one more time. It has been so long, and she misses him with a viciousness that won’t die. But she is horrified to see he has no face. Just a vast emptiness that stretches into the universe and punches her with indescribable sadness.
She turns her attention to what he has written. Maybe there is something in his words that will make everything okay again. She reads: You’re going to die very soon, Mother.
He smiles at her and eats his paintbrush in one giant gulp.
She wakes up.
She screams.
Only this time the sound is able to come out of her.
*******
Friday, September 15: 8:54 a.m.
“Now that is a good-looking man.” Dr. Leo Lawson grinned cheekily at the new advertising banner he’d just had installed outside his therapy clinic: a huge, twenty-foot photo of himself pointing two fingers at the people walking by on the sidewalk. His dark hair tousled in a just-got-out-of-bed look, framing his come-hither blue-eyed sneer. His tanned and jacked biceps flexed under the tight sleeves of his yellow tee-shirt. He refused to wear a suit and tie for that photo like other stuffy, boring therapists would. Instead, he wore a tight blue shirt that didn’t leave one single line of muscle to the imagination. He thought it made him look more approachable and fun for the clients.
“Tell me, Charles,” Leo said to his neighbor, who was just opening up his own shop, a Botox clinic. Dr. Charles Henderson had sent a lot of self-conscious clients Leo’s way over the few months since he’d gone through a messy divorce and set up shop in the most random of small towns he could find on the map. Business was booming, thanks to his powers to calm down clients stuck in a paradox between wanting to hang onto elusive eternal youth, and yet struggling with a crippling fear of needles. “Wouldn’t you go gay for a guy like that?” Leo cheekily pointed to his banner. “I mean, if we both swung that way, that is, of course.”
Charles, an African American plastic surgeon in his fifties, looked up at the sign and let out a snort. “I dunno. I think you kinda look like one of those male strippers who lap dances for dollar bills at little old ladies’ eightieth birthday parties.” He jingled a pair of gold keys out from his pocket and slid one into the lock of his clinic. “If I were to ever go gay for a guy, he’d have to be a lot classier than that.”
Classy or not, the sign had only been up a month, and business was raging like a moose on Viagra. Doc Leo always had a nonstop lineup of bored housewives making appointments to talk about simple issues, like how Suzy wouldn’t do her homework and the cat barfed in the coffeepot. Issues that didn’t require much use of his doctorate in psychology. All that was r
equired was feigning a concerned tenderness toward his client while nodding sympathetically. Every now and then he’d catch them sneaking a peek at his muscled chest, their eyes meandering down his huge sculpted biceps, drinking in the magnificence of his carved granite-hard abs. When he found them checking him out, they’d usually dash their blushing gazes away. But there were a few who dared to keep on gawking.
Leo couldn’t say he entirely minded being objectified like that. If it kept business coming back week after week, then he might as well capitalize on the perks of what double bodyweight dead-lifts four times a week did to a guy.
“Well, no matter what you say, I think the banner rocks.” Leo unlocked his own office and then peered up at the banner to take one last look.
“Mm-hmm. Conceited much?” Charles droned. Bored, with a flicker of mild amusement that lilted his sarcasm.
“You’re just jelly,” Leo said. “Nachos and beer later after work?”
“As always, my man. It’s Friday, ain’t it? Gotta work on this ol’ potbelly,” Charles patted his gut drooping over his belt. “It helps my patients feel gorgeous compared to me.”
“You’ll always be beautiful in my eyes, Charles.” Leo winked.
“See you at five,” George waved over his shoulder as he entered his clinic. “Just try to control yourself today with the ladies.”
“You got it, dude.”
Leo entered his clinic and flicked on the lights. He jabbed off the numbers on the security system with the other hand. His fingers paused as he noticed the systems had already been turned off. He was sure he had armed it the night before.
The stinging, musty scent of sandalwood wriggled at his nose and eyes distracted him from that thought; the essential oil burner had clearly been left on all night. Again. From the corner of his eye, he caught sight of one hell of a disaster in the clinic that was far worse than any burnt essential oil.
Colorful files and papers littered every conceivable surface of the office like they had been yanked out of the filing cabinets and tossed about with oblivious enthusiasm. Sarah, the receptionist, who had not yet arrived, had a tendency to be a bit on the disorganized side when it came to filing and bookkeeping. But she was wonderfully warm and patient with the clients. And, truly, that was the main thing Leo looked for in an employee.
“Shit, girl,” he muttered to the empty office. “You think you could have cleaned up a bit after going mental with the paperwork?” He expected her to be thirty minutes late this morning, as usual. She was always running late in the mornings, due to daycare issues, and Leo was cool with that.
He remembered what it had been like being a single dad, before…the incident. Leo felt his face clench into a scowl as slivered memories of his son’s death flickered in his mind’s eye. Every now and then, slivers of memories would wriggle their way to the forefront of his consciousness, and behind his eyes, where they would stamp a watermark of misery and horror over everything he saw that day. With every molecule of mental strength he had, Leo shoved those memories back down into the deep swells of his subconscious where he hoped, this time, they would obediently and quietly stay put. And, like magic, he was back to feeling comical and oblivious again. There would be no cheap tequila and cat videos tonight at home to strangle away his sorrows. Nope. Not today. Today was going to be a good day.
He bent down and picked up every stack of paper, chucking them on Sarah’s desk for her to deal with later.
Another day, another dollar helping the crazies. He grinned. Crazies being the affectionate term he called his clients. And how he loved his crazies. Truly, insanely loved them. His passion was digging deep into what deeply rooted issue caused their current despair. Dissecting it and pulverizing it and rescuing them from the punishing and eternal negative feedback loop of their own mind.
Of course, they weren’t actually crazy people. Well, not most of them, at least. A few were kind of ‘out there,’ so to speak, but the vast majority were lonely people who just needed someone to listen to all their shit and offer zero opinion or advice in response to it. Just listen. With empathy and actual concern. And then after they were done ranting and releasing all the week’s pent-up tension, they would get up and go on their merry way again.
He rounded the reception area, humming a happy tune while he pounded on the switchboard to check the voicemail. The screen blinked that there were forty-five new messages.
“Meh…” Leo shrugged. He would check them later. But he accidentally hit the delete button. “Shit!” he scrambled to undo the catastrophe he’d just caused. Those could have been paying customers lining up for appointments, and now they had disappeared into oblivion. “This is why punctuality is important, Sarah. I can’t be trusted with any office equipment,” he said to the empty reception desk.
“Leo?” a timid voiced squeaked from across the room.
Leo’s head snapped up. A raven-haired woman in a beige trench coat and huge sunglasses stood in the doorway of his therapy room. Watching him.
He jumped back. His legs tangled in the black reception chair and he backward-somersaulted over it. As physically strong as he liked to consider himself, the shock of seeing someone standing there rendered every muscle in his body useless now. As he fell, he grabbed the desktop to stop himself, sending colorful papers twirling above him like giant confetti. In a loud brawl of a crash, he landed, starfish, on the floor, legs hanging across the now overturned chair.
“Who are you? How the hell did you get in here?” he demanded from the floor.
“The door was left ajar. I just…walked in…? I’m so sorry…”
“Bullshit. That door closes automatically.” He clambered back up and took a better look at her. Disheveled dark hair cascaded around her face. She was still in her pajamas under her trench coat and clutching a piece of paper in her hands. He knew this woman.
No, it couldn’t be.
He strained to see her more closely. It had been so long, but he knew exactly who she was. He would recognize those soft, round lips anywhere after a thousand lifetimes in a thousand different universes.
“Mia?” He could barely even believe it. Despite her changed style of attire, she still looked exactly the same. She stepped toward him, her glossy black main disheveled and tossed to one side, framing a pair of diminutive sunglasses worn low on the bridge of her nose. But rather than shield her gaze, her glasses inspired a mysterious edginess.
“Mia Floyd? Wow, it’s got to be at least twelve or fifteen years now since I’ve seen you,” he said, knowing full well it had been exactly eighteen years and four months. Give or take. But he didn’t want exactly want to admit he had been thinking about her every day since they parted ways. That he’d been obsessing about her. Ever since…
He could barely see her face past the enormous black lenses, save for her glowing complexion and powerful arched brows above the frames, but he still knew it was her. He could feel it was her. A swipe of natural apricot flushed across her cheeks at the longing way that he was probably looking at her. Her pink bow lips pressed together in distress.
“Is this a bad time?” She clutched a piece of notepaper to her chest. Even behind her black glasses, he could see she was on the verge of crying.
“No, no, of course not.” He pulled himself together. Scrambled to pick up the papers that cloaked the floor. He fumbled vainly with them and then eventually gave up, kicking them all under the desk. “I have a client coming in soon, but why don’t you sit down and take a load off? How about I grab you some coffee from across the street? We’ll catch up on old times.”
“I don’t drink coffee anymore,” she said.
“Tea?”
“No…thank you.”
They watched each other silently. He didn’t know what to say, so he crossed the room toward her. He needed to touch her again. Just one more time.
“No.” She pressed her glasses higher up her nose and swept backward toward the door before he could reach her. “I’m so sorry, Leo. This was
stupid. I shouldn’t have come here.”
“Mia, please don’t go—”
But she was already down the sidewalk, her brown suede slippers clapping the pavement. The bells clattered emptily as the door snipped itself closed behind her and sealed Mia out of his clinic. And as quickly as she had skimmed back into his life, like a candle flame quivering down to its premature sputtering death, the woman of his dreams was gone again.
*******
CHAPTER THREE
Mia jogged through the fat globs of rain and couldn’t get to her car fast enough. Far away, the rumble of thunder vibrated through the sky.
What had she been thinking, coming to see Leo after all these years? For what? To receive therapy from her former lover who broke her heart?
Who does that?
The man of whom she was terrified and also the man by which she measured all other men, who failed wretchedly in comparison? After the awful thing that had happened between them so many years ago? To now tell him with great knee-slapping hilarity all about how her son went missing and now she was receiving death threats she’d found scribed in her own handwriting.
Yeah. Sure.
Tell him all that while ignoring the blatantly awkward chemistry that still churned thick and unwanted between them?
Maybe Constable Barter had been right. Maybe Mia was crazy. She would have to be so completely off her rocker that her rocker was floating in another universe to come up with an idea as absurd as this one.
Her fingers squeezed around the death threat still clutched in her hand. She stuffed it into her pajamas pocket. When she got home she planned to just burn it in the kitchen sink and wash it down the drain. Forget all about it. Maybe then she could convince herself it had never happened.
Kiss Her Goodbye: Thriller/Romance with a shocking twist Page 2
