“Good afternoon,” the woman chirped. “Can I help you?”
“Hannah Cirric. I have an appointment at eleven.”
The woman leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially to Hannah.
“We only use first names and last initials here, for your privacy.”
She actually winked, closing one mascara-encrusted eye in a ridiculously exaggerated fashion. Hannah looked around at the otherwise empty waiting room.
It was even more comical, considering this town was so small everyone knew exactly who everyone else was and what they were up to all the time. It didn’t help that the office was a glass fishbowl of windows in the middle of Main Street. Hannah sincerely doubted there was any privacy left for her first name and initial to protect.
Shaking her head in disbelief, Hannah sat down to wait. Was there a holiday or something today I missed? she thought after a few minutes. It felt like half the population of town paraded by while she sat in the uncomfortably warm waiting room flipping through a ratty Better Homes & Gardens. Almost to a person they paused ever so slightly to peek though the unshaded window before moving on. While she was enduring a bundled-up child with his nose pressed up against the glass like a pig snout, the door behind the receptionist opened and a woman emerged, red-eyed and clutching a wad of crumpled tissues. Once the woman had walked out the door, the receptionist announced Hannah C. in an exaggerated whisper to the still-empty waiting room. Hannah rolled her eyes.
Inside the therapist’s office, the dislike was instantaneous, and, swallowed up in the faux leather armchair across from the man, Hannah had to force herself to take a deep breath and at least try to be civil.
“So what brings you here today, Hannah?”
Lack of a better option, she said to herself. “I was required to make an appointment as a condition of my release from the hospital,” she said. “A couple days ago I got…confused and was, uh…” It was tough to say out loud, so she didn’t. “I was involved in an accident.” That was one way of putting it.
What had really happened is that Hannah had seen him. She’d seen him, the man she’d hit—would have sworn she’d killed—with her car.
It wasn’t the first time. In her nightmares Hannah saw him every night. But after the sheriff had given her the brush-off, Hannah started catching sight of him while she was awake. He was never close, always just too far away for her to make out clearly, and she could never seem to get nearer than that. She’d get a quick glimpse of golden-blond hair in a passing car or a flash of big shoulders on a man crossing the street and would take off after him, but he always seemed to slip away like magic, leaving her standing confused in an empty street, or following a shadow around a corner to find no one in a dead-end alleyway. Every time she missed catching him was like a jolt, and a thud, and it all came back, just as bad as when it’d happened. And it left her even more bewildered. Hannah had been looking for a body, certain he was so badly injured he couldn’t have survived. Now she was seeing what she was sure was him, but alive. Was it even possible? What did it mean?
Then, two days ago, she’d spotted him—closer than any time before—and she wasn’t going to let him get away. He was behind the wheel of a sleek black car, and when it passed by she’d caught a glimpse of his hair, the shape of his jaw, and his size, the top of his head brushing the ceiling inside. It had to be him.
He nearly slipped away again, but the traffic light had turned at just the right moment, and his car had been trapped there in the intersection. Heart pounding, Hannah ran toward it, willing the light to stay red for just a moment longer until she could reach him. He was sitting there in profile, facing forward. He hadn’t seen her. She was only a few steps away.
Then the minivan hit her.
It only clipped her, thank god, the side mirror spinning her around and tossing her backward into traffic. The car behind it shrieked to a halt just in time, so close they had to back up to get the hood of her sweatshirt out from under the tire to move her.
It was a freak accident, a whoops with an all’s well that ends well at the end, maybe a little road rash and a couple nasty bruises. Or it would have been, if she hadn’t opened her mouth and told them what she’d seen when the sheriff’s department got to the scene. And if they hadn’t done a blood alcohol at the hospital where they’d insisted on taking Hannah to check her out. And if she hadn’t been over the legal limit at ten in the morning on a Tuesday. Whoops was right.
“So this accident, it happened because of a man you thought you saw in the car,” the therapist said. “Who is he, the man you were trying to get to? Tell me about him. Where do you know him from?”
Hannah raised an eyebrow. Maybe it was a therapist thing, where he wasn’t supposed to act like he knew just as much about this story as everyone else in town. She was sure he knew exactly who Hannah was. She’d recognized him immediately. He’d been part of the human chain walking through the woods after the accident, poring over the ground looking for the very man he was asking about; his extremely white sneakers and gray community college sweatshirt were hard to forget.
Taking a deep breath, Hannah shut her eyes for a moment and compelled herself to cooperate. It was not going to kill her to sit here and talk about it, especially if it was the only way around any more threats of involuntary commitment from the sheriff. She wasn’t sure he could do that, but at the very least he could press the issue about the public intoxication and the jaywalking. An hour in therapy was the easiest solution. And a teeny-weeny little part of her admitted that maybe it would actually be good to talk about it. Hannah let out the breath she’d been holding, opened her eyes, and started talking.
It felt like she was listening to someone else speak as she told the therapist the story he already knew. He nodded and mmmh hmmm’d as she spoke.
“It’s the same man. I know it was him,” she said.
“But all these times you’ve seen him—starting with the accident and leading up to the most recent time when you were struck by the van—has there been any evidence he’s actually there?” the therapist said.
“I know what I remember. I know what happened. They didn’t find any evidence, but why would I make something like that up? My mind can’t just have created a person. And something destroyed my car. I know the rest doesn’t add up, but it doesn’t prove anything the other way either. And two days ago, I saw him. He was in that car, I know he was.” Hannah was getting a little hot under the collar, and when the therapist sat back and smiled down on her with a look he probably thought appeared genuine, she had to suck in a breath between her teeth to keep her temper in check.
“And you were intoxicated when you were struck by the vehicle. Is alcohol consumption something you struggled with prior to the initial accident, or is this a new development, since all this happened?”
She crossed her arms and stared at him.
“I see.” The therapist nodded sympathetically and scrawled something on the yellow legal pad on its cheap plastic clipboard, making it wobble where it lay propped on his crossed knee.
“Are there any other substance issues at present? Are you using any illicit drugs? What about prescription medications?” He raised an eyebrow, and she wondered if it meant he thought she was on drugs, or that she needed some.
He finishing writing, uncrossed his legs, and set the clipboard squarely on his knees, leaning forward. “I think we need to look at the root of this man’s appearance in your life. It might be helpful to look farther back, at things that might have happened before the event. Were there any big changes in your life before all this transpired? What about since then—how has this affected your relationship with your family?”
Maybe he genuinely didn’t know, or maybe it was all part of the oblivious act; Hannah couldn’t tell, but she told him the truth because there was no reason not to. It hadn’t changed her relationship with her family one single iota because Hannah didn’t have anyone, no family. Hannah was alone. There had only ever been her uncle�
��she’d been raised by him her entire life until a little over a year ago. Now he was gone.
The thought of him was like a punch in the chest, unexpected enough to take her breath away. Hannah missed him in a way that physically hurt, and the house was an empty rattling shell with just her inside it.
He must have thought he was on to something, because the therapist handed her a tissue she didn’t need. Hannah crushed it in her palm. This would have been completely different if her uncle were alive now, every part of it. He would have known how to handle it, and he would have believed her. He would have somehow made this situation tenable, because that was the way he’d been. Uncle Joel had taught her to be strong, and resolute, and he always operated with complete and total confidence in what should be done, no matter what the situation was. Now, left to her own devices, the determination and absolute belief in herself he’d taught her had backfired. She believed in herself alright. Problem was, no one else believed her.
She crammed the flowery-smelling tissue down in the crack of the seat and stared at the man who had gone back to scribbling. It was difficult to explain how she felt to a figure that instinctively made her bristle, but she made an attempt despite herself. Hannah didn’t think for a minute it had anything to do with the accident, but losing her uncle had been crippling, and maybe she did need help in that department.
Swallowing the lump in her throat, Hannah described how close she’d been to her uncle, and how different her future looked now..
“I mean, my life was good. I finished college, I got a job I really liked. And it’s not like I was a child. When he died I was perfectly capable of taking care of myself. It was just so unexpected. He’d been there my entire life and then he wasn’t.” Hannah swallowed back a lump in her throat. “I never got to say goodbye. All of a sudden he was just gone. For the longest time I kept expecting him to walk back in the door. I had just stopped listening for his footsteps on the porch when this happened.”
Hannah eyed the nodding therapist, wondering what he was thinking.
“My uncle was my best friend, more than that,” she went on. “I didn’t realize it until it was too late. He was my best friend, and my father, and my mother, and a big brother all rolled into one. I know he was only one man, but he was all those people for me. It’s like I lost my whole family in one day.”
It actually felt good to put it in words, she had to admit, even when she wasn’t sold on the man in front of her as the best outlet for her feelings.
“Your relationship with your uncle, it sounds like you were extremely close, more than most nieces and uncles would normally be.” The therapist lowered his voice, leaning toward her slightly. “Was it ever too close?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t really think I understand what you’re asking,” Hannah said. Actually, she was afraid she did. She just hoped to god she was wrong.
“You say your uncle was your whole family. With the lack of other adult figures in your life and the number of roles he filled beyond uncle, were there any other parts he might have played, ones that crossed into territory that might have been hurtful to you as a person or damaging to the psyche maybe? That kind of relationship and the loss of it might drive you to create a male figure…” The therapist was staring directly at her, expectantly, almost as though hoping there was a salacious part, something grimy and titillating for him to uncover.
“What in the actual fuck does that mean?” Hannah got up slowly and deliberately. “What kind of screwed-up bullshit are you into that would make you think something like that you…”
She couldn’t even finish. Let them drag her into an institution or jail, she didn’t care. Hannah swiftly raised two middle fingers in front of his face, then slammed her way out his office, enraged. The suggestion appalled her and she had to resist the urge to smash a boot through the receptionist’s desk. She settled for swiping the stack of magazines onto the floor in a cascade of pages and subscription card inserts, sending all the slick, artificial cheerfulness face down on the carpet. When she left, she slammed the front door as hard as she could, putting all her anger into it. It was a substantial amount of anger, and Hannah heard the crash of glass behind her. She didn’t look back.
After the rage had subsided from that first unpleasant experience with therapy, Hannah made an appointment with the only other therapist in the area. She’d spent another week not sleeping and rambling the woods, with the new addition of sitting on the bridge and staring blankly down into the river for increasingly long periods of time. But that really wasn’t why she made the appointment. It was because Sheriff Morgan had called repeatedly, and after being ignored, had finally stopped by to let her know that once again she didn’t have a choice. He was a persuasive man, what with the possibility of charges for property damage added to his previous list of threats.
This appointment was in the next closest town, which wasn’t actually that close, but was near enough that Hannah could at least make it there under her own steam. She still couldn’t bring herself to get behind the wheel, and her other option was asking someone for help. Hannah would have rather risked the car.
She hauled her bicycle out of the shed and climbed on, then climbed off to root out the pump and inflate the tires. Maybe the bike wasn’t the best idea after all, she thought as she huffed, pedaling it doggedly down the logging road that cut through the woods, the shortest way to the two-lane on the other side of Route 14.
By the time Hannah dragged her bike through the brush between the forest and the paved road she was baking in the layers she had piled on against the cold. By the time she managed to pedal to the top of the hill above Newton, sweat was trickling down to her waist. Unzipping her coat to let the breeze blow through her, she coasted down the last stretch of road onto Newton Street.
Hannah didn’t walk into the psychiatrist’s office expecting any ridiculous insinuations. There wasn’t any way there could be another mental health professional in the world as inept as the last one, let alone in such close proximity. Still, she was on edge, not knowing what to expect.
She needn’t have worried. From the moment she sat down, Hannah could see this was going to be a different kind of appointment.
“Now tell me, Hannah, what brings you here today?”
The therapist didn’t interrupt or make fake sympathetic noises, just sat back and listened while Hannah waded yet again through her story. Aside from a tendency to pat her tightly pulled-back hair for stray strands, the woman seemed perfectly normal. She didn’t take notes and appeared to be listening intently, only breaking in once or twice to ask appropriate questions.
“Now tell me about the man you remember hitting. Who do you think he might be?”
Hannah opened her mouth but was interrupted by a soft ding; time flies when you’re having fun.
“I’d like to see you next week, Hannah,” the psychiatrist said. “I believe this situation really bears some looking into. I also think the problems with sleeping and rumination are something that can be helped.” She scribbled on a few pages of pastel-pink prescription pad and tore them off, handing them to Hannah. “And these”—she added a handful of pamphlets on grief and depression to the pile—“you might find some things that ring true.”
Hannah wordlessly accepted the stack and an appointment card for the next week, the thought of which made her legs hurt.
“I want you to really think about the man from the accident. Really think about who he is, who he might be. We’ll talk more about him next week.”
Hannah pushed everything into her pocket and stepped blinking into the bright, biting cold. As she pedaled back through town she considered the question about who the man might be. Who was he? What kind of man was he, or more likely, what kind of man had he been? Did he have a family who was looking for him, or was he a bad person running from something? Was that why all the searching had turned up nothing? Was there something more beyond the random man who had the misfortune of meeting the front end of her car?
As soon as she got home, legs like jelly, Hannah poured herself an oversized glass of cheap boxed wine. Bad habit, yes, but her biggest problem right now? Not hardly.
What if they were right? She set the full glass down on top of the prescriptions and watched a dull red ring soak into the little squares of paper. She’d hit a man with her car and watched him die, but no one else had seen him. There was no evidence he’d ever existed. But Hannah, she was still seeing him. She was seeing him even more frequently, and alive now, but still it was just her. Everyone believed her mind was broken. It was starting to feel like it was. What if it was?
Picking up her wine, she downed half of it then sat back and stared at the canister in the center of her kitchen table.
Small—about the size of a soda can but shorter and fatter—and a uniform matte silver, the canister contained all that was left of the man who raised her. The day of the accident had marked exactly one year since he died so unexpectedly, and she’d spent the entire day on Barclay Mountain, picking her way upward through the overgrown trails to the knob. It was a hell of a climb, but it was a place that meant something. Hannah couldn’t begin to count the days the two of them had spent up there, camping when the weather was good, hiking until winter set in with determination.
Echoes (Book 1): Echoes Page 4
