Authors: Hannah Ford
I could tell from
his tone that he knew what he was talking about, and I suspected perhaps it was
something he’d had to tell himself in the past.
“I won’t.”
“Good.”
He kissed my lips, then stood up and began
buttoning his shirt.
“Should I stay
with you this morning?
I can go
into the office late.”
“No.”
I shook my head.
“I have to meet with the school
psychiatrist, anyway.”
“The school
psychiatrist?” Noah frowned as he straightened his sleeves and began to tie his
tie.
“What for?”
“It’s required I
want to go back to school.”
He nodded.
“Get it over with.”
“That’s what I was
thinking.”
He picked his suit
jacket up and slid it on.
“You sure
you don’t want me to stay?”
“I’m sure.”
He kissed me
good-bye, and then he was gone, leaving me alone with Docket.
***
Two hours later, I
stood in front of the administration building.
Ivy snaked its way up the bricks, seemingly
taunting me.
I’d thought it would
feel weird to be back at school, that it would remind me of Professor
Worthington and all that had happened, and it did.
But instead of giving me all kinds of
horrible flashbacks, instead I felt empowered.
I was excited to be back at school,
excited to get back to my old life.
How can you get
back to your old life when Mikayla and those girls are still in trouble?
The thought tugged
on my mind.
And it was a valid
question.
How could I move on so
seamlessly?
I’d been lucky that night at Force, lucky
that Noah had known where to come and find me, to rescue me.
But
what about Mikayla and all those other girls?
How could I just leave them there?
One step at a
time,
Charlotte, I told myself.
You have to go to this meeting.
Starting to get your life back doesn’t mean you won’t be able to help
those girls.
You need to take care
of yourself, too.
I had another
brief flash, back to that phone call I’d gotten yesterday and Noah’s reaction
to it.
He’d been right of course.
Whoever had been on the other end of the
line had probably been some kook, someone who’d read about me in the
paper.
But what was going to happen
when there was actual evidence about where those girls were?
Because I was still
determined to find Mikayla.
I took in a deep
breath.
First things
first, I told myself, and began climbing the steps of the building. It was
quiet inside, a few students and administrators milling through the halls, but
nothing like the nightmare scenario I’d had in my mind, the one where everyone
was staring and pointing at me.
I was able to make
it to Dr. Cartwright’s office without anyone even giving me a weird glance.
I paused outside
the frosted glass door, and then I knocked.
“Come in,” a deep
male voice answered from within.
I turned the knob
and walked in.
A man was sitting
at a desk by the window, wearing a navy blue button up and typing something
into a computer.
He was about
thirty, with close-cropped dark hair and tan skin.
“Charlotte?” he
tried, his tone friendly.
“Yes,” I
said.
“I’m here to see Dr. Cartwright.”
“Please,” he said,
standing up from the desk and walking over to me.
“Call me Jason.”
He stuck his hand
out, and I shook it.
His grip was
strong and firm.
This was Dr.
Cartwright?
I’d expected him to be
a little old man in a tweed blazer with corduroy patches on his elbows, not someone
so young and attractive.
“Nice to meet
you,” I managed.
“Please, have a
seat,” he said, sitting back down at his desk.
I surveyed the
seating options.
There was a chair
in front of his desk, and then a couch sort of wedged in at an angle over to
the side.
I hesitated, not sure
where to sit.
“You can sit
wherever you’re most comfortable,” he said.
Still, I
hesitated.
Wasn’t there some kind
of weird thing where psychiatrists would try to figure out your mental state based
on whether you chose to sit in the couch or the chair? I thought I remembered
something about that from one of my undergrad psych classes.
Either that or someone had told it to me
and I’d filed it away as fact.
“Oh, God,” Jason
said, laughing.
“Trust me, I’m not
going to judge you on where you sit.
That’s a total urban legend.”
“Okay.”
I smiled and sat down in the chair.
“Let me just pull
your file up,” he said, picking up his iPad and tapping at the screen.
“Okay.
I have to start by telling you two
things.
One, anything you say in
this session is totally confidential.
It’s against the law for me to tell anyone what we discuss here.
Second, you don’t need to be
nervous.
This shouldn’t take long.”
“Great.” I nodded
in relief.
This was going to be
easier than I thought.
Jason was
nice enough, and it seemed like he wasn’t planning on grilling me about
anything.
In fact, this seemed to
more of a formality than anything.
“So you were out
of school because you were involved in an altercation with a professor, is that
correct?”
“Yes.” I nodded
and pulled nervously at the sleeves of my sweater.
“Professor Colin Worthington.
He abducted me and then he…he tried to
kill me.”
It was strange saying the
words out loud, and a flash of panic flooded my body, along with a shot of
adrenaline.
Jason nodded.
“But you were able to escape.”
“Yes, my boy -- um,
my fiancé was able to get to me in time.”
I shook my head.
“Sorry, I
just got engaged yesterday.”
I held
up my ring, not to brag, but to show him that I was stable, that I was moving
on, that I had a support system.
“My mom is coming out here soon, too, “ I said.
“So I have plenty of support.”
But Jason wasn’t
listening.
Instead, he was staring
at the marks on my wrist, the ones Noah had left there last night.
When I’d held up my hand to show him my
ring, my sleeve had slipped down.
“What happened to
your wrist?” he asked nonchalantly.
“Oh.” I quickly
pulled my sweater down.
“I’m … that
just… “
I wracked my brain, trying
to figure out how the hell I could explain.
It wasn’t like I could just claim to
have fallen down or something.
The
marks were obviously from being tied up.
So I did the only thing I could do.
I lied.
“It happened with
Professor Worthington.
He tied me.”
Jason tapped
something on his iPad, making a note.
“They look pretty raw.”
“Yeah, well, they
haven’t healed.”
He looked up and
smiled at me.
“Tell me about
your fiancé.”
“Noah.”
“Yes.
How did you meet?”
I squirmed in my
chair.
Why was he asking me all
these personal questions? “I was working on his case,” I said.
“He was one of Professor Worthington’s
clients, and I was assisting him.”
“And you two began
a romantic relationship?”
“I’m sorry,” I
said.
“But what do these questions
have to do with whether or not I’m allowed to come back to school?”
“I’m trying to get
an idea of your mental state and what kind of support system you have in place.”
“Noah is a great
support system.”
“Have you had any
nightmares since the incident?”
I swallowed.
I didn’t want to lie to him.
I didn’t.
But the questions he was asking me, all
of them felt like
they
were
a loaded
gun, just one second away from going off in my face
.
“No,” I lied.
“No nightmares.”
“Any flashbacks?”
“No.”
I shook my head.
He leaned back in
his chair.
“Charlotte,” he
said.
“It would be completely
understandable and normal for someone who’d been through a trauma such as yours
to be having some after affects as they worked on processing what happened to
them.”
“I know,” I said.
“But I’m doing well.
I really am.”
He pursed his
lips, like he was going to say something else.
But then he nodded.
“Okay.”
He turned back to his iPad.
“Any depression?”
“No.”
“Suicidal
thoughts?”
“No.”
“Difficulty
concentrating?”
“No.”
“Do you feel as if
you’re ready to come back to school?”
I could tell he
was running through a checklist now, one of those forms they probably made him
fill out for each person, just so they could have a record of it.
I felt the band that was around my chest
start to loosen a bit.
This really
was just a formality.
“I’m definitely
ready,” I said confidently.
“Do you feel you
will be able to handle your course load effectively?”
“Definitely.”
Jason ran his eyes
back down the checklist, making sure he hadn’t missed anything.
Then he looked up at me.
“Is there anything else you want to talk
about today, Charlotte?
It doesn’t
have to be about what happened with Professor Worthington.
It could be about anything.
Your family, your relationship.”
I almost laughed
at the idea of talking to a stranger about my relationship.
“No.”
I shook my head and shrugged.
“Everything’s getting back on
track.”’He
studied me for a long moment, and I felt
something in the room subtly shift.
A strange feeling rose inside of me, a physical
sensation.
Almost like a
premonition or an urge.
An
urge to what, though?
I wondered.
Confide in this man I hardly knew?
I swallowed my
uneasiness, and a second later, the moment passed.
“Great,” Jason
said.
“Then I guess we’re finished.”
“Great,” I said.
But he didn’t
move.
Finally, after
another long beat, I stood up and held my hand out to him.
“I will send an
email to the administration and cc you on it,” he said.
“And you’ll be all set to get back to your
classes.”
“That’s great
news,” I said, nodding.
“It was
nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you
too, Charlotte.”
Once I was outside
of his office, I breathed a sigh of relief.
I exited the
building, then sat down on a bench in the quad.
The morning was cool, but the sun was
shining down, its rays bouncing off what was left of the morning dew.
I pulled out my
phone so I could call Noah and tell him I was done with my meeting, and that it
had gone well.
“Charlotte?” he
demanded when he answered.
There
was brusque tone to his voice that instantly put me on edge.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“Sorry to make you nervous.
I just got out of my meeting and I wanted
to let you know it went well.
It
was just a formality.”
“Good,” he said,
his tone clipped.
“Listen, we’ve
run into a bit of a roadblock with the Lilah Parks case.”
“What?”
“Lilah’s
disappeared.”
“She’s
disappeared?”
I shook my head,
confused, trying to downshift from the relief I’d just felt from finishing my
meeting to the tension of working on a high-profile murder case.
“But how?”
“I don’t know.”
Noah’s s voice became muffled as he began talking to someone in the
background.
It sounded like he said
something like, “
Go ahead, try whatever number you can find.”
Then I heard the
murmured sounds of a female voice.
“Where are you?” I
asked.
“At Lilah’s
hotel.”
“Wait, what?”
I had no idea what he was talking
about.
Lilah’s
hotel?
Wasn’t Lilah at the
hospital?