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“Lou, what’s up with these questions?”
“Favorite month?” I repeat, poking his upper arm with my index finger.
“August, when your birthday is, the twenty-first.”
“Any month except August!” I say sternly.
“November—that’s when the lakes in the Yukon freeze over and sing.”
I nod contentedly. “Birth date?”
“January nineteen.”
“Capricorn.”
Bren looks at me, completely taken aback.
“That’s your zodiac sign. Ambitious, determined, serious.” He’s certainly not used to so much mundane information. “Bren?”
“What?”
“Where have you been living the last few months? If you’ve seen a therapist, you couldn’t have been on your property in the middle of nowhere.” I’ve been wondering that for the past two days, but I wanted to wait for him to tell me.
Bren folds his hands and places them on his knees. “I was in Faro, in a rental house.”
I look at him, stunned. “You rented a house in a town and lived there? Normally, among other humans? That’s progress!” I brush off a few blades of grass that I’ve carelessly scattered on my clothes.
“It’s a small place and I hardly ever went outside. Just a few times to shovel snow and to go into the woods with Grey. And obviously to see Dr. India Lee.”
“Can’t we go there?” I ask, hopeful.
Bren’s gaze narrows a tad. “Don’t you want to go to the Yukon with me anymore? What are you afraid of?”
“I’m not afraid. I just think…it’s a good solution, isn’t it?”
“For who? You? So you can be in civilization and run away if you don’t like something?”
Just like you believe your mom did! I could tell him now, but I’m too chicken. Who knows what it will trigger within him after his reaction in the supermarket. For seconds, fragments of his flashes blaze through my mind. How he roared and raged while shackled with chains, his face contorted by something only he could see. His bestial screams, followed by terrified whispers: So dark…so deep underground. Where are you, Mom? The smell of needles and dirt rises in me, but I push it back by concentrating on the exhaust fumes. I take a few deep breaths, but it sickens me.
“Is it so hard for you to imagine that I’d rather live in a town with you?” I finally ask softly. “Does my fear seem so unfounded to you?”
Bren looks down at the pavement, staring intently at a piece of trampled chewing gum. “So, you’re scared after all. Then why are you lying to me?” He gets up and paces in front of me, hands shoved deep into his pockets. For a moment, it seems as if he would like to run away so as not to hear my answer. “And why are you silent now?”
Because you take everything I say out of context!
He stops abruptly. “Lou, I’m scared too. At least as much as you. Every minute, I fear I am going to mess up so bad, you will leave me! Sometimes, I even think this is all one giant flash and I’m about to come to and you’ll be gone.”
I smile at him tensely. “I’m not going to leave you. I promised you.”
An old Chevy drives through the parking lot with a rattling muffler and another dog barks in the distance, but it’s not Grey.
Bren looks at me in silence, his eyes dark like dug graves. “I remember so much now,” he says, his voice cracking, and I know he’s talking about his past. “I simply repressed most of it. Dr. India Lee says I split off a part of myself because I couldn’t live with all the memories at the time. The little boy is what I called that part. I knew he was there. Always. He lived inside me and was stuck in the Thorson Avenue dungeon. My stepfather and I used to live there. Everett Harlow Nolan.” His voice trembles with those last words and he takes a deep breath. “That’s his name.”
I get up. “Bren, you don’t have to…”
“But I want to.” He pulls his hands out of his pockets. He’s pacing again and I can see him fighting a tidal wave of terror. “He treated me worse than a dog. Sometimes, he made me eat out of a plastic bowl on the floor with my hands bound—if I got anything at all. I was locked in a tiny closet with no windows all day and he would only let me out when he needed help in the workshop. I was always attached to chains.” He pauses, then slides back the braided leather bracelet the silver coin used to hang from. “I have him to thank for that.” He holds out his hand.
A bulging scar extends around Brendan’s wrist; it looks like a severe burn. Trying not to show my horror, I gently touch the destroyed tissue with my index and middle finger. I don’t know what to say, but Bren doesn’t seem to expect me to say anything because he keeps talking.
