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The whispering is unnecessary—there’s no sleeping child to worry about waking—but it feels right all the same.
Leo’s room is empty too, so that leaves her room.
I feel my brows knit together when I see her empty bathroom and no Avery shaped lump in the bed.
Did she go somewhere?
No, not unless she walked. You parked right next to her, remember?
A worried look and a tremor of dread passes between the three of us.
I’m about to pull out my phone and call her parents when I hear the tiniest sniff coming from under the bed.
With a slight groan that betrays my age, I lie on the floor to peer under the bed.
“Hey, there. Why are you under the bed, Princess?” I ask softly as Phillip and Jamie come to sit on either side of me.
Her voice is so jagged I could cut myself on it. “Everywhere else is too bright and too exposed. No one can see or sneak up on me under here.”
I swear I can actually hear my heart shattering along with Jamie and Phillip’s.
“I had a coworker like you once. Something horrible happened to her, and every so often, I’d find her buried in the breakroom closet. She said something similar when I asked her about it.”
“You don’t think I’m some kind of freak?”
“Of course not.”
“You should,” she mutters.
“Why would we think that?” Phillip asks. “So many of my patients who have been through trauma feel much safer with their backs to things, in dark rooms, or both. It isn’t anything to be ashamed of.”
“I’m almost twenty-two and I’m hiding under my bed like a loser. I absolutely should be ashamed.”
“Are you hurting yourself by doing this?” Phillip asks.
“No.”
“What about anyone else?”
“No.”
“Then I think this is a perfectly fine way to cope.”
“It’s pathetic. You should leave so you don’t have to see me like this.”
“Avery, you’re not the only one who's done something like this.” Jamie takes a shaky breath. “For a long time after Julia died, I was a shell of myself. When things got really bad, I’d sit in her side of our walk-in closet with my back to the wall and just breathe in the way she smelled. Does that mean I’m pathetic?”
“Of course not. You were going through so much.”
“So then why isn’t it okay for you?”
Phillip and I share surprised looks.
I never knew he did that. He always seemed so put together on the outside. I should have looked closer, dug deeper.
After a long silence, I hear her scoot closer to us.
“How did you stop?”
