Frank sat across from her with the door at his back. “Talk now if you’d like,” he said.
A voice deep inside of her screamed, but it was Frank who her mouth obeyed. “You . . .” Even her tongue felt heavy. Even her thoughts. “You hypnotized me.”
He looked almost proud of her.
She thought of the knife in her purse. But her purse wasn’t on the table anymore. Had he taken it? （Or had he taken her? And if so, where?） The voice inside of her screamed, but her mouth watered at whatever Frank had cooking on the stove. She smelled garlic. Fresh herbs. Cooked meat.
“Good for you for figuring it out,” he said. “You remind me of myself.”
“You . . . killed them.”
He raised an eyebrow at the word them. “It was either him or me.”
Maya realized he was talking about his father. Frank had killed him too. Her mouth hung open. Her jaw felt loose. And this felt good to her, like a long exhale, like the relief she’d been craving ever since being forced off Klonopin—or rather since starting on it in the first place. Ever since watching Frank kill her best friend, this tempting exhale, this heavenly unwinding, was all she had wanted. But now she fought against it as hard as she could. “Aubrey,” she managed to say.
His smile fell. “You think I wanted to kill her? I didn’t. But she figured it out. Can you believe it? I made the mistake of recommending a book to her about a famous mesmerist, and she made the jump to hypnosis. Pieced it together at the last minute. Aubrey was smart, I’ll give her that. I only did what I had to.”
“And Ruby?”
Frank looked as if she’d slapped him. “Don’t talk about her. You don’t know shit about Ruby.”
Maya hoped her phone, wherever it was, was catching all this. “Cristina,” she said.
“So you did see the video.” His lips curled into a snarl.
“I talked to Steven.”
“Fuck that guy. He didn’t know her like I did.”
“She wrote him a letter before she died.”
The snarl fell as a flash of worry crossed his face. “A letter?”
“She . . . told him everything.”
Frank’s face grew uncertain. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Maya tried to stand, but her limbs felt made of concrete. She wasn’t going anywhere; his control over her was complete.
He leaned in closer. “Tell me what the letter said.”
She intended to evade, to drag this out. Keep him guessing.
Instead, to her horror, the truth marched obediently from her lips. She was an observer in her own body. “Cristina told Steven she was sorry for being a bad friend. She said she was moving in with you, into your cabin. He said it sounded like she was saying goodbye.”
Frank relaxed. He sat back, and Maya did the same. They’d been sitting in the same position the whole time, but only now did she realize it.
“That should tell you everything you need to know,” he said.
“She . . .” The answer came to her easily in this state of mind. “She knew she was going to die.”
“It’s what she wanted. I’d brought her to my cabin many times, and like you, she figured it out. She knew exactly what this place was.” His voice was raw with love, though it wasn’t clear if his love was for Cristina or his cabin. Or himself. “I only gave her what she wanted,” he said.
Maya felt like she was sinking, her bones melting into the seat, the seat melting into the earth.
“She never wanted to go back to the real world. She’d spent her whole life trying to escape it. First it was through her painting—she taught herself when she was a kid. Said when she painted, the canvas would turn into an escape hatch. Come to think of it,” he said, as if he’d just thought of it, “she kind of reminded me of you in that way. The way you would disappear into your father’s book.”
“Leave him out of this.”
Frank acted as if she hadn’t spoken, which made Maya wonder if she really had or if she’d only thought it.
“Then she discovered drugs,” he said. “And getting high was an easier escape. More fun. Or so I’m told . . .” There was that smile again, the one that made her feel like they were in on the giddiest joke together, but now she knew this had never been the case. The joke had always been on her. She might have laughed if she wasn’t struggling to hold her head up.
“The problem,” he said, “is that you always have to come down. That was the part Cristina couldn’t handle. Her heart. Her head. She felt everything too much—this is what that asshole Steven didn’t understand. Cristina was always going to be looking for an escape, right up until the ultimate one. She was never at home in the world. Begged me not to make her go back to it, every single time, so I told her to prove it to me. Prove she wanted to stay here forever.” He leaned across the table. “And she did.” He ran a finger down the inside of Maya’s wrist. “She tattooed the key to this place . . . right . . . here. She did it to herself, right in front of me.”
“I don’t believe you,” Maya said. But a part of her did.
“It was her idea to die on camera at the diner,” he said, “so that the world would see I never laid a hand on her. Because she knew how important my work is, how much my patients need me. I guide them back to the homes they carry inside. I help them build that space from the ground up.”
She recognized these as words from the Clear Horizons website and understood that Dr. Hart was indeed Frank. She thought of the testimonials on his website and felt a flicker of hope—plenty of people had survived Frank’s “treatment.” They even said it helped them.
“Cristina knew this,” he went on. “She didn’t want me to get in trouble. Look, I don’t have to tell you this, and I definitely don’t owe Steven any explanation. But you should know that what happened at the diner was her final wish. I only gave her what she wanted.”
Maya’s head tipped forward, and she lacked the energy to haul it back up. “Please,” she whispered. Her voice sounded far away. “I won’t tell anyone, I promise.”
“It’s too late. You never should have come here tonight.”
“Can’t you make me forget?”
“Some part of you would always remember.” His voice was thick with regret. “I know that better than anyone.”
She sank further. Frank was right: he had won. But he was wrong if he thought she was just like Cristina. Maya might have shared Cristina’s affinity for imaginary worlds and, yes, for getting high, and maybe it was true they both had been looking for an escape. But if there was one thing Maya knew—even if it had taken her until this moment to figure it out—it was that her home was with Dan and her mom and everyone she had, or ever would, love. Home would never be another world, some perfect cabin in the clouds, and Maya only hoped that if she ever made it back to where she belonged, she’d remember this.
“You’ve been suffering,” he said. “You know you have, I can see it. You’re tired of fighting.”
She was tired of fighting. She felt her body slowing down.