What you’re experiencing is akin to the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, Chloe. Feelings of anxiety persisting despite the absence of any immediate danger.
Of course, it’s easier to dole out advice than to actually take it. I feel like a hypocrite, an imposter, reciting the words I would say to a patient while willfully ignoring them when the recipient is myself. My phone vibrates beside me, sending it fluttering across the marble island. I glance at the display: One new text message from Daniel. I swipe at the screen and scan the paragraph before me.
Good morning, sweetheart. I’m headed into the opening session now—will be unavailable most of the day. Make it a good one. I miss you.
My fingers touch the screen, Daniel’s words lifting the heaviness from my shoulders just slightly. This effect he has on me, I can’t explain it. It’s as if he knows what I’m doing at this very moment; the way I’m slipping underwater, too tired to even look for a branch to cling to, and he’s the hand that juts out from the trees, grabbing my shirt and yanking me back to land, back to safety, just in time.
I text him back and place my phone on the counter, turning on the coffee maker before walking into the bathroom and twisting the knob in the shower. I step into the hot water, the violent spray feeling like needles against my naked body. I let it burn me for a while, pelting my skin raw. I try not to think about Aubrey, about her body found in the cemetery. I try not to think about her skin, scratched and dirty and covered in maggots swarming eagerly around a meal. I try not to think about who might have found her—maybe it was that cop, all nasally and winded as he walked her earring back to the safety of his locked cruiser. Or maybe it was khaki-cargo-pants, leapfrogging into a ditch or a particularly dense patch of crabgrass, the scream getting caught in her throat, instead coming out like a deep, wet choke.
Instead, I think about Daniel. I think about what he’s doing right now—walking into a cold auditorium in New Orleans, probably clutching a Styrofoam cup of complimentary coffee as he scans the crowd for an empty chair, a lanyard with his name dangling around his neck. He’s having no problem meeting people, I imagine. Daniel can talk to anyone. After all, he managed to turn an emotionally guarded stranger he met in a hospital lobby into his fiancée within a matter of months.
I had initiated our first date, though. I’ll give myself that. After all, it was his business card that was pushed into the pages of my book that day. I had his number, but he didn’t have mine. I vaguely remember slipping the book back into the box that was resting on top of my car before loading it into the back seat and driving away, watching him disappear into Baton Rouge General in my rearview. I remember thinking he was nice, handsome. His card said Pharmaceutical Sales, which explained why he was there. It also made me wonder if that’s why he was flirting with me—I could be just another client to him. Another paycheck.
I never forgot about the card; I always knew it was there, calling to me quietly from the corner. I left it there for as long as I could, leaving that box of books still untouched until, three weeks later, it was the last one left. I remember pulling stacks out by their spines, dusty and cracking, and slipping them into their spots on the bookshelf until finally, there was only one left. I peered down into the empty box, Bird Girl staring back at me with her cold, bronze eyes. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. I bent over and picked it up, turned it to its side. I ran my fingers along the edge of the pages, fingering the gap where his business card still rested. I stuck my thumb inside and flipped it open, once again staring at his name.
Daniel Briggs.
I picked up the card and tapped it between my fingers, thinking. His number stared back at me, a silent dare. I understood my brother’s aversion to dating, to getting too close to anyone. On the one hand, my father had taught me that it’s entirely possible to love someone without ever really knowing them, and that thought kept me up at night. Every time I found myself getting interested in a man, I couldn’t help but wonder—what are they hiding? What aren’t they telling me? Which closet are their skeletons lurking in, buried in the dark? Like that box in the back of my father’s, I was terrified of finding them, of learning their true essence.
But on the other hand, Lena had taught me that it’s also possible to love someone and lose them for no reason at all. To find a perfectly good person and wake up one morning to learn that they’re gone without a trace, either by force or by will. What if I did find someone, someone good, and he was taken from me, too?