I omitted a few things: My dreamlike, phoneless showdown across the kitchen table with Kristen. The mutilated rabbit that appeared in the dark. Digging in the basement in the middle of the night, angry scribbles where Jamie’s face should be. Like the news broadcast in an airport—edit the feed to limit hysteria. It was exhausting, keeping a lid on the fear. It threatened to crumple my lungs and give me away.
“What do you think is triggering it?” Adrienne asked.
There it was. A sliver of ivory nail pulled free.
“I’m still…uneasy with Kristen being back here.” I couldn’t tell her why, but deep down I knew the answer: I was beginning to question if I could really trust her. Which felt surprising and strange and wrong—historically, Kristen was synonymous with safety in my mind.
“Why do you think that is?”
I shrugged. “She’s still acting like everything’s fine. Which is one way to deal with something scary, but I worry it’s an act. Like, she’s keeping it all inside where it could go off like a bomb.”
Adrienne nodded. “And what makes you think she’s keeping it in?”
For starters, she refuses to even acknowledge the wealthy developer teaming up with the LAPD to find us. Her behavior when we’d found the CNN article had been so bizarre that a part of me kept whispering, Was that insincere?
“She just seems…off. Normally she’s a joy to be around—she’s intoxicating, you know? But since she came back, things between us seem strained. And Lord knows I wasn’t myself after I was attacked, so I’m not judging her for it. But it’s like she’s aggressively happy or something—fake.”
Adrienne tilted her head. “It’s notable, how much time we spend talking about Kristen’s emotions. Do you think you might be prioritizing them over your own?”
“It’s not that,” I spit out. But then I sighed. “I know she cares about me. And I…it’s not wrong to be worried about my best friend.”
“Of course not,” Adrienne replied, and my defensiveness slackened. She crinkled her brow, gathering her thoughts. “So, Kristen acting ‘aggressively happy’ puts you on edge. It makes you feel more worried about her and focused on how she’s doing.” She waited until I nodded. “And you’ve said she’s super smart. And in tune with your emotions, right?” I nodded again. “So, I wonder if maybe she…she knows she’s having this effect on you. I’m not even saying it’s intentional, but maybe it’s a way to sort of maintain the power balance in the relationship. Remember when we talked about how when a friendship changes, someone usually pushes back?”
Nausea in my belly, like a bud unfurling into a fat, prickly leaf. I wanted to tell Adrienne she was wrong, but combined with all the alarms boinging around my head since the weekend, well…
“I always told myself Kristen was all I needed,” I admitted as a tear trickled past my nose. “And I do love her, I do. But now that I have other people in my life—now that I have Aaron…” I snatched up a Kleenex. “I feel so guilty saying this. Like it’s a betrayal.”
“It’s okay, Emily. Anything you say here is between you and me.”
A loud, slow exhalation. “I think she wants me all to herself.” I didn’t know it until it was out of my mouth, and then it was true: “Like, she planned this birthday trip even though I told her I already had plans with Aaron. Just informed him she was taking over and he’d have to wait.”
“Did you let Kristen know that that bothered you?”
“Of course not. She was just trying to do something nice for me.”
Her eyebrows flashed. “Some people would say that hijacking your birthday plans is not respecting your boundaries.”
Tears brimmed again as the truth lapped at my mind. Unavoidable. Irrefutable. Kristen’s love looks a lot like control.
“What happens when you think about talking to Kristen about this stuff head-on?”
It felt…unfathomable. “I just hate confrontation,” I said.
“That’s fair—conflict is uncomfortable. But sometimes bringing things into the light can actually help, right?” I stared at her miserably, so she continued. “Let’s step back. When you were a kid, what happened if you tried talking to your parents about something they did that upset you?”
I shook my head. “I didn’t.”
“You didn’t. Period.”
“Well, I learned not to at a young age.” I stared at my hands. “Because if I spoke up, I got in trouble. They were in the because-I-said-so school of parenting.”
“Wow, Emily.” She nodded solemnly.
Something flopped in my breast, something deep and raw and spiky. I pictured my dad’s furious eyes, the sudden shock of a spanking when I had no idea I was misbehaving. How the pain cut off my singing mid-word. “I don’t want to talk about it, if that’s okay.”
“Of course.” She waited as I blotted my cheeks. “Let’s go back to Kristen steamrolling your birthday plans with Aaron. How did he feel about that?”
“He said it was fine. But would he tell me if it wasn’t?”
“What do you think?”
A beat. “He’s just so nice. Maybe that’s making me uneasy too.”
“That’s a reason to feel scared?”
I squirmed. “I think things are going really well. And now I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. For the past to come back and haunt me.” For the universe to punish me for all the lies—the universe or the Los Angeles police.
“So you’re afraid that him treating you well makes it more likely that things won’t work out.”
I ducked my head away.
“Do you think that’s true?” she asked.
“It’s not rational, no.”
She dropped her notebook onto her lap. “Remember how I used to be a lawyer? My job was to get the jury to look at the evidence objectively. Cognitive behavioral therapy is kind of the same thing: You examine your thoughts like a scientist so you can challenge the ones that don’t hold up. So let’s look at this fear, this belief or, or thought pattern you’ve noticed. Just because a feeling is real doesn’t mean it’s true.”
* * *
—
That was the lesson Adrienne hoped I’d take away from the session. Because she thought my fears were irrational, that a body hadn’t been exhumed, that there wasn’t a group of armed professionals actively tracking me down. But that evening, I saw her advice in a new light: Be a scientist. Be like an attorney, build the case. I now knew Kristen was controlling, pulling the strings whether she meant to or not. And clearly something had rattled my lizard brain during my time at Lake Novak—enough to make me doubt that I could trust her.
One, two, three, four, five dead bodies. My subconscious kept counting, kept scraping at our friendship like an art restorer chiseling the grime off the truth.
The question at hand: Was Kristen a bystander with links to multiple deaths through a series of unfortunate coincidences…or was there something more at play?
My stomach clenched and bile scalded my throat. The hugeness of the accusation swooped through me and jangled my balance. I dropped into my desk chair, breathing hard.