Elena woke up grabbing at her sheets, drenched in her own sweat , her hands was shaking. The bedroom was dark and the duvet was on the floor and Sophie's face was already fading the way it always faded dissolving at the edges, going somewhere Elena couldn't follow.
The phone kept ringing non stop .
She picked up.
"Yes." Her voice was rough, and breaking
"Dr. Voss?" A woman was on the other end of the phone with a careful tone, the kind people used when they were about to say something hard, "This is Constable Reid from Ashford Hollow police,I am so sorry to call you this early."
Elena looked at the clock it was six fifty-one.
"It's fine," she said.
She sat up straighter and took a deep breath internally putting herself back together the way she had learned to do quietly, quickly, without anyone seeing the pieces in her four years of practice, It took her less than three seconds now.
"We have a situation," the constable chirped in her shrill voice , "A young woman was found in Kelmore Park this morning, we believe she may have been a patient of yours." there was a pause on the other end ,"Her name was Nadia Petrova."
Elena went still.
Outside the window Ashford Hollow was waking up, she could hear it the first cars, someone's door closing down the street, a bird somewhere starting up like it hadn't heard the news yet.
"Dr. Voss?"
"Yes. Sorry", She cleared her throat "Yes I knew Nadia, she was a former client and we finished our sessions about two months ago."
"I see...,a detective will be in touch with you soon ,just routine questions, nothing to worry about."
"Of course, anything I can do to help."
"Thank you sorry again for the early call."
"Don't be"
She hung up .
She sat on the edge of the bed and didn't move for a while.
Nadia yes Nadia she was twenty-three years old, dark hair, always pulled back, quiet in the way people are quiet when they've learned that being loud got them into trouble.
She had sat in Elena's office every week for six months and slowly very slowly she started to trust her.
Two months ago Elena had signed off on her discharge, had written in her notes
"significant progress, client ready to continue independently"
Elena stared at the floor, she started counting the tiles without meaning to,"One... Two..... Three.. ."the crack between the third and fourth one that she had been meaning to report to the building manager for six months" five.... six....." the dark scuff near the radiator that wouldn't come out no matter what she used, "Seven... eight..."
She did this sometimes, Counting things, patterns,tiles, steps, ceiling panels, the lines between floorboards. It had started after Sophie, it was a way of staying inside her body when her mind wanted to go somewhere she couldn't follow .
Nadia was dead.
Eight tiles and a crack and a scuff near the radiator and Nadia Petrova was twenty-three years old and would never sit in anyone's office again and say things she had never said out loud before.
Elena stopped counting , she got up went to the kitchen, to make a cup of coffee
She always made one cup now, it was two before her daughter never liked coffee but she made two because of Steve.
She stood at the window and held it with both hands and watched the street below there was a postman struggling with his mail bag probably because the clipped had come undone ,Mrs Smith was walking her dog, two school kids dragging their feet.
All of them moving through their ordinary morning not knowing that somewhere in Kelmore Park a girl with dark hair was never going to have an ordinary morning again,her coffee went cold, she just lost appetite thinking about the night before .
She was thinking about the part of the night before that she couldn't remember,
She remembered her last client at five. She remembered locking the office, she remembered walking to her car in the cold.
After that nothing.
She had woken up in bed fully dressed at two in the morning with her shoes still on and her coat damp at the sleeves and no memory of how she got home or what time she had arrived or whether she had eaten or spoken to anyone or gone anywhere other than straight home.
She had told herself it was exhaustion.
She had taken her shoes off and gotten under the covers and not thought about it.
She was thinking about it now.
She went to the bathroom, and turned the light on, stood in front of the mirror looking at herself for a long time she was still beautiful, but she took no pleasure in it anymore,high cheekbones, dark eyes, the kind of face people looked at twice on the street without knowing why.
But the sadness was there too.
It lived just underneath everything underneath the composure, underneath the professional stillness, underneath the careful expressions she had spent years learning to arrange. You had to look closely to see it. Most people didn't look closely enough.
It was in the corners of her eyes, the way her mouth sat even when she wasn't speaking, the small permanent crease between her brows that hadn't been there five years ago,
she looked like a woman who had been carrying something heavy for a very long time and had simply gotten used to the weight.
She touched the glass lightly with one finger.
Like she was checking if the woman inside it was real.
Then she turned the light off.
She was at her office by eight-fifteen.
Unlocked the door, turned the lamp on, Lit the candle bergamot, always bergamot, the smell that meant safe and contained and professional and nothing is wrong here.
She sat in her chair looking d at the empty chair across from her she remembered Nadia she was a wreck when she first saw her in her office drenched from the rain.
Nadia had sat in that chair, had looked at Elena with those careful watchful eyes and had said things out loud for the first time in her life, had trusted Elena with the parts of herself she kept from everyone else.
"I'm sorry," Elena said quietly.
To the empty chair, and to Nadia wherever Nadia was now.
Then she opened her diary to Thursday, it was just one entry at ten o'clock with Detective James .
She always wrote her appointments herself, It was a habit her handwriting, her pen, her neat careful letters in the Thursday column every week without fail, this was her handwriting,she was almost certain it was her handwriting, but just couldn't remember writing it.
She closed the diary slowly, put both hands flat on the desk she looked at the candle and at the empty chair
Outside on the quiet Ashford Hollow street a car went past and a child laughed at something and someone called a name Elena didn't catch all of it normal,all of it ordinary.