He returned my grin with a questioning look, but I didn’t explain.
I gestured to the table and we both walked carefully toward it, watching each other’s progress, and lowered ourselves into the seats as if choreographed. I placed my hands on top of the table, palms down, and he mirrored me. So far, he was responsive, taking cues both verbally and nonverbally, and showing no hint of aggression. I didn’t hear any palate issues, no stuttering, stammering, or signs of more serious communication issues like aphasia. It was tempting, oh so tempting, to dive right into the deep end of the pool. You could see the lucidity in his eyes, the intelligence, but that’s how every cop and therapist had gotten nowhere with this patient. Instead I glanced at Bryce – who already looked bored – and gave Lucas the opportunity to direct the conversation, the kind of tiny power no one outside these walls would even notice. Inside, it was a major currency.
‘Is there anything you want to ask me before we get started?’
He leaned forward. ‘Why am I here?’
I exhaled and debated the answer. Did I go into the incident? Monica Anderson’s death? Robert Anderson’s fractured skull? We’d have to deal with those things eventually, but there were minefields everywhere and I didn’t know which step would make him explode. Slowly. I had to go slow. ‘You don’t remember what happened?’
His brow wrinkled and I couldn’t tell if he was blocking it out or he just didn’t like my reply. Whichever it was, he avoided my question, too.
‘When can I leave?’
That one was easier. ‘They don’t put a timeline on it.’
‘They?’
‘The doctors, and primarily Dr Mehta. She’ll discharge you whenever she feels you’re ready to rejoin society.’
He was quiet for a moment, processing that. At close range, his eyes looked bluer, colder. Then, so quietly I almost missed it, ‘What do I have to do?’
The million-dollar question. I took a breath and weighed my answer carefully. ‘The first and most important thing is to demonstrate you’re not a danger to others or yourself.’
He glanced at Bryce, hulking in the corner, and then slowly rolled his hands palm up on the table. See? Showing me his uncuffed wrists, the inner skin as white as a flag, he challenged me to deny his cooperation.
I gave him a moment, taking in his posture, my silent acknowledgment of what he wasn’t saying, then set a blue cloth bag on the table – the surprise bag covered with emojis that I brought to all my sessions – and started pulling tiny objects out and setting them in a careful line between us.
They were rocks, all different colors and textures, each no bigger than a quarter. Dr Mehta had cleared me to bring them; we both knew it took a much bigger rock to bash someone’s head in.
‘This is greenstone.’ I pointed to the first one and waited until he picked it up. ‘It’s been weathered down for the last two billion years. Do you know what a glacier is?’ I didn’t question his nod or how he might have received the knowledge. I didn’t look at him at all as I told the story of the ancient volcano that erupted pillows of basalt into the land that would become the Boundary Waters. How all the softer stone had been carved out by ice sheets, and the basalt itself transformed into greenstone before the ice melted into hundreds of lakes. Handing him the greenstone, I picked up the next rock and told the story of the Knife Lake slate, before moving on to the granite, and then the milky ball of quartz, as pure and unforgiving as January ice.
I’d pried the stones out of the frozen rock garden in the corner of our yard this morning. My mother, the geologist, hadn’t grown vegetables or flowers. She’d planted rocks and told me their history as if it was her own. I could almost hear her voice as I repeated it to Lucas now.
He touched them all, holding each specimen as I explained how they’d formed the home he’d known for most of his life, but the longer I spoke the more I sensed he was looking at me instead of the collection. He let me tell him about the rugged terrain, the life of the oldest exposed rock in the world, while silently studying me. I couldn’t tell if he was absorbing any of this, if he was even interested, until I finished describing the last one and began gathering them up to put them back in the bag.
Without warning he reached out and stopped my hand, taking hold of my wrist. Bryce, who’d been falling asleep in the corner, pushed himself off the wall and rushed over but not before I’d jerked Lucas’s wrist up and twisted it, forcing his arm down and crumpling his shoulder into the table. Half crouched over the top of him, I held Bryce off and locked eyes with Lucas.
He didn’t put up a fight. There was no struggle in him beyond the surprised rise and fall of his chest, the widened eyes racing over every inch of my face as if searching for something that had just skittered away. Immediately I perceived I’d overreacted, but the strange look on his face froze my grip in place. Before I could regroup, his jaw moved.
‘I know you.’
It was a whisper, the words leaked out in a rush of breath I barely heard over the thud of my own heart.
Then Bryce moved in, sinking his meaty fingers into the hospital gown around Lucas’s shoulders and finding purchase. ‘All right, man. Let her go.’
In slow motion Lucas unwrapped his fingers from my wrist, I released my hold, and we both returned to our choreographed sitting positions. Bryce withdrew a short step, hovering behind Lucas’s chair.
‘What did you say?’ I asked even though I could still feel his whisper rippling in the air. I know you.
‘Nothing.’ Less than ten seconds later, his face had changed completely. He looked worried, not making eye contact, and somehow I knew it didn’t have anything to do with the giant orderly breathing down his neck. He was . . . scared. Like he’d suddenly found whatever he’d been searching for in me and regretted -looking.
Being careful not to startle him, I gathered up the rocks and dropped them into my bag. When I stood up, Lucas did, too, retreating from the table until his back touched the wall and leaning against it as if trying to will himself through the concrete.
‘How did you know all that?’
I didn’t answer right away. I watched Bryce text Stan to let him know we were done and thought about the summers I’d spent paddling the Boundary Waters with my mother. I remembered her expression as the sheer rock faces came into view, how she inhaled the Precambrian balm of those cliffs. I know you.
It took an immense effort not to lie. I met his eyes as the door unlocked behind me, sensing the current of fear still running high. ‘I used to know a geologist. She said rocks are the language of the Earth.’
Then, turning away, ‘See you tomorrow.’
5