Page 80 of In Every Lifetime
“I assumed he had it,” I mumbled.
“Why?” Jackie asked, a brow raised.
I sighed deeply and closed my eyes as I explained. “When I called him Gabriel, he acted confused.”
“Well, we already assumed that wasn’t his name,” Fai interjected.
I shook my head and looked back at him. “It wasn’t like that. He asked me explicitly why I called him his brother’s name.”
“Oh shit,” Nate mumbled with wide eyes, putting the pieces together.
Fai’s gaze stayed trained on me.
“He thought—or at least was pretending—to be you, Fai. He called himself Fai, Faizal… my husband.”
Fai’s jaw dropped in shock, his eyes swimming with confusion.
Scarlett’s pen stopped writing for the first time since I had started explaining, her eyes bouncing between Fai and me. “Was he pretending… or did he believe it?”
“I don’t know,” I confessed.
She nodded slowly. “I’ve seen the photos from your house. It’s quite the mess. Was that from him?”
I shook my head. “He started approaching me and even gave me a hug, and I knew I needed to get away. He wasn’t acting violent, but I didn’t want to see what he would eventually do. I was making tea, and the kettle caught him off guard just long enough for me to shoulder-check him into the coffee table and run.”
I explained the run from the living room to the bedroom and the logic going through my head when I opened the window and hid in the closet. Scarlett seemed impressed by my actions, even calling them smart.
“Once I was in the closet, I heard him get through the door. He stopped yelling my name. I think he saw the open window, assumed I had run out, and followed. Once it had been quiet for about a minute, I called Fai,” I explained.
“Why not the police?” Jackie asked, a knowing gleam in her eyes.
I shrugged. “Honestly? It didn’t even cross my mind. I knew Fai would come and would get to me faster than anyone else.”
Jackie hummed, and Nate smirked just a bit. I didn’t have the energy to decipher what was going on there and focused back on Scarlett.
Scarlett continued to take notes while asking me questions. “Do you think he truly believes he is Fai, or is he simply trying to take Fai’s spot in your life?”
“There is no way to know unless I spent more time with him and gave him an official evaluation,” I began, but I was cut short by Nate.
“What’s your gut feeling? Is he losing his mind or is he evil?”
I did my best to keep from rolling my eyes at the comment because Nate couldn’t understand the intricacies of the human mind. Someone with a personality disorder wasn’t losing their mind; they were navigating a world and culture not built to support them. Mental illness doesn't, by itself, make someone dangerous. Yes, people with mental illness could be dangerous, but so could your average Joe who lived down the street.
“I don’t think he’s losing touch with reality,” I explained carefully, thinking back to our time in Montana. “I could always tell there was something off with him. He was too fast to smile at times, and he had to think about questions that should have come naturally.”
“So, was he pretending to be Fai, or does he believe he truly is him?” Jackie asked, perplexed.
I shouldn’t have been shocked that everyone was so heavily involved in the conversation. Scarlett was a former detective, and Jackie was an investigative journalist trained by Fai. This was their wheelhouse.
“We have two options here,” I began. “If he truly believes he is Fai, I think he also believes he is Gabriel. Or, he is using Fai to grow closer to me. He could have also just wanted to scare me. There’s no way to know with the little information we have. If he were a patient and I was given a file of his actions over the lastcouple of weeks, I would also look into a potential diagnosis of borderline erotomania.”
“And that is?” Nate asked, leaning back against the kitchen counter. He was probably the only one keeping up with my ramblings—being the certified genius he was.
“Violent attachment disorder. Well, it’s a broader term. Essentially, there was a trauma in his life that has caused him to behave this way—unhealthily attaching to subjects, needing to be close to them in any manner. In this case… the subject would be me.”
“So his belief that he is, or was, Fai was his way to get close to you?” Nate asked.
I nodded. “It’s possible he’s been trying to get close to me for a while and never found an opening until Fai. Gabriel saw an opportunity to get close to me via Fai. Maybe we were brought to Montana for this reason, or it happened organically while we were there, but he watched and learned from Fai’s behavior and actions on how to get close to me.”
