Page 29 of Kane

“How are your nightmares?” Margie asks, her voice even as usual.

I shift uncomfortably in my chair. “Still hanging around like the plague.”

Margie folds her hands in her lap.

“What do you see in these nightmares?”

I blink, taken back by the question. When I first started seeing Margie, we talked about my nightmares, but when she first asked me to describe them, I shut down. We haven’t talked about them in detail since.

I think about her question, but before I can answer her she says, “It may help you process things, might even trigger your memory.”

Her words are bait, and I know that, but…

I find myself taking it like the starving fish I am.

“Mostly that night,” I say carefully.

“The night your mother was murdered.”

It’s the way she says the words, so plainly. So nonchalantly. Detached.

I get it. It’s her job to be professional and detached, so she can help me sort through my shit. But something about the emptiness in the way she says it, strikes me deeper than it should.

“Yes,” I say, shifting again in my seat. “It’s like I’m right back there again, but—”

I look up at the clock, noting I still have at least fifteen minutes left.

Fifteen minutes too long, in my opinion.

“But what?”

“Sometimes things change. Little things, like… sometimes when the door opens it’s not Jasper. It’s—”

I don’t have to say his name for Margie to understand. She nods.

“And what happens when you see him?”

I look at my hands.

“I don’t know. I usually wake up then.”

My stomach flips as my throat tightens and I look out the window. It’s a gloomy day out. Cold. Rainy.

“Do you have somewhere else you need to be?” she asks carefully.

“Huh?”

“You keep looking at the clock.”

I tense at her words, trying to refrain from looking at the clock, because now I feel more of an urge to look. To see how much time I have left before I can escape this conversation.

“Is it a client?” she asks.

I could tell her the truth, but I’m not sure I want to. Especially because Ryder is so close. I don’t want to share Ryder with her. I want Ryder all to myself, and I know that’s a problem.

I barely even know him.

Sure, I know him in the sense I see him every week, know he likes mushroom coffee and brownies, and he works until close every Tuesday.