Free In the Blood by Lisa Unger Page A

rattled, never recoiled or looked shocked by what I told her.
    Of course, there are some disturbing blank spaces in my memory, places where things are foggy or black altogether. They rise up at me sometimes, white noise in my dreams, or startling flashes in my waking life. And Dr. Cooper says that it is the psyche’s nature to protect itself. She does not recommend prying into the dark places, crowbarring open the locked boxes. When you are ready to deal withthose memories, they will come back, and we’ll work through it then. And they may never come back—which might not be a bad thing.
    I’m not into navel-gazing, and I am not especially curious. In fact, I’d rather avoid all unpleasantness inside myself and without. Which might explain my lack of desire for any kind of relationship, my lily-white virginity. My parents kept their wedding photo on their dresser. In it my mother is a vision of loveliness with her blond hair pulled back tight and crowned with white roses, her blue eyes shining. My father is her contrast, his dark hair long and wild, his black eyes intense and staring. The look of love on their faces, so passionate, so desirous, so joyful—it was almost an embarrassment to behold. They went from that day of ice-cream-white love to a day that ended with my mother lying in a pool of her own ink-black blood. Every couple starts off loving each other, don’t they? It’s how a relationship ends that really defines its nature.
    We talked a little more about my new job, about my classes. But my heart wasn’t really in it. My mind was on Beck, and her bag sitting out there in the night.
    “Lana?”
    “Sorry.”
    “It’s okay,” she said. “I get it. It’s impossible not to be concerned about Beck.”
    I liked how she never offered any physical comfort. I appreciate people who have a healthy respect for personal boundaries. Our culture is too touchy-feely; everyone wants a hug these days. But Dr. Cooper just sat and was present. She would let me rant and rave at her, just sat and waited as one might wait for a storm to pass. Maybe she sensed that I was uncomfortable with physical contact.Or maybe she just felt it best to establish and keep boundaries—for herself as well as for her patients.
    “There’s something I’ve been wanting to discuss,” she said. “And honestly I’ve been struggling with how to bring it up, or whether I should at all.”
    That didn’t sound good. “Okay,” I said. “Go for it.”
    “Your father has reached out to me via e-mail.”
    My whole body froze, and I felt my stomach go hollow and wobbly. I liked to pretend that my father was dead. In fact, I was quite good at convincing myself of it. That’s what I told those people who pushed their way into my past, that my parents died in a car accident when I was sixteen. (People usually backed way off after that, except for Beck, who had only moved in closer. Tragedy turned her on.)
    So, the doctor might as well have told me that she’d conducted a séance and was communicating with my father from beyond the grave. That’s the kind of jolt her news sent through me.
    We sat in silence for a moment, then: “Should I go on?” she asked.
    I nodded, even though I wanted to get up and run from the office.
    “Am I wrong in thinking that you have a right to know about this? We can end this discussion right now. I can let your father know that I will not be reading his messages, and that you have no desire to hear from him. If that’s what you want, that’s what we’ll do.”
    It was tempting to tell her that yes, that’s what I wanted. But wasn’t there a nagging curiosity, a tidal pull I still felt to him? One would think that after what he did, any bond we shared might besevered like an umbilical cord—a harsh, irrevocable cut, two parts of the same whole that would never knit back together. But that’s just not how it works.
    “What does he want?”
    I could see the blood on the floor, the perfect red handprint