Free The Binding by Nicholas Wolff

didn’t mention I was coming?”
    “No,” Becca said. “I mean, he’s not my father.”
    She said this with an unforced conviction, as if she were stating something so obvious that it almost didn’t warrant mentioning.
    “Okay, we can talk about that later,” said Nat. “I came by to see how you were doing. I talk with a lot of people, and I’m able to help some of them.”
    She didn’t ask, Help with what? —she just watched him. Her hands were pressed together and placed on her lap.
    “So,” Nat said, smiling. “How are things with you?”
    Her gaze was steady and deep. “What do you mean?”
    “How are things going? Do you feel happy with . . .” Nat spread his hands and looked around. “Your situation.”
    “How can I be happy?”
    Nat frowned. “Well, we’re happy when we feel that we’re enjoying life, I guess.”
    “But that’s just it,” she said, and her pained smile said, You’ve blundered right into it.
    “Just what?”
    “That’s the problem.”
    “Let’s talk about that.”
    Her eyebrows arched, as if she was going to mention something a bit sad, though she didn’t mean for it to be that way.
    “I can’t enjoy life,” she said quietly, “because I’m dead. I died three weeks ago.”
    Nat felt a chill go through him at the matter-of-factness in her voice. Behind it, he heard the hum in his ears, the echoing low buzz of dark electricity in the house. But what frightened him was the look in Becca’s eyes. A look of serenity.
    “Why do you say that?”
    “That I died?”
    “Ye-es.”
    She brought her right hand up and smothered a laugh. Nat saw that the nails were bitten to the quick, and the pinkie finger was painted with a black cross.
    Why are you horrified by this? her expression seemed to say.
    Nat had come expecting a clinically depressed teenager. But there was something about Becca’s confidence that unnerved him more than he could describe. For a second he believed her, and felt a little lunatic laugh run up his own throat. She thinks she’s met death and it’s nothing to be afraid of , he thought, before getting control of himself.
    “That’s a very serious thing, Becca. Death. Not something people usually find amusing.”
    “ Isn’t it, Dr. Thayer?”
    Nat frowned and looked away. “I suppose it can be. I suppose it’s even good to laugh at death. But in this—”
    “Ah!” Becca said. “I see. Because my brothers died, I should be more respectful when talking about it.”
    “I’m not telling you how to feel, Becca.”
    Her eyes were mischievous. “Thank you, Doctor. But, you know, they weren’t my brothers.”
    Now her eyes grew serious.
    “If only they were my brothers. I would’ve loved them. I’ve dreamt about having brothers, to throw me in piles of leaves out on the lawn”—she pointed at the closed curtains—“and to go Christmas caroling with. To defend me.”
    There were tears in her eyes now, and her voice had a slight warble of hysteria in it. Nat watched her, unable to get a word out.
    “But I never had one.”
    Something about Becca’s maturity made Nat trust he didn’t have to play games with her. And the fact that he was seeing her furtively—outside of his office, after the doom-laden visit from her father—tempted him to be unorthodox. It had always been a weakness of his. I’m not saying you’re not concerned about the patients , his mentor, Dr. Francesci, at BU had once told him. It’s just that you like to make it interesting.
    All true. So let’s make it interesting, then , he thought.
    “So tell me, when did you die?” Nat said.
    Becca seemed delighted by this. Her eyes were liquid in the gloom, and her head tilted slightly to the right, as if she was trying to recall, and then stopped. “December twenty-first, 2011.”
    “And what did you die of ?”
    Her eyes searched his face. She leaned toward him. “I was murdered,” she whispered.
    Nat felt the chill again. How had he come to be having this