Free Always Watching by Chevy Stevens Page A

trust money.
    I said, “Did the center ever ask you to donate money to them?”
    Now she looked even more nervous, her gaze flicking around the room, her chest rising as she started to take rapid breaths. She said, “I shouldn’t be talking about them. I told Daniel I wouldn’t say anything.”
    So they had, and judging by her reaction, she had complied. I wondered why Daniel had allowed them to leave. He’d obviously wanted to stay, and the behavior Heather had exhibited to this point, even her promise to her husband, showed someone more likely to submit to him. Either he’d given in to her feelings to keep her happy, or deep down, he might’ve also had his own doubts.
    When she didn’t elaborate, I said, “I know you weren’t comfortable with the center’s beliefs about raising children, but was there anything else that you didn’t agree with?”
    She glanced at me nervously again, shrugged. “Some stuff … it was just different how they did things—but it helped a lot of people.” She said the last part slightly defensively, and I wondered whom she was trying to convince.
    I said, “Like what?” I heard the words come out of my mouth, and realized I’d asked because I’d personally wanted to know, not because I was worried about Heather. I felt a rush of anger at myself. This was not the kind of doctor I wanted to be, one focused on her own agenda. But it didn’t seem like Heather had even heard my question.
    She said, “I keep thinking about when I was first there. How fun it was, and how happy everyone was. I felt really good, better than I had in years.” Her eyes filled with tears. It sounded like she was glorifying her first days there, in a sort of euphoric recall, like some people do about the beginnings of their relationship, after everything falls apart. “Maybe I’m the problem. If I couldn’t stay happy at the center, then maybe I’ll never be like that. Maybe they were right, and I was just scared to let myself be happy. Why didn’t I just stay?”
    I repeated what I’d said on the first day I met her. “You made a choice that felt right for you. You wanted to protect your child.”
    “I don’t know.” She looked confused. “I was thinking that maybe I should go back. When I get out of here…”
    “I don’t think you should make any decisions about that right now. This is a place for you to take a time-out from life, so you can focus on getting better.”
    Her face was beginning to shut down as she pulled away from the conversation.
    “Can you concentrate on taking care of yourself for now?”
    She didn’t answer, and I couldn’t push harder without risking her shutting down completely, so I said, “Would you like to talk about something else? You mentioned another girl, Emily. Do you want to tell me about her?”
    Guilt washed across her face. “When we’d been living at the commune for a few months, we were assigned people who came to a retreat—like a spiritual brother or sister. We had to go everywhere with them. Emily’s only eighteen. She’d tried to commit suicide before too, that’s why she came to the center.…”
    Where was this girl now? If she was suicidal, then the center might be the worst place for her. My concern was elevated even higher when Heather said, “She was still depressed at the center—but I talked her into staying for another retreat, and now she lives there full-time. If you were able to get people who came to workshops to sign up for another one, Aaron would sit with you in a private meditation. I wanted him to like me.” Her eyes turned flat, despairing.
    Trying to get visitors to sign up for more retreats also fit with the profile of many human-potential groups, including ones of a cultic nature, but it had been the mention of private meditations that alarmed me the most. I thought back to the commune and got a murky memory of Aaron leading female members off for healing sessions, his hand on their lower back, or resting on their