Chapter 222 Rebuilding 2

Chapter 222 Rebuilding 2
At Dr. Baxter's office, the maple tree outside the window had gone bare. November had stripped it down to branches that scratched against gray sky like something drawn in pencil.

Twenty-four sessions since June. I'd counted, although not deliberately. The way you count anything that becomes rhythm. Thursdays at two fifteen. The chair by the window. The clock on the bookshelf ticking its quiet, incidental tick.

"You did the Forbes interview," Dr. Baxter said.

"Friday."

"How was it?"

"Professional. The writer was good. Asked the right questions. Didn't waste time on flattery."

"She asked about Eugenia."

"Yes."

"What did you tell her?"

"The version Margaret approved. That Eugenia made her final choice, and I can't give her power over my healing by fixating on how she chose to leave."

Dr. Baxter adjusted his glasses. The gesture I'd learned to read over six months. It meant he was about to push past the surface answer.

"That's what you told the journalist. What do you tell me?"

I looked at the bare maple tree. A bird landed on one of the branches. Sat for a moment, and then flew away.

"I told Rachel Kwon I have a good therapist. Margaret almost had a stroke."

"You're deflecting."

"I know."

Silence. His technique. The space he left for me to fill. Six months ago, I'd resisted it. Let the silence stretch until he broke first. Now I understood it wasn't a contest. The silence was the room where the real answers lived.

"I wanted her to rot," I muttered. "Thirty years in a cell watching the world forget her name. She denied me that."

"What would those thirty years have given you?"

"The knowledge that she was paying. Every day. Every meal she didn't choose. Every hour she couldn't control. That was supposed to be the cost."

"And without it?"

"Without it, she got the last word. Same as always."

Dr. Baxter was quiet for a moment.

"You frame everything about her as a power dynamic," he said. "Last word. Control. Her choices determining outcomes. Even her death, you describe it as something she did to you rather than something she did to herself."

"Because that's what it was."

"That's what it was strategically. You haven't told me what it means emotionally."

The bird came back to the maple branch, the same branch, and sat longer this time.

"I wanted to visit her," I said. The admission surprised me. I hadn't planned to say it. Hadn't known I was thinking it until the words were out. "Not now. Years from now. I wanted to walk into a federal prison in ten years and sit across from her and ask one question."

"What question?"

"Whether it was worth it. All of it."

"And now you'll never get to ask."

"No."

"How does that feel?"

I closed my eyes. The bird outside the window made a sound I couldn't identify through the glass.

"Like a door closing," I murmmured. "Not the one I wanted to close. The one she chose. And now I'm standing in front of it, knowing the conversation I've been rehearsing in my head for months will never happen. The question will never be asked. And the answer, whatever it would have been, is gone."

Dr. Baxter was quiet for a long time. Longer than usual.

"There's something you said a few sessions ago," he said. "About the verdict. You told me you'd expected to feel triumph and instead felt nothing. That the emptiness wasn't painful, it was flat. Like a field after a fire."

"I remember."

"The fire metaphor is interesting. Because fields grow back after fire. The soil is still there. The roots survive underground. It takes time, but new growth comes. The field doesn't stay flat forever."

"Is that your professional opinion?"

"That's botany. My professional opinion is that you've spent six months processing the fire. The trial, the verdict, the sentencing, Eugenia's death. You've sat in this chair every Thursday and pulled apart the layers of who you became to survive it. That work is real. It's happening."

"It doesn't feel like enough."

"It's not supposed to feel like enough yet. You're six months in. The woman you built to survive Eugenia took two years to construct. She doesn't dismantle in twenty-eight sessions."

"She's gone," I said. "Eugenia. She's dead. No more victims. She's gone."

"Yes."

"I'm free of her."

The words came out quietly. Not triumphantly. Quiet in the way things are quiet when you say them for the first time and realize they've been true for longer than you knew.

"I'm free of her," I said again. "She can't hurt anyone else. She can't send contractors or cut brake lines or order murders or steal inheritances. She's gone. And I'm still here."

"You're still here."

"In a thriving company. With a foundation launching in January. With a therapy appointment every Thursday at two fifteen." I paused. "With half-finished cups of tea and a study that gives me less than it used to and an ex-husband who hasn't called in six months."

"That's a full inventory."

"It's an honest one."

"That's the same thing in here."

The session ended at three fifteen. An hour. Same as always. Dr. Baxter stood when I stood. We didn't shake hands. We never did.

"Ms. Campbell."

I turned at the door.

"The question you wanted to ask Eugenia. Whether it was worth it." He paused. "You might consider asking yourself the same thing."

I stood in the doorway for a long moment.

"I'll think about it," I said.

"Thursday."

"Thursday."

I walked out of the building into November rain. Seattle in the late afternoon, already getting dark at four, the lights coming on along Madison Street, traffic thickening with people heading home.

I stood under the awning and watched the rain. I felt it on my hands when I extended them past the edge.

Was it worth it?

The question Eugenia would never answer. The question I wasn't ready to answer either. Not yet. But the fact that I was asking it, turning it over, carrying it with me out of Dr. Baxter's office and into the rain, that meant something.

The field after the fire. The soil still there. Roots underground.

I pulled my coat tighter and walked to my car.