He Let Me Grieve a Lie, Now He Begs Forgiveness novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The List

At midnight in the clinic Chiara writes every name in her own hand, signs the consent and goes under, and wakes wearing a ring she cannot explain.

The clinic was dark except for the nurses' station.

Taylor Merrow looked up from her crossword and saw Chiara standing in the doorway, soaked with sweat, with grass in her hair.

"You're supposed to be on a weekend pass," Taylor said. "Did you run here?"

"Is Dr. Coombs in?"

"She's in her pajamas with a coat over them, and she's furious. Sit."

Chiara sat.

Taylor had worked the night shift on her floor for fourteen months.

In all that time Chiara had never asked for a thing, not an extra blanket, not a different pill.

Taylor put a paper cup of tea in her hands and did not ask what had happened.

Dr. Coombs came down the hall five minutes later, gray hair flat on one side, reading glasses swinging on their cord.

She took one look at Chiara's face and unlocked her office.

"Say it again," she said. "In daylight words."

"My family is alive."

Dr. Coombs's pen stopped.

"They faked the crash," Chiara said. "My husband and my brother knew from the first day. They watched me for three years and let them sign me into your building."

Taylor, leaning in the doorway, said a word nurses are not supposed to say.

"Chiara," Dr. Coombs said. "Anger is allowed. Grief is allowed. This is a long way past both."

"I want the procedure."

"You said no to it twice."

"I'm saying yes."

Dr. Coombs took off her glasses.

"Let me be exact. I suppress the people on your list and the events attached to them. Their faces, their names, the rooms you shared. You will still know how to draw. You will still know how to drive."

"Good."

"You won't know why you flinch at a certain song. A smell can bring a piece back. A voice can. Suppression fades when it is fed, and I cannot promise you it won't."

"Then it fades," Chiara said. "It can't hurt more than this."

"I did not say it would be painless to be nobody's daughter."

Chiara looked at the dark window.

"They are not my family," she said. "They are people who watched me kill them for three years."

Nobody spoke.

Then Taylor said, quietly, "Doc."

"I heard her."

Dr. Coombs pushed a legal pad across the desk.

"Write the names. Full names, your own hand, so no one can ever say I put words in your head."

Chiara picked up the pen.

She wrote her father's name first, and the pen shook, so she gripped it harder.

Her mother.

Gemma.

Luca.

She stopped on the last line.

She could see Elio at the altar, in the same dark suit he wore to every meeting, with his hands shaking when he took hers.

He had cried at their wedding.

He had stood in the study today and looked relieved.

She wrote his name.

Elio Marcato, my husband.

Under the list she wrote: I am asking for this. Nobody is forcing me. Then she signed it.

Dr. Coombs read it twice.

She handed the page to Taylor.

"Witness," she said.

Taylor signed.

Her handwriting was loud and slanted, and she pressed so hard the pen went through the paper.

"One more thing," Dr. Coombs said. "A patient is allowed to leave any treatment before it begins. You can stop me until the headset is on."

"I won't stop you."

"Then I won't ask again."

The treatment room had one chair, one lamp and a band that fit across her forehead.

Taylor held her hand while the technician checked the dials.

"Talk to me," Taylor said. "Anything. What's the best thing you ever ate?"

Chiara thought about it.

"A lemon cake," she said. "My mother made it every year. On my birthday she left the kitchen light on until I came home."

Taylor's hand went tight around hers.

"Chiara, you just said her."

"I know."

"Do you want to stop?"

Chiara looked at the ceiling.

She remembered the hot dog stand, the long line, the empty spot where Gemma had been standing.

She remembered the stairs.

"Start it," she said.

The lamp went from white to amber.

Dr. Coombs's voice came from somewhere far off, counting backward from forty.

At thirty-one Chiara felt something slip out of her hand, a thing she had carried so long she had stopped feeling its weight.

At twenty she tried to hold on to the lemon cake.

At twelve the cake was gone, and she could not have said what she had been reaching for.

At four she heard Taylor say, "I'm right here."

At one there was nothing.

She woke in a narrow bed with gray morning light across the blanket.

Her head was clear and quiet, and she could not say what was missing from it.

Taylor sat in the chair beside the bed with a cup of coffee going cold on her knee.

"Hey, you," Taylor said. "Know where you are?"

"The clinic."

"Know your name?"

"Chiara Pellegrino."

"What did you have for dinner last night?"

"I don't remember."

"That's fair. I don't either."

Chiara smiled, a little, because the woman seemed to want her to.

She lifted her left hand to push her hair back and stopped.

There was a gold band on her third finger.

It was plain, a little worn on the inside.

She turned it in the light, and then looked at Taylor.

"Whose ring is this?" she asked.

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