not sure. You don’t have the same DNA, of course. As for other possibilities…did you try to find out if she was a student at Berkeley? Through the registrar’s office, for instance?”
“No,” Rachel said abruptly.
“You didn’t really want to know,” Victoria guessed again. “Because if it was Angela, you’d have had to do something about it. You’d have had to look her up and talk to her.”
Rachel frowned. “I wish you wouldn’t read my mind that way.”
“That bothers you?”
“Of course it does! You’ve always done that, and it drives me nuts.” Rachel paused, then laughed. “I guess that’s not the sort of thing to say to a psychiatrist.”
Victoria smiled. “We’ve known each other a long time, Rachel. You should know by now, you can say anything to me.”
Rachel hugged herself with her arms, feeling cold even though the room was warm. “I just think it’s silly, Vicky, my parents getting all worried like this. I warped back into the past for a few minutes when I saw that tree on the floor. Doesn’t everybody do that sometimes?”
“Your mother said you were up pacing all night, and you didn’t eat any breakfast this morning.”
“Well, duh! I was upset, for heaven’s sake. I’m over it now.”
“Are you?”
“Yes, dammit!” Rachel gave the therapist a mutinous glare.
Victoria laughed. “I haven’t seen that look since you were…oh, seven or eight.”
The glare faded into a grin.
Victoria reached behind her chair and took a plate from a low mahogany filing cabinet. “Cookie?’
“Geez. I can’t believe you’re still plying patients with chocolate-chip cookies.”
Victoria smiled. “It seems to work.”
Rachel took a cookie. “This is supposed to make me more willing to open up, right?”
“Right.”
She rolled her eyes. “Does psychiatry still work, even when the patient is smart enough to figure out all the moves?”
“Only when the cookies are merely a distraction, to keep the patient from figuring out the real moves.”
“Is that what you’ve been doing to me all these years?” Rachel asked. “Playing mind games?”
“Why would you see it as mind games?” Victoria asked. “Why not simply as a way to help you? A way to get to the truth?”
Rachel snorted. “That assumes there’s any such thing as truth.”
“Are you saying there isn’t?”
Carefully Rachel set the cookie back on the plate. “Let’s approach this from another direction. Do you think you’ve helped me over all these years?”
Victoria hesitated. “I…well, you’ve been going to college, preparing for the future. I certainly think you’re better now than you were when you were sixteen, for instance. Or right after Angela left.”
Rachel’s mood changed in an instant. Jumping to her feet, she clenched her fists at her sides. “Angela left? For God’s sake, Vicky, my sister did not leave! She was sent away—returned to the store, like a defective toaster oven. Why does everyone say she left? Does it make it easier somehow to sweep the truth under the rug?”
“So we’re back to truth,” Victoria said calmly, leaning back in her chair and folding her arms. “What is your truth, Rachel?”
Rachel threw up her hands. “How the hell do I know?”
“Do you want to know?”
“I…of course I do!” But she had paused before answering, and Victoria picked up on it quickly.
“What are you afraid of?” she asked.
Rachel sat again, rubbing her face and taking a deep breath. “I don’t know. I think…I think I’m afraid of Angela. Of what I might find out if I saw her again.”
“Have you been wanting to see her again?”
“I haven’t even really thought much about her since I’ve been away at school. Then all of a sudden, I thought for sure she was there, and it all started up again.”
“What started up?”
Rachel gave Victoria a shaky smile. “The fear. It was like déjàvu. It just washed right over me, like some awful wave. I started to shake, and I actually thought—”
“What? What did you think?”
“It’s…it’s silly.”
“Nothing about fear is silly. Remember when I taught you to turn around and face the monster in your nightmares? What happened?”
“It went away,” Rachel admitted. “The nightmares stopped.”
“So you know you can trust me, right?”
“I guess.”
“Then tell me, Rachel. What did you think when you saw—or thought you saw—Angela?”
“I guess I thought, what if she came here to kill me?” Rachel said, looking down at her hands again. They were shaking.
Victoria rested her chin on tented fingers. “And how does it feel now that you’re home? Safer?”
“God, no! It feels worse. Vicky, I keep thinking something awful is about to happen. And my parents—” She paused.
“What about your parents?” Victoria pressed.
“Oh, hell, they aren’t even here anymore. They’re both doing their own thing, and they hardly talk to each other.”
“I see. When did you first feel this about them?” Victoria asked.
“Last summer, I guess. It was so weird, I couldn’t wait to get back to school.”
“So let’s think about this. Do you feel your parents are no longer around to protect you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
Victoria was silent. Finally, she said, “Rachel, let me pose a theory. You’re feeling vulnerable, unprotected, exposed. That could bring up old memories of the night when Angela—”
“Don’t say it,” Rachel interrupted. “I don’t even want to think of it.”
“—when Angela tried to kill you,” Victoria finished, ignoring her. “Look at it, Rachel. See
