Chapter 3
THE MAN WHO KNEW MY NAME
The lock turned once.
The woman beside me made a small, strangled sound and backed toward the kitchen.
I couldn't move.
The handle turned again.
Then someone outside the apartment said, "Mara, I know you're in there."
Dr. Adrian Vale.
His voice was as calm as it had been in his office that morning. The same voice that had guided me through panic attacks, nightmares, and eighteen months of conversations about the sister I couldn't remember losing.
The woman grabbed my wrist.
"Don't answer him."
I stared at her.
"Who are you?"
She looked as though I'd slapped her.
"You don't remember me?"
The lock clicked.
I pulled away from her and reached for my phone. My fingers felt clumsy, disconnected from the rest of my body.
I could call Jonah Reed.
I could shout.
I could run into the hallway and demand to know why my therapist had followed me to a building I'd left three years ago.
Instead, I did the one thing I had learned never to do when frightened.
I listened.
The door opened.
Vale stood on the threshold in his charcoal coat, one hand resting on the brass handle. He looked from me to the woman, then toward the kitchen wall.
His expression barely changed.
"You're making a mistake, Mara."
I almost laughed.
"That seems to be a popular opinion today."
He stepped inside and closed the door behind him.
The woman moved between us.
"You said she wouldn't remember."
Vale glanced at her.
"I said she might not."
"You promised."
"I promised nothing of the sort."
"You told me she wouldn't come back here."
His jaw tightened.
For the first time, the polished calm slipped.
"Clara, please."
Clara.
The name meant nothing to me, but she reacted to it as though he had struck her.
"Don't call me that."
Vale looked at me again.
"We should leave."
"No."
"Mara."
"Not until you tell me what's behind that wall."
He glanced at the plaster.
"Nothing."
"Someone just spoke to me."
"You've been under considerable stress."
"Don't."
I took the photograph from my bag and held it up.
"Don't do that. Don't turn everything I say into a symptom."
His eyes settled on the image.
For a second, he seemed genuinely tired.
Then he reached for it.
I pulled it away.
"Did you know my sister?"
"No."
"Did you ever treat her?"
"No."
"Did you come to this apartment three years ago?"
He said nothing.
The silence lasted just long enough.
Clara began to cry again.
"Tell her," she whispered.
Vale turned toward her.
"Please don't make this worse."
"Worse?" Her voice rose. "You said it was over. You said the room was empty."
My heart hammered against my ribs.
"The room was empty?"
Clara covered her mouth.
Vale took a step toward her.
She flinched.
That small movement told me more than anything he had said.
I had seen people flinch like that before. At work, while transcribing police interviews, I had learned to recognize the difference between a person startled by sudden movement and someone anticipating a blow.
Clara was anticipating something.
Vale noticed me watching her.
"You're misinterpreting the situation."
"Then explain it."
"I can't."
"Won't."
"Can't."
"Why?"
He looked at me for a long moment.
"Because you don't remember what you agreed to."
The apartment seemed to contract around us.
"What did I agree to?"
He didn't answer.
I heard another knock from behind the wall.
Three.
A pause.
Two.
Clara pressed both hands against her ears.
"Stop it," she whispered.
I turned toward the sound.
"Elise?"
The knocking ceased.
Vale's voice sharpened.
"Don't encourage it."
I looked at him.
"Encourage what?"
He reached for my arm.
I stepped back.
"Don't touch me."
His hand stopped in midair.
Something changed in his face. Not anger, exactly. More like disappointment.
As though I had failed to follow a familiar script.
"Mara," he said softly, "you need to come with me."
"Where?"
"Somewhere safe."
"Safe from whom?"
He looked toward the door.
For the first time, I wondered whether he was afraid of someone other than me.
Then a sound came from the wall.
Not knocking.
Scratching.
Slow, deliberate strokes against the other side of the plaster.
Clara stumbled backward.
Vale swore under his breath.
I moved closer to the wall.
The scratching stopped.
A voice whispered through the plaster.
"Ask him about the blue room."
Vale went white.
It happened so quickly that I might have missed it if I hadn't been watching him.
His lips parted. His eyes fixed on the wall.
And for one terrible second, I saw something beneath the professional composure.
Recognition.
"What's the blue room?" I asked.
He didn't respond.
"Adrian."
"Stop."
"What's the blue room?"
He grabbed my wrist.
Not hard enough to bruise, but hard enough to make his meaning unmistakable.
"Whatever you think you remember, it isn't what happened."
I looked down at his hand.
Then at his face.
"You just admitted there was something to remember."
He released me.
Clara moved toward the kitchen counter, fumbling with a drawer.
Vale noticed.
"Don't."
She pulled out a small kitchen knife.
Her hand shook so violently that the blade rattled against the drawer's metal edge.
"Get away from her."
Vale stared at the knife.
"Clara, put that down."
"No."
"You're frightened."
"Yes."
"You're confused."
"I'm not confused."
Her voice broke.
"I'm the only one here who remembers what you did."
The words struck the room like a dropped glass.
Vale's face became very still.
I turned toward Clara.
"What did he do?"
She looked at me.
For a moment, she seemed ready to answer.
Then her gaze shifted to the wall.
Her expression changed.
The fear drained from her face, replaced by something colder.
"Oh God," she whispered.
"What?"
She pointed the knife toward the plaster.
"It's not supposed to be awake."
A heavy impact shook the wall.
The picture frames on the opposite side of the kitchen rattled.
I stumbled backward.
Vale seized Clara's wrist and forced the knife down.
"Enough!"
She fought him.
"You said it was sedated!"
Another impact.
A crack appeared in the plaster.
Not a hairline fracture.
A long, jagged split running from the floor toward the ceiling.
I heard something scrape behind it.
Then a sound I knew so intimately that my knees nearly gave way.
My sister was laughing.
Not the cheerful, careless laugh I remembered from childhood. This was quieter. Exhausted. The sort of laugh someone made after crying for so long that the body forgot how to do anything else.
"Mara," Elise whispered.
I ran toward the wall.
Vale caught me around the waist.
"No!"
I struggled against him.
"Let go!"
"Listen to me!"
"That's my sister!"
"You don't know that!"
I drove my heel into his shin.
He released me with a sharp curse.
I reached the wall and pressed both hands against the crack.
The plaster was warm.
Beneath my fingertips, something moved.
A breath.
A living person, inches away.
"Elise," I whispered. "It's me."
A long silence.
Then three words.
"You locked me in."
My hands went numb.
Behind me, Vale said my name.
I didn't turn.
The crack widened.
A small piece of plaster fell to the floor.
Behind it was darkness, then the unmistakable gleam of a metal surface.
A door.
The same door I had seen in the police photograph.
I stumbled back.
The woman behind the wall began to pound against it.
"Open it!"
Vale lunged toward me.
I dodged him and grabbed the kitchen knife from Clara's hand.
"Don't come any closer."
He stopped.
His eyes moved from the blade to my face.
"Mara, you need to understand something. Whatever is behind that wall, it isn't what you think."
"Then tell me what it is."
"I can't."
"That isn't good enough anymore."
He glanced toward the apartment entrance.
I followed his gaze.
The front door was open.
Clara had slipped into the hallway.
She was gone.
"Clara?" I called.
No answer.
Vale moved toward the exit.
I raised the knife.
"Stay where you are."
He stopped again.
For the first time, I saw anger in his eyes.
"You have no idea what you're doing."
"Then help me."
"I've spent eighteen months trying to help you."
"Have you?"
His mouth tightened.
"You came to me because you were frightened of your own memories. You couldn't sleep. You couldn't work. You were convinced you'd done something terrible to Elise."
"Did I?"
He looked at the wall.
That was answer enough.
I felt the knife trembling in my hand.
"What happened that night?"
Vale lowered his voice.
"You brought her here."
"No."
"You were the one who called me."
"No."
"You told me she was dangerous."
I shook my head.
"I would never say that about Elise."
"You did."
"You're lying."
"Then why don't you remember?"
The question struck deeper than I wanted to admit.
Because I didn't remember.
Because the missing minutes were a hole in my life, and every person who claimed to know what had happened seemed determined to keep me from looking inside it.
I lowered the knife slightly.
Vale saw the movement.
He stepped toward me.
I raised it again.
"Stay back."
He stopped.
Then he said something that made the room go silent.
"Elise wasn't the first."
I stared at him.
"What?"
"She wasn't the first person you locked away."
I felt as though the floor had vanished beneath me.
He reached into his coat pocket and removed a folded photograph.
He placed it on the counter.
I didn't move.
"Look at it," he said.
"No."
"Mara."
"No."
He unfolded the photograph himself.
It showed a small room with blue walls, a narrow bed, and a metal chair bolted to the floor.
On the chair sat a young woman.
She had dark auburn hair, a silver ring on her right thumb, and a small birthmark near her temple.
Elise.
Alive.
I stepped toward the photograph.
There was a date printed along the bottom edge.
October 13.
Three years ago.
The day after she supposedly disappeared.
Beneath the photograph was a second image.
A different room.
The same blue walls.
The same metal chair.
But this time, the woman sitting in it was me.
I was wearing a hospital gown. My hair had been cut short. There was a bruise beneath my left eye.
And someone had written a message across the bottom in red ink.
PATIENT TWO: MEMORY RESTORATION SUCCESSFUL.
I couldn't breathe.
Vale folded the photographs.
"Now do you understand why you need to come with me?"
I stared at him.
"No."
He closed his eyes briefly.
"Mara, the woman behind that wall isn't your sister."
The pounding stopped.
A silence settled over the apartment.
Then the voice behind the wall spoke again.
This time, it sounded nothing like Elise.
It was my own voice.
Calm. Clear. Almost bored.
"Adrian, let me out."
Vale's face crumpled.
Not with fear.
With grief.
He whispered, "I'm sorry."
Then the wall began to open from the inside.
STORY NOTES FOR NEXT CHAPTER
Mara confronts Dr. Adrian Vale in her former apartment, where the current tenant, Clara, reveals that Vale predicted Mara's return. A hidden door is uncovered behind the kitchen wall. Someone inside claims Mara locked them in and calls for release. Vale says Elise was not the first person Mara locked away. He shows Mara photographs of Elise alive on October 13, three years earlier, and another showing Mara in a blue room, labeled as a patient whose memory restoration was successful. Vale insists the person behind the wall is not Elise. The voice from behind the wall then speaks in Mara's own voice, and the concealed door begins opening from the inside.
Open mysteries: Who is behind the wall? What is the blue room? Why was Mara a patient, and what does memory restoration mean? Is Elise alive? What did Mara do before her memories disappeared?
Next chapter teaser: The person who steps out of the hidden room knows Mara's childhood secrets—and carries proof that one of her memories belongs to someone else.