Dr. Young nodded. “He was Elizabeth’s boyfriend, right?”
“I-don’t-want-to-talk-about-Jag.” I said in a rush. “We can talk about my mom, if you want, or…I don’t know, my grandmother! She witnessed a lot too!” I was now leaning forward, elbows on his desk, trying desperately to shift the topic elsewhere. I didn’t want to tell him anything, but he had touched upon a super sensitive spot in my soul that I wanted to lay to rest. Jag deserved that much. “Okay, how about this: I’ll tell you about the first time I had to go to the hospital. Every-little-bit-of-it. Nothing left out. That work?” Bargaining wasn’t my best quality, but he seemed like a man who appreciated a little give and take. Plus, my first trip to the hospital because of Joe’s actions wasn’t as traumatic as everyone probably thought. I’d been hit with a belt as punishment for not finishing a can of soda. Joe had called it wasteful, and in the midst of his rage hit my lip with the metal belt buckle. The four stitches across my eyebrow had been painful, but it was nothing compared to the future damage he would inflict.
Yes, I’ll let him have the first visit. Joe could win this one. There was medical documentation to back-up my claim, anyway. I nodded at my thoughts and blew out a deep breath, preparing myself, mentally, to make the treacherous trip back down memory lane. “I wore a yellow parka that day. It had rained the night before…”
A sad smile splayed across Dr. Young’s lips. Before I had a chance to continue, he flipped to the second page of my chart and said, “Do you want to go home? Or do you want to stay in here forever?” He leaned forward to meet me halfway and added, “Forever in a place like this is a long time, Gambrielle. I’ve treated patients that have been housed in facilities just like this one for over twenty years. One or two years?” He made a face. “That’s not so bad. Twenty years? That’s a third of your life.” His sympathetic eyes pierced into mine. “Are you going to stay here and give up? Or are you going to fight with me?”
I opened my mouth to speak but couldn’t find the words to justify my defense. No, I didn’t want to stay at Hawthorne forever. I wanted to get out, go to college, grow old, maybe have a few kids. I’d never been the most attentive to my cousins, Xander and Zavier, whenever they came to visit during the holidays, but I was working toward it. I’d also envisioned a teaching career in literature and spending the majority of my days reciting old works from some of history’s greatest writers. The point was: I had made goals, and I knew how to work toward them to make them a reality. And as soon as justice was served to Joe on a platter, I would pick myself back up and forge ahead as best I could. That was all anyone could do in my predicament, right?
“I want to go home.” I softly admitted, leaning back in my seat. “But I don’t have a home to go back to.”
Dr. Young settled his elbows on his desk and propped his palms under his chin. “That’s a scary thought.” he agreed. “Would it make you feel better to know most of the patients here are in the same boat?”
No, it didn’t. All it did was make me feel worse.
“I can get you home. It may not be the home you are used to, and at times it might get lonely but,” Dr. Young paused for effect, “you’ll have your freedom.”
I nodded.
“I’m not here for your family, I’m here for you. “
I was stubborn, and rightfully so after everything I had endured over the last six months, which Dr. Young picked up on right away. When twenty minutes passed and we hadn’t made any progress, he reached into his desk and retrieved an unopened pack of shiny, yellow stars. What’s this? It seemed stupid, the power those stars held over me; instantly, my body sat at attention and my eyes focused on the five points.
“Two stars. That’s what I’m offering, Gambrielle.” he said. “You tell me about Jaguar, not Elizabeth, but Jaguar.”
Two stars?
Two days.
For the price of one?
I bit my lip as Dr. Young waved the pack in front of me as though it were a million dollars. “Two stars. Going once, going twice—”
“—Joe hated him.” I blurted out. Crap, here we go. Clasping my hands together in my lap, I squeezed my eyes shut and blew out a deep breath. “He, um… Jag, was a police officer.”
Dr. Young ceased his movements but continued to hold the stars up like a torch signifying freedom. “What do you mean by Joe hated him? Why?”
I pursed my lips together. “Because Jag wielded more power than he did.”
“More control, you mean?” Dr. Young assumed.
“No.” I wagged my head. “It was more than that.”
“Oh?”
“Joe wanted to be the law. Jag was—well, is—the law.” Two stars. I had to keep reminding myself of that even as Dr. Young pulled out a legal pad and began scribbling things down. Two stars, eight days left, if I could manage to get through the next ten minutes.
“How old is Jaguar?”
It seemed a basic enough question. “Twenty-three, I think.”
Dr. Young nodded but didn’t stop jotting down the information. “And how old was your sister?”
“Eighteen.”
“That’s a pretty big age gap.” Dr. Young noted. He peeked over his legal pad and raised a questioning brow. “Did Joe take issue with that?”
I shook my head. “Age was never the issue. Jag wanted to marry her and show her the world.” A smile tugged at my lips as a memory of Jag in his policeman uniform flipping pancakes entered my frontal lobe. I don’t know what it was about him that warmed my soul; perhaps the way he treated her, as though she were a precious mirage that could vanish at any moment if his brain veered too far away. Anything she wanted, all she had to do was ask—he was that devoted and consumed by her.
“Jag didn’t take any of his crap.” I finally said, looking back at Dr. Young. “He stood up to him. He was her shield.”
Dr. Young tilted his head back and let out a sympathetic, “ahhh.”
“Jag used to pick us up every morning in his police cruiser and take us to school. We always had to stay ducked down in the backseat because he wasn’t allowed to let anyone ride with him…but Jag being Jag, he was determined to give her the whole high school boyfriend experience.”
“And did he?” Dr. Young pressed on.
My brows knitted. “I think so.” My eyes fell to the white knuckles suffocating in my lap. “She always wrote about him in her diary and would sometimes show me a few pages…” My words drifted off as the revelation slammed into me like a ton of bricks.
Diary…
Would there be anything in her diary, besides Jag? I’d never thought to ask, nor had she ever offered up the information. What if she had written something important that the investigators missed?
Things were quiet for the next few minutes as Dr. Young jotted down the remainder of his notes. I didn’t care. I was too preoccupied with thoughts of what could be in between the pages of the small black book. Had Elizabeth written about the abuse she had endured at the hands of Joe? Had Joe tried to kill her before six months ago? He’d wanted to silence her and was eventually successful in his quest. But did she leave a trail for me to pick up on and follow?