I’ll need to interview Diana and try to figure out what set Sophie off. I don’t expect to get anything. From Diana’s frantic babbling, Jay hadn’t even gotten to my question about the dual camps. He’d been easing her in by reminding her where she was and promising that we were looking after her. She’d seemed to understand. She’d been calm, a little teary-eyed. Then she’d realized she was restrained and panicked, and Jay made the mistake of being a compassionate human being. He’d started to untie her, just as Diana had that first morning. Diana wanted to check with me, but Jay said we were busy, and he’d take responsibility. He untied Sophie and then …
We will never know what went through Sophie’s mind at the moment she attacked. I can guess, though. As hard as Jay had tried to reassure her, she hadn’t been reassured. Her mind still conjured the demons of her delirium, and she couldn’t help thinking she was a captive. After all, she was tied down, wasn’t she?
She’d played tearful victim to relax Jay’s guard. It was the smart thing to do. It’s what I’d tell someone in her place to do. Play up your “feminine passivity” to get the guy to untie you. Once he does? Attack. Which she did, and with the language barrier, we couldn’t explain well enough to convince her she hadn’t been captured by monsters.
She apparently did know English. Just enough to call me a liar. Lying about taking care of her. Lying about being a hospital. Lying about trying to help her friends.
I’m not the one she’d attacked, though. That was the person she could communicate with. The one person who could have helped explain what was happening.
Jay.
If not for this, I think he might have passed his time in Rockton under our radar. Another quiet resident, here to take advantage of the sanctuary we offered. A decent guy who’d poked his head above the parapet to help.
Did I take advantage of that?
Did I properly explain the risks?
I should have made sure Jay was protected. Despite Sophie’s outbursts, though, I considered her a low threat. Restraints and sedative, and she’d be fine. We just had to wait until she was lucid enough to understand the situation and stop fighting. Jay thought we’d reached that point, so he’d set her free.
The blame ultimately lies with me for being too busy chasing corpses and killers to properly assess the danger Jay faced. Now he’s in a coma, possibly brain-damaged, because he tried to be helpful.
When Dalton returns, I’m moving blindly through the exam room, tidying and straightening. He murmurs something to April, and the next thing I know, I’m walking through the forest to our backyard.
He opens the door and nudges me through. I stop in the doorway, my heels digging in.
“I need to speak to the council,” I say.
“It can wait.”
“It can’t. I need to talk to them and finish autopsying the settlers and move Sophie’s body and figure out what the hell I’m going to tell the residents and—”
I stumble and grab the doorway, straightening as Dalton catches me. He says something. I don’t hear it.
I need to get out of here.
Out of Rockton.
It’s like a horrible anxiety dream where every choice I make gets someone killed, and nobody else sees that. Nobody takes me aside and says, “You need to stop.”
You need to get out of here.
You’re only making things worse.
Dalton rubs my arms, and I wheel to see him there, frozen in worry and rising panic.
In his face, I see the problem.
Dalton lets me do what I like, trusts me to make choices, because he loves me, and he’s terrified of losing me.
What if I worked in the general store? Could I do that? Please?
The words hover over my tongue. I taste hope in them, and I imagine saying them and—
And what the fuck am I doing?
Am I serious?
Please, Eric, let me work in the store, so I don’t have to make the hard choices. So I’m spared the guilt of making another mistake. You can handle it all instead, okay?