Dr. Navarro’s building smells like rain and eucalyptus and printer toner.
I stand in the lobby longer than I need to, watching drops stripe the glass wall that looks out over the street. Cars hiss past on wet pavement, headlights streaking across reflective windows in the offices opposite. My phone buzzes once in my pocket—a calendar alert about this appointment I’m already late for—and the familiar chime sounds faintly from someone else’s pocket across the lobby, that Maple Hollow echo following me even downtown.
“Mara?” Dr. Navarro’s voice carries from the hallway. “You’re good to come back.”
I tuck my phone away and force my legs to move. The carpet in the hallway gives under my feet, softer than anything in my house. Each step feels like it could swallow me.
In her office, everything is glass and fabric and plants. Frosted panels for privacy, a tall fiddle-leaf fig by the window, two armchairs angled at forty-five degrees like we’re in a tasteful podcast. The sound machine hums in the corner, a gentle static that tries to pass for ocean.
“How are you arriving today?” she asks, closing the door behind me.
I lower myself into my usual chair, fingers worrying the seam of the cushion.
“On four hours of sleep and too much coffee,” I say. “So, normal.”
One corner of her mouth lifts. “Any aftershocks from our last session?”
I picture the anonymous videos, the hooded figure, Liam’s face when he talked about his sister. Tessa’s accusations. My own voice telling her she needed the simple story.
“I keep thinking about that phrase you use,” I say. “‘Narrative coherence.’”
“You dislike it,” she guesses.
“It sounds tidy,” I answer. “Like if I line up the scenes correctly, the ending will stop hurting.”
She nods once, acknowledging. “The ending doesn’t change,” she says. “The way your brain holds it can. That’s the work.”
Micro-hook: I didn’t come here to make the ending softer. I came here to check whether my brain is lying to me.
She reaches to the small case on the side table and takes out the EMDR buzzers: two smooth, oval devices with cords trailing back to a control box.
“I’d like to return to EMDR today, if you’re willing,” she says. “We talked before about using it to explore the missing minutes.”
“Explore,” I repeat. “Not rewrite.”
“Your brain already rewrote,” she says gently. “We’re inviting it to show more of the draft. You remain in control.”
Control. The word lands with a weight I don’t trust.
“Last time we tried this,” I say, “I ended up exhausted and nauseous and still with a ten-minute blackout.”
“You also landed on some new sensory detail,” she reminds me. “The guardrail sound. The smell of gasoline on your hands. That’s data.”
Gasoline and guardrails. Liam’s favorite vocabulary. I flex my fingers until my knuckles crack.
“All right,” I say. “One more round.”
She passes me the buzzers. They fit into my palms like river stones. She adjusts the dial on the little box until they begin to pulse: left, right, left, right, a soft vibration in alternating hands.
“Focus on the target,” she says. “The time between Caleb’s last text and the call from the police. Notice whatever comes up. Images, sounds, body sensations. You don’t have to force anything.”
I let my eyelids drop halfway, not fully closed. The frosted glass wall blurs; Dr. Navarro becomes a shape in my peripheral vision. The buzzers thrum in my hands like twin hearts taking turns.
“Start with where you know you were,” she prompts. “The last moment that feels solid.”
“The kitchen,” I say. My voice sounds thinner with my eyes partly shut. “I was rinsing Caleb’s cereal bowl from that morning. He texted and said, ‘I’m fine, Mom. Stop.’”
“Notice that,” she says. “The phone. The words. Let it play.”
The buzzers keep alternating. The sound machine hums. Outside, a car horn bleats briefly, muted by glass.
I lean into the memory.
The bowl is still in my hand, water running. The house on Maple Hollow hill around me, familiar creaks and fridge hum, the distant freeway like a sleeping animal. The porch light off because I’m not expecting anyone. My phone on the counter, screen lit with Caleb’s text.
I’m fine, Mom. Stop.
“Where in your body do you feel it?” Dr. Navarro asks softly.
“Chest,” I say. “Like someone poured cold water into it.”
“Stay with that,” she says. “Let your mind go to the next part of the scene.”
The buzzers tap. Left, right. Left, right. The kitchen flickers, not disappearing exactly, more like sliding to the side.
I inhale and the air shifts: water and Pine-Sol recede; cologne takes their place. Sharp, citrusy, the scent Caleb stole from a department store kiosk and then wore like armor. Underneath, sweat and the faint stale edge of beer he tried to mask with gum.
“I smell him,” I say. My fingers tighten around the buzzers. “His cologne, the one he thought made him smell like a grown man.”
“Notice that,” she says. “What else?”
Sound rushes in next. Not the hum of my old fridge but bass through a cheap car speaker, rattling slightly. A song Caleb loved—trap beat, slurred vocals—lyrics about never slowing down. The melody climbs up my spine, familiar in the worst way.
“Music,” I say. “Too loud. My teeth buzz with it.”
“Are you in the kitchen?” she asks.
I open my mouth to say yes.
“No,” I hear myself answer.
Micro-hook: I don’t have to see anything yet to know the geography just changed.
My eyes stay half-lidded, but the world behind them snaps into a different framing. Dark outside, but interior lit not by my overhead kitchen fixture. Dashboard glow washes my thighs in blue-green. Streetlights strobe across the windshield. Wipers beat a steady rhythm against light rain.
My seatbelt presses across my chest.
“Describe where you are,” Dr. Navarro says.
“Passenger seat,” I breathe. My throat goes tight around the words. “I’m in his car.”
The realization hits my stomach before my brain finishes naming it. My hand spasms around the left buzzer; the cord pulls taut. The fabric seat under me scratches the back of my legs through leggings. The window at my right shoulder carries arcs of water, catching roadside lights and smearing them into streaks.
“Stay with it,” she says, voice calm, distant. “You’re here with me, in this room, and you’re also noticing an image from the past. Two tracks.”
Two tracks. Present chair, past seat. My body flickers between them.
“He’s driving,” I say. “One hand on the wheel, one elbow on the window.” My own voice comes out rough. “He’s singing along and mangling the words.”
In the memory, I turn my head. Caleb’s profile glows in the instrument light: the same stubborn nose he hated in photos, mouth twisted around the lyrics, jaw more angular than the baby face in half the memorial pictures people post for likes.
“What do you feel in your body right now?” Dr. Navarro asks.
“Hot,” I say. The buzzers push against my sweat-slick palms. “My neck, my face. My hands keep clenching.”
“What emotion might go with that?” she prompts.
I swallow hard. “I want to grab the stereo and throw it out the window,” I say. “So. That.”
“Stay with the scene,” she says. “What are you saying to him?”
My mouth moves in both places—the clinic chair and the car.
“Caleb, turn it down,” I hear myself shout over the music. “You’re weaving.”
“I’m good,” he says, voice younger and older at once. “Chill, Mom.”
In the driver’s side door pocket, an empty gas-station coffee cup rattles. The smell of cheap hazelnut creamer mingles with his cologne. Outside, the blind curves of Old Willow Road loom., guardrail posts strobing past like teeth.
“I tell him to pull over,” I say. “I say, ‘You’re not fine, you’re slurring.’”
In the memory, he laughs, sharp and defensive.
“You had wine at dinner,” he throws back. “You don’t get to lecture me.”
My chest tightens. “Two glasses, four hours ago,” I snap. “I can drive. You can’t.”
“Notice the thoughts you have about yourself in this moment,” Dr. Navarro murmurs.
The thought knifes through both versions of me at once: I have to stop him; I have to be the adult.
“I’m the only one keeping him alive,” I whisper.
“Let the scene unspool,” she says. “You’re safe here. You can watch without changing anything.”
The buzzers speed up slightly, left-right-left-right, like a march.
On the road, Caleb’s hands tighten on the wheel. The car drifts half a foot toward the center line, then back.
“Caleb,” I say, louder now. My nails dig crescents into my thighs. “Guardrail.”
“I see it,” he mutters.
The white posts flash by. The overpass ahead hovers, that lean I remember from standing below it later. Rain needles the windshield in finer streaks. The wipers squeak at the top of each arc.
“What happens next?” Dr. Navarro asks.
Sweat gathers under my knees where they bend over the seat edge. My heart tramples my ribs.
“We argue,” I say.
In the car, my voice ratchets higher.
“Pull over,” I say. “Right now. I’m not going to the hospital again because you ‘had it under control.’”
His jaw sets. “You promised you’d treat me like an adult.”
“Adults don’t drive drunk,” I fire back.
The word hangs in the small space between us. Even the song feels quieter for a beat.
“I’m not drunk,” he bites out. “Buzzed. I’ve driven worse.”
“That’s not comforting,” I say. My hand shoots out, turning the volume knob down without permission. “You’re swerving.”
“Jesus, Mom.” His nostrils flare. He bumps the volume back up a notch lower than before but not off. “You’re freaking me out more than the road.”
My thighs press against the edge of the seat, muscle memory so strong I taste adrenaline on my tongue, metallic and sour.
Micro-hook: the story I’ve told myself for months has no place for this argument.
“Where did you think you were, before this?” Dr. Navarro’s voice filters in. “In your narrative?”
“Home,” I say through my teeth. “I was home. Waiting for the call.”
“Hold both options side by side,” she says. “The written version in your head, and what your body is showing you now. You don’t have to choose yet. Just witness.”
Witness. The word feels cruel, because in the memory I’m not witnessing. I’m reaching.
On the road, the curve tightens. Headlights from an oncoming car flare through the windshield glass, then slide past in a ribbon. The guardrail glows in short bursts.
Caleb’s blink lags. His elbow slips a fraction on the window ledge. The car kisses the fog line, tires hissing on the wet edge.
“Caleb,” I yell. “Enough. Pull over or I’ll—”
I don’t finish, because my body moves before my sentence does.
My right hand shoots across the console and clamps onto the steering wheel.
My fingers dig into the textured rubber. His hands jerk in response. The car lurches, angle shifting. The world outside tilts.
“Mara?” Dr. Navarro’s voice is sharper now. “What’s happening?”
My nails gouge the buzzers. I can’t feel the pulses over the phantom grip of the wheel.
“I grab it,” I gasp. “I grab the wheel. Not to crash. To straighten him out. I’m just trying to straighten—”
The guardrail leaps toward us, closer than it should be. The hood dips a hair. The song on the speakers fractures into static in my ears. Caleb shouts something—my name, I think—but his voice breaks on the first syllable.
Light fills the windshield.
The scene shears in half.
I rip my eyes open.
The therapy room slams back into place: plant leaves, neutral art, Dr. Navarro’s face in sharp focus. My lungs saw for air. My heels dig into the rug as if fighting momentum. The buzzers still vibrate, but my grip around them has gone so tight that my fingers ache.
“Mara, look at me,” she says. Her tone is firm now, authoritative. “You’re here. You’re in my office. Can you describe three things you see?”
“Glass,” I spit out. My vision jumps from the frosted wall to the window where actual city traffic moves. “Your stupid fig tree. The box of tissues I refuse to touch.”
She reaches forward and gently turns down the buzzer device. The pulsing in my hands slows, then stops.
“Good,” she says. “Name two things you can feel.”
“Sweat,” I choke. “My shirt. My hands. This chair digging into my back.”
“Take a breath,” she instructs. “In through your nose, long exhale.”
I try. The air feels thick, heavy with that clinic eucalyptus. It does not smell like gasoline. It does not smell like Caleb’s cologne.
“I was there,” I say. The words drop between us. “In the car. I wasn’t at home, I was in the passenger seat.”
“That’s the image your brain delivered right now,” she says, careful. “We can make space to explore it. It doesn’t cancel what you believed before; it adds information.”
My laugh comes out sharp. “Information,” I repeat. “I just saw my hand on the wheel, and you’re calling it information.”
She holds my gaze. “I’m calling it a fragment,” she says. “Trauma memories are not perfect recordings. They mix chronology and symbolism. The goal isn’t to decide in this exact moment which frame is the one true version.”
“Except one of them puts me at my kitchen sink, and one of them puts me in the car grabbing the wheel before it hits the rail,” I say. My voice rises. I don’t care. “Those aren’t interchangeable metaphors.”
“No, they’re not,” she agrees. “Which is why we move slowly.”
Slow feels intolerable. My body already bolted ahead and dragged the story with it.
“We’re near the end of the hour,” she adds. “We can spend a few minutes grounding, then schedule another session to continue working with what came up.”
I’m already pushing up from the chair. My legs wobble. The rug grips the soles of my shoes too much, then not enough.
“I need air,” I say. My hand goes to my throat. “This room is… I can’t breathe in here.”
“You can step into the hallway,” she says. “I’d like you not to drive immediately, though. We can sit with cold water for a few minutes.”
“I drove here,” I say. “Unless you want to call Jonah or my sister or my investigative neighbor-slash-possible saboteur, I’m getting back in my car.”
Her brow furrows. “We don’t have to call anyone,” she says. “We can just pause and let your nervous system settle. No more processing today. Just containment.”
The word containment makes my skin itch.
“No,” I say.
I set the buzzers on the table with more force than necessary. They roll, cords tangling. My fingers leave faint damp prints on the smooth plastic.
“Mara, making big decisions in this state isn’t ideal,” she says. “We’ve opened something. It deserves careful attention.”
“I just watched myself argue with my dead son while he drove drunk,” I snap. “Then I watched my hand on the wheel. I think I get to decide what I do with that, ideal or not.”
We stare at each other, glass and plants and soft art pretending this is a safe experiment.
“I’d like to schedule another session,” she says quietly. “Even if you decide later to cancel. Put a placeholder down, so this doesn’t hang loose.”
“That’s what it does,” I say. “Hang loose. That’s literally the problem.”
I reach for my bag, my keys cold against my palm, teeth-edged metal grounding me more than any breathing exercise. The movement sends a flare of pain down my forearm, phantom strain from the memory of gripping the wheel.
“I’ll email,” I say. “If I decide to come back.”
“I strongly recommend we don’t leave it there,” she says.
“I’m strongly done for today,” I answer.
Micro-hook: I walk out of a room built for remembering with a brand-new memory I might have to destroy.
In the hallway, the air feels thinner, fluorescent instead of lamplight-warm. I move past the waiting area without looking at the other faces. The front desk blurts out something about scheduling; I wave a vague hand and push through the glass door to the street.
Cold drizzle hits my cheeks. The smell of wet asphalt and faint exhaust wraps around me. Cars move along the road, headlights slicing through mist, reflecting in the plate-glass windows of a yoga studio, a café, a salon.
I stand on the sidewalk and watch a hatchback roll past. For a moment, every windshield is mine. Every wheel bears my fingerprints.
My phone vibrates in my pocket—another notification from Maple Hollow’s group chat, probably a lost cat or a lawn complaint. The chime sounds bright and harmless. The story it belongs to does not.
I look toward the parking garage and picture my own steering wheel waiting in the dim.
For years I’ve told myself a clean version: Caleb behind the wheel, me at home, the guardrail the villain. Now my body holds a competing draft in which I sit in the passenger seat and reach across the console, and the line between victim and culprit collapses into one motion.
I wipe rain from my upper lip with the back of my hand and start walking toward my car, one thought pounding louder than the freeway in my ears.
If this new memory is true, I didn’t just lose my son on Old Willow Road.
I might have helped drive him there.