By the time I hit downtown, my hands ache from gripping the steering wheel.
Maple Hollow drops away in the rearview like a curated feed I scroll past too fast: identical roofs, identical trimmed lawns, fog curled low around porch lights while people inside tap out memorial hashtags and HOA complaints. Headlights smear across my windshield, glass throwing their beams back at me in thin, accusing streaks. Every traffic light reflects my own face—eyes red, jaw locked—layered over Caleb’s car, over the paused bodycam frame of my bleeding knees.
I don’t bother parking straight. I angle my car into a spot outside Dr. Navarro’s converted warehouse and climb out before the engine stops shuddering. The air hits me damp and sharp, pine from the sidewalk planters mixing with exhaust and the distant grind of freeway traffic. My phone buzzes with a notification from the Maple Hollow Facebook group; I mute it without looking. No more curated grief while I walk into the building where my brain gets revised.
The clinic lobby smells like eucalyptus and printer toner. Soft music drips from hidden speakers. The receptionist looks up, smile already forming.
“Hi, do you have—”
“I need to see Dr. Navarro,” I say.
My boots squeak on the polished concrete as I head straight for the frosted glass door that leads to the hallway. The receptionist comes half out of her chair.
“Ms. Ellison, right? I’m sorry, Dr. Navarro is in session. Do you have an appointment today?”
“Not yet,” I say. “Give me ten minutes and a locked door.”
“Ms. Ellison—”
I put my palm on the cool metal handle. “You can either call back and tell her the woman in the drunk-driving case is about to have a public breakdown in your lobby,” I say, “or you can ask privately if she can spare five minutes between clients.”
Her polite expression falters. Good. I watch the calculation behind her eyes—HIPAA nightmares, Yelp reviews—and then she nods tightly.
“Let me check,” she says, already reaching for the phone. “Please, just… wait there.”
I stand in the middle of the lobby, arms crossed, watching my reflection in the glass wall across from me. Two copies of me glare back, slightly out of sync. In one, my mouth twitches first; in the other, my eyes. I don’t know which one looks more real.
The door clicks. Dr. Navarro’s voice floats down the hallway. “Mara?”
I turn. She stands framed by the glass, slim and composed in a dark knit dress, a tablet tucked against her chest. Her eyes widen a hair at my face, then smooth back into clinical concern.
“Come in,” she says. “We’ll make a few minutes.”
In her office, the diffuser breathes out a slow curl of lavender that catches in my throat. The same beige armchair waits for me, the same weighted blanket folded on its arm, the same clock ticking quietly above her shoulder. Glass panels separate us from the hallway, sound machine hissing softly to promise privacy.
I stay standing.
“You watched it,” she says softly. “The bodycam footage.”
“Yes.”
She gestures to the chair. “Sit, please.”
I drop into it harder than I intend. The cushion sighs. My knee bounces, jittery energy traveling up my leg.
“You got it from Liam?” she asks.
The way she uses his name without prompting tightens something in my chest. “He queued it up on his biggest screen,” I say. “Dimmed the lights. Gave me the full cinematic experience.”
Her brow furrows. “And now you’re here.”
“Oh, that’s not the interesting part,” I say. I lean forward, elbows on my knees. “The interesting part is that your therapy and his footage tell two different versions of where I was when my son died.”
She stays silent. Her hands rest loosely on the notebook in her lap, fingers still.
I take a breath that shakes. “In EMDR, with you, I saw myself in the passenger seat,” I say. “Arguing with Caleb. Grabbing the wheel. That’s not vague, or symbolic, or a feeling. That’s an image. My body in the car.”
“I remember what you reported,” she says.
“On the bodycam,” I go on, “I arrive on foot. No car. No passenger seat. Just me, wandering out of the dark like a drunk ghost, bleeding and barefoot. And there’s a jump in the footage right before I appear. A tidy little slice of missing time.”
The words tumble faster now, gathering heat. “So I have two mutually exclusive things. Either my brain made up the car to punish or protect me, or the footage is altered. Maybe both. But there’s one variable that connects all this, and that’s the process we did in this room.”
“You think I implanted the image,” she says.
It’s not a question. I nod anyway.
“Yes,” I say. “I think you opened a door in my head, and someone else walked through it.”
Micro-hook: if my mind is a crime scene, I don’t know whose fingerprints glow under the blacklight—mine, hers, or his.
Dr. Navarro exhales slowly, then sets the notebook aside.
“Mara,” she says, “I hear how frightening this is. I’m glad you came in. Before we talk about blame, can we talk about what EMDR actually does?”
“Please enlighten me,” I say. “Maybe you can retroactively add an informed consent paragraph.”
A tiny muscle jumps in her jaw. “You’re angry,” she says.
“I’m observant.”
She lets that sit. “EMDR doesn’t beam images into your mind,” she says. “It uses bilateral stimulation to help your brain reprocess stored material. That material can be sensory fragments, emotions, beliefs. When you described being in the passenger seat, you didn’t ‘retrieve a file’ from a mental hard drive. You constructed a narrative around fragments that surfaced.”
“It felt real,” I say.
“Real does not always equal literal,” she replies. “Especially in trauma memory. People dream about events they never lived, but the feelings are authentic. That doesn’t mean the dream happened in waking life.”
“So now it’s just a dream,” I say. My nails dig crescents into my palms. “One week you tell me to trust what my body shows me. The next, you downgrade it to metaphor.”
Her dark eyes sharpen. “I never said to treat EMDR images as unquestionable fact,” she says. “Do you remember our first session? I talked about memory being reconstructive, not a recording. That’s why we write what comes up, then compare it with external evidence. The process was always meant to include checking.”
“Then why didn’t you stop me when I told you I grabbed the wheel?” I demand. “Why didn’t you say, ‘Careful, that might be symbolic, not literal’? You watched me hang an entire noose of guilt on that image.”
Her shoulders lower a fraction. “Because you needed to feel the full weight of what your system was trying to show you before we challenged it,” she says. “If I swoop in and say, ‘Don’t worry, that’s just a symbol,’ you learn that your inner experience is not trustworthy. The goal is to honor it, then hold it up to other sources.”
“Honor it,” I repeat. “By letting me walk around believing I killed my son?”
“Did I ever tell you that you killed Caleb?” she asks.
I open my mouth, then close it. No. She asked what I saw, what I felt. She never finished my sentences. I did that.
“Suggestion happens in EMDR when a therapist leads,” she continues. “When they say, ‘Do you see yourself in the car?’ or, ‘Are you grabbing the wheel?’ I did not do that. I asked, ‘What do you notice now?’ and you told me.”
My stomach twists. I want to argue, but the script of that session rewinds in my head: her steady tapping fingers, her voice saying, “Go with that… and what comes next?” It fed the story but never supplied the lines.
“Liam said EMDR can create false memories,” I mutter.
She lifts her chin a degree. “Liam is not a clinician,” she says. “He’s not wrong that suggestible clients can misattribute or confabulate details. There is research on that. There is also research on EMDR reducing PTSD symptoms and helping people integrate traumatic events. Both can be true, depending on how it’s used.”
My head throbs behind my eyes. “So my image might be literal, or symbolic, or contaminated,” I say. “Super helpful.”
“That uncertainty existed before EMDR,” she says gently. “You came to me with missing time and intrusive hypothetical scenes. Therapy didn’t manufacture your doubt; it gave it form. That form can now be evaluated against evidence.”
Micro-hook: if I can’t trust the woman I hired to guard my mind, maybe I need to learn how to pick the lock myself.
I lean back, staring up at the ceiling. The diffuser’s vapor curls in the edge of my vision, a ghost without a body.
“Fine,” I say. “Let’s evaluate. The bodycam shows me arriving on foot after a three-minute gap. EMDR shows me in the passenger seat before impact. Those two images cannot both be literally true. Pick one.”
“That’s not my role,” she says. “My role is to help you tolerate the not-knowing long enough to keep investigating without breaking.”
“You’re dodging,” I say.
“I’m respecting limits,” she replies. “I wasn’t at Old Willow Road. I didn’t edit the footage. I didn’t ride in the car. I guided you through a process that surfaced a specific image. That image has meaning for you, regardless of its literal accuracy.”
Frustration surges hot under my skin. “Meaning for cross-examination too,” I say. “If the company’s attorney ever gets ahold of those EMDR notes, she gets to paint me as the crazy mom who ‘remembered’ a whole new role in the crash after trauma therapy.”
Dr. Navarro’s eyes shutter for a breath. “Client records are protected,” she says. “There are exceptions, but it would take a court order.”
“Evelyn Hart has more lawyers than this building has chairs,” I say. “Exceptions are her hobby.”
“Then we will discuss how to respond if that happens,” she says. “I can testify about the nature of EMDR, about symbolic imagery, about the dangers of treating subjective recall as objective data. You will not be alone.”
Something in her voice rings true, but I’ve already seen how professional language gets twisted into weapons. Liam’s research, Evelyn’s cross, the HOA gossip—it all feeds on gray areas.
I sit up straighter.
“Speaking of not being alone,” I say, “I need to ask you a direct question.”
Her attention sharpens. “Go ahead.”
“Have you talked to anyone about my case?” I ask. “Not anonymized, not ‘a hypothetical client’ in a conference. My case. The crash. My name.”
“No,” she says immediately. “I do not discuss identifying details without your written consent, except in supervision, which is confidential and de-identified.”
“Have you ever talked to Liam?”
The question hangs between us like a dropped glass right before impact.
For a heartbeat, her face doesn’t move. Then something shifts in her eyes—a quick flash I wouldn’t have caught six months ago, before I started reading microexpressions like a second language.
I lean forward. “You have,” I say quietly.
“Not about you,” she says.
My pulse spikes. “Try that again.”
She clasps her hands together on her knee, thumbs pressing hard against each other, blanching the skin. When she speaks, each word comes out measured.
“Several months ago,” she says, “before we began EMDR, I received an email. Then a phone call. From a man named Liam Rowe.”
The room contracts. The hum of the sound machine rises into a low roar in my ears.
“What did he want?” I ask.
“He said he was consulting on a case involving trauma survivors,” she says. “He told me he worked in investigations, not therapy, and was trying to understand the implications of EMDR on eyewitness accounts. He framed it as wanting to avoid retraumatizing people he might interview.”
“Of course he did,” I say. My fingers go cold.
“He asked general questions,” she goes on. “How EMDR affects recall. Whether it could strengthen or distort memory. How therapists guard against suggestion. I answered in broad terms. I referenced published research. I did not give him case examples, and he did not mention you.”
“Did he mention a guardrail crash?” I ask. “A drunk-driving teen? A grieving mother who happens to live across from him?”
“No,” she says. “He said the client was a pro bono case involving a car accident years ago. Different jurisdiction. No names. I get inquiries like that occasionally from attorneys, journalists, researchers. I treat them as educational, not clinical.”
Years ago. Different jurisdiction. The details slide through me like ice. How many crashes does he carry in his pocket?
“Why didn’t you tell me he called?” I ask.
“Because I didn’t connect him to your neighbor until you mentioned Liam by name,” she says. “Even then, I had no evidence they were the same person. Rowe is not a rare surname. I considered that the overlap might be coincidence.”
“Do you believe that now?” I ask.
Her silence answers.
“When did you realize?” I press.
“The day you described your neighbor’s work and said his full name,” she says quietly. “I recognized it and felt… uneasy. I debated whether to disclose the prior contact. Ethically, I had an educational conversation, not a consultation about you. Still, I worried that telling you could destabilize our work at a fragile point.”
“So you decided not to tell me,” I say.
“I decided to monitor,” she says. “To see whether his influence appeared in your material. I did not observe leading questions from him about EMDR in your reports. Until now, when you referenced his concerns about false memories.”
My laugh comes out short and humorless. “Congratulations,” I say. “Consider this your observation.”
Micro-hook: if Liam wanted a mind he could edit, he did his homework on the software before he bought the hardware.
I stand. The movement dizzies me, but I ride it.
“Mara,” Dr. Navarro says. “Please sit. We can process this. I understand why you feel betrayed.”
“Do you?” I ask. “Because from where I’m standing, the man who moved in across from me researched how to bend trauma narratives months before I lay down on your couch, and you’re just now mentioning it.”
“He did not consult about you,” she repeats. “I had no reason to suspect he would enter your life. I understand the optics are terrible. I should have disclosed the contact once I recognized his name. I will document that failure. But my commitment to you has not changed.”
“Your commitment exists inside institutions,” I say. “Licensing boards, supervision groups, liability insurance. Those same institutions can be leaned on by attorneys who want to call me delusional on the record. Liam knew to start with the infrastructure. He always does.”
Her gaze steadies. “What do you want from me right now?” she asks. “An apology? A referral to another therapist? A letter for your file clarifying that EMDR images are not hard evidence? All of the above?”
The fact that she offers options instead of defense knocks me off balance for a second. I catch myself on the back of the chair.
“I want the truth,” I say. “From you, from him, from that road. And I’m not sure any of you know how to give it without editing.”
“Truth and memory are not identical,” she says. “You know that better than most. You write for a living.”
The reminder lands with a dull thud. Narratives, arcs, revision passes. I have spent my career turning mess into meaning. Now I’m the manuscript full of tracked changes, and I can’t see who made which edits.
I pick up my bag.
“I’m not quitting,” I say. “Not yet. But I’m done handing you my mind like a blank page.”
“Good,” she says softly. “You were never a blank page.”
“I’m going back to Old Willow Road,” I add. “There’s a camera up there. Another narrator we haven’t heard from yet.”
Her hand tightens briefly on the arm of her chair. “Please be careful,” she says. “You are walking into a story that powerful people have invested in keeping fixed. They will not like revision.”
“They picked the wrong kind of mother for that,” I say.
I step to the door and catch my reflection in the glass panel: my face overlaying the blurred shapes of other clients in other rooms, other stories, other rewrites. Behind me, Dr. Navarro is a second figure, doubled by the reflection, two versions layered and not quite aligned.
“Mara,” she says.
I pause, hand on the handle.
“Whatever Liam’s motives were when he called me,” she says, “you still have agency here. Don’t let either of us convince you otherwise—not even in the name of healing.”
The word healing tastes different now, edged with liability and strategy.
“Then I’ll start by deciding who gets to witness my next memory,” I say.
I pull the door open and walk back through the softly lit corridor, past the plants and the diffusers and the closed doors hiding other people’s secrets. Outside, the gray sky presses low, headlights sliding past on the wet street, smearing themselves across the glass façade.
For the first time, I look at those reflections and think: if every window in this city is just another camera, then the curve on Old Willow might have more witnesses than anyone counted.
I just have to find the one they forgot to erase.