Ilse stepped up the worn stairs to her front door, stretching as she did, and listening to the whisper of the leaves above, rustling where they hung low. The canopy of green and brown extended past her home, towards the lake behind her house.
She paused, frowning up the driveway, over her old, beige sedan which she'd nicknamed The Boat. Leaves were caught beneath the windshield wipers, lodged against plastic and glass.
She reached out, pulling some of the leaves free and tossing them onto the asphalt drive. The scent of lake water mingled with the odor of the forest.
This wasn't home at all, was it?
It was a facsimile of home.
She stood outside her house, staring up at the trees, at the leaves. Each of them threatening to fall, to tumble towards the ground. And then, eventually, a new leaf would form. Again and again the cycle would repeat.
She felt cold all of a sudden, standing outside her home, wishing the taxi from the airport had lingered a while longer. She didn't want to be here.
Such a strange realization...
But she was sick of this place. A handicap, simply mirroring back her own childhood. A similar house, a similar setting, in a similar forest, with a similar lake.
She'd never let go. She knew that. All of this, the lake house, the trees, the memories were holding her back from finally moving on with her life.
Too many parallels between this place and the one in Germany. She closed her eyes for a moment, standing in the driveway, listening to the rustling, the whistling of the breeze.
It was still peaceful, somehow.
Horrible. And peaceful. Quiet. And resounding.
She looked towards the old asphalt road meandering through the trees, her eyes flicking to the leaf-strewn forest floor. Something needed to change.
Even as this thought dawned on her, her phone began to ring.
Ilse frowned, fishing out her device and staring at the small, flickering screen.
Appointment.
“Shit,” she muttered, spinning sharply and hurrying up the steps to the house. A couple of packages, also strewn with leaves huddled beneath her mailbox. No time. She had to keep the appointment, and it was already going to take ages to boot up her old, fossil-aged desktop.
She pushed into her home, confronted by the familiar, clean place. She hastened into the kitchen, moving past the wood-burning stove, the scent of cinnamon lingering on the air. She reached her computer, turning it on and only then collapsing in the wheeling desk-chair, breathing slowly to try and calm her nerves.
She glanced at the clock on the wall.
10:03.
Already late.
She winced... Watching the computer. “Come on...” she murmured. “Come on!”
Once the dinosaur finally managed to wake up, she connected to the online server. Her PC didn't have a webcam, but she adjusted the microphone headset and waited as she connected to the meeting room.
A few moments passed, and then, now ten minutes late, a flickering image appeared.
A woman in her forties, leaning in close, wearing a pink sweater and a neat headband. The woman's nose was bulbous and large as she'd sat too close to her own camera.
“Dr. Beck?” Cindy said, frowning now, her eyebrows scrunching on the screen. “Dr. Beck, can you hear me?”
Ilse swallowed, calming her own breathing for a moment. She watched Cindy, watched as her client leaned back, distancing from the camera. For a moment, Ilse frowned, remembering their last meeting. The way she'd lashed out at Cindy's comments.
Then, unmuting her mic, Ilse said, “Hello, Cindy, I'm here. Sorry for the lack of camera today. Hopefully next week we can return to in-person. My traveling should be over for a bit.”
“Oh—ah, hello, Dr. Beck,” Cindy said, smiling now. Her cheeks dimpled, and her eyes brightened. For a moment, she glanced around as if scanning her own computer screen. And then, her eyebrows shot up. “Oh—oh you said no camera. Okay, then. Should—should I turn mine off?”
“Whatever makes you more comfortable.”
Cindy hesitated. “Well, what do you think?”
Choices. An important part of counseling. The more Ilse made choices for her client, the more dependent they became on her. First starting out, she'd fielded calls daily, if not nightly, from various clients, trying to answer their questions or give guidance in all walks of life.
Now, with a bit more experience, she knew how important it was to equip someone to make their own choices. Her job wasn't to save anyone. It was to help them find their own strength.
“It's up to you,” she said, softly.
“Oh—well, alright then. I—I think I'll leave it on if that's alright with you.”
“More than alright, Cindy,” Ilse said, keeping her voice warm. She paused, and then, quickly interjected, “Actually, Cindy, before we start, I was wondering if I could apologize for something.”
Her client froze, and for a moment, Ilse thought she'd disconnected. Then, Cindy swallowed, and tilted her head. “Apologize?”
The word sounded foreign to her, as if she wasn't sure where it belonged.
“Yes,” Ilse said, nodding slowly. “I—last week I raised my voice. You were talking about the man who took you and your best friend. You were saying he was a nice man. I lashed out, and I'm sorry.”
“Oh. Well, I'm not mad.”
“It's alright to be mad,” Ilse said, quietly. “You'd have every right.”
“No, no it's fine. It's not a problem, Dr. Beck. I barely even thought about it.” Judging by the slow shift in tone, from uncomfortable and awkward to light and carefree, Ilse wasn't sure this was entirely honest.
She hesitated, thinking deeply before choosing her next words. “I lacked empathy,” she said, contemplatively. “Abusers, killers, don't always start out as inexplicable monsters. Sometimes they're also victims who never got the help they needed.”
Ilse trailed off for a moment, thinking of Heidi, of Duncan... Wondering about Duncan's father... About...
She swallowed. Her own father. What was he? Could he have been helped?
She shook her head, wincing, but continued. “Two things can be true,” she said, “at least, I'm starting to believe that. Killers can be in desperate need of help. They can even have redeemable qualities. And they can also damage, abuse, and scar others horribly. Both are true. What was done to you isn't right—there's no excuse...” She paused for a moment, frowning. “But I think it's important that you still saw some type of kindness in him. I don't know how much of that was you or him. But it tells me you have a level of empathy. And I'm sorry for making you feel bad about it...”
“Thank you, Dr. Beck,” said Cindy, breathing shallowly. She hesitated, plucking at her sleeve. “I—I was thinking about what you said, actually. And you're right. He did hurt me. And... And I should be allowed to be angry, right?” She phrased this last part as a question, wincing and tilting her head.
Ilse nodded deeply, but then realized her client couldn't see her. Equally emphatically, she said, “Absolutely. You have a right to be angry. And it isn't your responsibility to help someone who's hurt you. This man—this person who took you and your friend, he might have been kind. You could be right. I don't know what all lurks in a human. We're all a mixture, I suppose. But,” she swallowed, trailing off, thinking of her father, of Heidi, of Duncan again. “But when they start hurting others,” she said, her voice hoarse. “A line has to be drawn somewhere. Kind or not, generous or not, friendly or not, if they're hurting someone else, they have to be stopped. Only after, then perhaps they can receive help.”
And sometimes, she thought to herself, they were so far down a path there was no coming back at all. But maybe that wasn't her call to make. Maybe, trying to reach out to Duncan, she'd offered him the one thing no one had before.
A chance.
It was his choice to ignore it.
***
The meeting ended ten minutes late. It had pained Ilse to go over the scheduled time, but she supposed Cindy had deserved it. Besides, Dr. Mitchell always made time for her. Something about time, the willingness to sacrifice it for others was often worth more than any check or dramatic gesture. Small bits and pieces of time...
Ilse supposed she needed to do better at this. With her clients, with others... Just a bit of time.
She tugged her hair past her maimed ear, moving to the front door and pushing it open again, glancing towards the leaves scattered across the packages she'd spotted earlier. She leaned over, picking up the packages and brushing off the red and yellowed leaves. Instead of heading back into the house, though, she pushed back out onto her small patio, sitting on the top concrete step.
She stared across the dusty driveway, towards the meandering road through the trees.
She liked going for drives at times. It might be nice to just leave this place for a bit, head deeper into the mountains, away from the lake... away from the house.
She smiled at the thought. Perhaps she might even visit Dr. Mitchell.
She glanced down at the packages now. One of them, she'd been expecting. The flat, rectangular shape suggested it was the small granola-cooling tray she'd purchased on the borrowed laptop back in Eugene.
She shivered at the thought of having access, at the tip of her fingers, to so many items for sale. The amount of money she'd waste if ever she allowed access to those things in her own home... She shivered at the mere thought of it.
She placed the flat package aside, though, and frowned, staring at the lumpy, brown parcel wrapped in twine. Something about the packaging looked familiar.
Carefully, she undid the twine, and slipped the brown paper off...
A small item fell into her hand, wrapped in tissue paper.
She removed the tissues and then froze in place, her hand going as stiff as a board.
A small tchotchke stared up at her. A little porcelain girl in a small, frilly yellow dress, feeding a bone to a poorly painted hound.
She stared at the doll, breathing heavily now, unable to move. With trembling fingers, she turned the doll over, staring at the inscription on the bottom. Made in Müllheim.
Another town in Germany. Not far from Freiburg.
She nearly dropped the doll, her fingers numb, but as she shifted, something else fell out of the brown packaging.
A postcard.
The front of the postcard displayed a small forest village in Germany. The name on the front matched the base of the doll. Welcome to Müllheim, it said.
Her mind didn't compute. She glanced from the doll to the postcard and back again, shaking badly now. Her neck was feeling better than before, and the brace was gone, but it felt suddenly stiff again, as if fingers were once more wrapped around her windpipe.
She let out a squeaking little breath and turned the postcard over.
This time, she did drop it. Along with the doll.
The porcelain figure smashed against the stairs, the little girl's head tumbling down the steps into the leaves.
Only two words on the back of the postcard.
Hilda Mueller.
The same sort of note she'd received earlier in the month. She'd thought those postcards had been from Heidi. She'd thought after her sister's death that particular thread had been cut.
But now...
She stared at the postcard resting on the second step, her eyes darting to the smashed remnants of the tchotchke.
Müllheim... her eyes narrowed, and suddenly, memories returned.
She was sitting in the back of an old truck, listening to a voice murmur to her, “Stay low. Don't speak. Don't make a sound. Hear me, Hilda? Don't speak!”
She remembered cowering, trembling in the back, crying as quietly as she could. Remembered the sound of the police officer's voice through the window.
She'd wanted to scream.
She'd wanted to shout for help. But the last time she'd tried, her father had taken it out on the others.
And so, crying and shaking, she'd hidden in the back seat. She'd heard the policeman bid her father farewell, heard the sound of the window closing, and heard the engine of the truck grumble as they pulled past the roadblock, up the street, moving rapidly out of the small forest town.
A town she'd forgotten until now. Müllheim.
She'd visited the town as a child. Her father had fled it, with her in the back. Why? What did it mean?
Her pulse raced, her heart pounding where she sat on the concrete step outside her own lake home.
Not Heidi. Someone else was taunting her.
Someone who knew her past, who knew her memories.
Her father? Perhaps. What about his accomplice? The other person who'd lived upstairs with him.
She wanted to scream at the thought, but her throat felt numb all of a sudden and her arms hung limp at her side. For a moment, all she could remember was fear, trembling in the back of that seat, crying as she did.
Someone from her past was taunting her. Someone was playing games. They'd been doing it for weeks.
Who?
She stared at the postcard. Welcome to Müllheim.
An invitation? Perhaps.
She'd just been to Germany, though. It hadn't turned up much. Did she dare go again?
If she did... she couldn't go just with words. Not this time. Not like she'd done with Duncan. Words were one thing, but the ability to protect herself, protect others...
There was more to all of this, more to dealing with twisted minds than just words.
Her eyes narrowed. One of her fists clenched and she kicked out, scattering the rest of the shattered tchotchke into the leaves. Then, with trembling fingers she pulled out her phone, cycled to Sawyer's number and dialed.
She waited, impatiently tapping her foot on the ceramic-dust covered step.
A few moments passed, and then, a voice, “Doc?”
“Sawyer, is that you?”
“Mhmm. What's up?”
She tilted her head back, breathing a bit easier now. Something about Sawyer's voice just soothed her. Something in the way he'd taken a beating but kept going. Twice she'd seen him pummeled, and both times, again and again, he got back to his feet. He'd saved her life. But more than that, he knew how to take care of himself.
“I—I just...” She frowned, wondering if she ought to hang up. Maybe this was a mistake. Her eyes darted to the postcard once more, lingering. Then, she scowled deeply. “I think you're right,” she said.
“Right about?”
“We did make a good team,” she nodded more emphatically. “Could—you said—well...”
“You all right?”
“Yes, no, I mean, yes I'm fine. Just, Sawyer... I was wondering if you could train me to be an agent. I—I don't know exactly what you meant. But I think I can do it. I think I'm ready.”
A long pause ensued. Sawyer cleared his throat. Carefully, he said, “Doc, I'd mostly meant as a consultant...”
She winced, her heart plummeting.
But then, Sawyer's tone shifted, and he sounded eager all of a sudden. “But shit, agent? That's way better! I gotta make a call or two. But... Yeah, shit, sure. When do you want to start?”
A small smile played across Ilse's lips. She refused to look at the postcard. Refused to look at the smashed doll.
This time, no matter what, when she returned, she'd be ready.