All My Darkest Impulses (House of Crows), Lisa Unger [top 10 novels .txt] 📗

blank, with sunlight glowing at the edges of the mask. For a few brief moments, she was just Claire, ready to start another day.

Then the pain.

Her broken jaw, now tentatively healed, was always aching. Her arm, elbow pinned back together, tingling, still weak. Better not to think about her face. She avoided the mirror, though the swelling from surgery had gone down. The person she saw in the mirror was not familiar.

Her phone pinged. Voice mail. Dr. Bold.

Claire made no move to call back. Her phone was filled with unanswered messages, words of support and concern, calls from lawyers—hers and Billy’s. His hearing was coming up, and she would need to testify. She should answer, but it was as if she were moving through air that had substance and weight—it muffled sound, impeded movement. Her thinking was slowed. Just like in the painting.

She shifted out of bed and walked down the long hallway to the kitchen to brew some coffee. That was what she needed, caffeine and food; then she’d start returning calls. There was a slight burst of energy. But when she sat down at the table with her coffee and her scrambled eggs, she didn’t touch either. And when she was aware of herself again, it was two o’clock.

Now the doorbell. Then loud knocking.

“Claire,” came the muffled voice from outside. Her ex, Will. “I know you’re in there. Please, Claire.”

He’d been there. The first face she’d seen when she regained consciousness, through every surgery, spending the first few nights on her couch, Claire’s mother in the guest room. The two of them had been like angels, handling every facet of her recovery, getting her to doctors, cooking for her, cleaning, helping her in and out of the shower. Will talking to her late into the night.

He still loves you, her mother had said just before leaving. He’s a good man.

I know, she hadn’t said. It’s just that I don’t love him. Not like that. He deserves better.

“I’m going to use my key,” he said through the door.

She didn’t move to stop him. She listened as the lock engaged and he moved around the house, looking for her. When he walked into the kitchen, she was still sitting there in front of her cold breakfast. His body practically sagged with relief to see her.

“Claire,” he said gently. “Didn’t you hear me?”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m just so tired.”

His brow was wrinkled with concern as he sat across from her. “You’ve got to get ready.”

“For what?”

“Billy’s hearing is today.”

“Today? No—it’s the twentieth.” It was weeks away. She had time to get herself together, try to reconcile what she thought happened with what she had been told happened. The two things were going to coalesce when she was stronger, more able to process the attack; she believed that. Had to.

“Today is the twentieth, Claire.”

Time was a fun house, everything pulled and warped since her attack.

“I can’t,” she said. “I don’t know what happened.”

She’d almost said that she wasn’t there. That she was in the painting with Archie. But she’d stopped saying that because the look on Will’s face frightened her, a mirror of her own confusion and worry. “I don’t remember.”

Everyone could accept that she didn’t remember.

Winston Grann’s attack had been swift and brutal. He’d picked the lock on his restraints with a sliver of metal he’d been holding in his mouth, and when Claire had inexplicably stood to walk over to the painting, he’d leaped on her, first breaking her arm, then her jaw, then biting her mercilessly on the face. All this before Billy had even made it the few feet that separated them. Before Billy could subdue the patient, Grann had beaten Claire viciously, had his teeth on her throat. When Billy had been unable to pull Winston away, Billy had delivered a blow to Winston’s head that proved fatal. She had no memory of the event, which in extreme trauma was not unusual.

“I think you just have to be there, Claire,” said Will now. “No one expects you to remember.”

Will helped her get into the shower, pick out her outfit; he made her a smoothie, which she gratefully drank. By the time they were heading out, she felt better. She always told her patients to get up in the morning, get dressed, be sure to eat well. Just these simple things can reconnect you to the world, create a momentum toward wellness and normalcy.

The day was bright, leaves on the trees an aggressive green, sky a crystalline blue. The colors seemed to pulsate and swirl, mesmerizing Claire.

Will was talking as he drove. Unfortunately, Archie was talking, too, so she couldn’t hear Will. This was another thing she’d stopped telling people, that she could still hear Archie’s voice.

“Okay?” said Will as they pulled into the office complex and found a spot.

“Okay,” she said, even though she had no idea what Will had said.

It wasn’t a court hearing, just a conference room with a long oak table. Billy would defend his actions to the supervisory board to determine if he’d acted appropriately. No criminal charges were being brought.

Will waited outside and Claire entered alone. The room was bright, and Billy looked stuffed into his blue suit, stiff with nerves. But he smiled when he saw Claire, rose to greet her.

“Dr. Allen,” he said. “Thank you for coming.”

He took her into a gentle embrace. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for saving my life.”

“I’m sorry this happened to you,” he said. “I’m sorry I didn’t move faster.”

“You did everything you could.”

Billy took his seat next to his lawyer, a small, elegantly featured woman with dark skin and a flowing wave of black hair. Claire’s own lawyer, Martin Gonzalez, was there, as well—hair graying, suit impeccable, a bold red tie. She sat in the chair he pulled out beside him.

A slim young man who identified himself as Dr. Bruce Shaw, the head of the review board for the hospital, began the questioning. Claire struggled to maintain her focus as the hearing