“Why not?”

“Because I can’t,” I snapped. “I don’t want to read about how I failed him and broke his heart.”

It felt okay to say. The problems I had two years ago with Nick felt welcome compared to what was lurking in the shallow tide pools of my memory.

“He mailed me a copy. It’s been sitting on my nightstand for two years.”

I glanced at the clock … hoping. And, yes! Our time was up. I jumped up and grabbed my purse.

“I hate this,” I said. “But my stupid surgeon won’t operate unless I talk to you.”

She nodded. “I’ll see you Thursday.”

I was shrugging my coat on and opening the door when she called after me.

“Senna.”

I paused, one arm not all the way in my sleeve.

“Read the book,” she said.

I left without saying goodbye. Dr. Elgin was humming softly as the door quietly shut behind me.


It was the first time I’d driven myself anywhere. I brought Isaac’s CD, and I played Landscape all the way home. It calmed me. Why? I’d love to know. Maybe Saphira could eventually tell me. It was the only song I owned that actually had words attached to it, and the beat wasn’t particularly soothing. Quite the opposite.

When I got home, I carried the CD inside. I set it on the kitchen counter and climbed the stairs. I had no intention of listening to anything Saphira Elgin said, but when I saw the cover of Nick’s novel lying next to my bed, I picked it up. It was a reflex—we’d been talking about the book, and now I was having a look. There was a fine layer of dust over the top. I wiped it off with my sleeve and studied the jacket for clues. The cover was not his style, but authors had little say over what cover went on their book. There is a team that does that at the publishing company. They brainstorm with cheap Flavia coffee, in a windowless conference room-that’s what my agent told me at least. If I was looking for Nick in the cover, I would not find him. The cover looked like a close-up of bird feathers: greys and whites and blacks. The title is angled in chunky white letters: Knotted.

I opened it to the dedication page. That was as far as I’d gotten in the past before slamming it shut.


For MV


I breathed through my mouth, flexing my fingers across the open page like I was preparing to do something physical. My mind caressed the dedication again.


For MV


I turned the page.


Chapter One


She bought me with words; beautiful, promising and intricately carved words…

My doorbell rang. I closed the book, set it on my nightstand, and went downstairs. There was no way in hell I was reading that.


“We should just make you a key,” I said to Isaac. He was standing on my doorstep, arms loaded with paper grocery bags. I stepped aside to let him in. It was a snarky comment, but I’d said it with familiarity.

“I can’t stay,” he said, setting the bags down on the kitchen counter. There was a brief sting, like a bee had wandered into my chest cavity. I wanted to ask him why, but of course I didn’t. It wasn’t my business where he went or who he went there with.

“You don’t have to do this anymore,” I said. “I saw Dr. Elgin today. Drove there myself. I—I’m better.”

He was wearing a brown leather jacket and his face was scruffy. It didn’t look like he came from the hospital. And on days he did there was always the faint smell of antiseptic around him. Today there was only aftershave. He rubbed his fingers across the hair on his face. “I scheduled your surgery for two weeks from Monday. That way you’ll have a few more sessions with Dr. Elgin.”

My first instinct was to reach a hand up to feel my breasts. I’d never been one of those women who prided themselves on their bra size. I had breasts. For the most part I ignored them. But, now that they were going to be taken, I felt protective.

I nodded.

“I’d like you to keep seeing her … after…” His voice dropped off, and I looked away.

“All right.” But I didn’t mean it.

He tapped the granite with his fingertip. “All right,” he repeated. “I’ll see you later, Senna.”


I started unpacking the groceries. At first I felt nothing. Just boxes of pasta and bags of fruit being shelved … put away. Then I felt something. An itch. It nagged at me, tugging and pulling until I was so frustrated I threw a box of soup crackers across the room. They hit the wall and I stared at the spot where they’d landed, trying to find the sound of my emotion. Sound. I ran to the living room and hit play on Florence Welch. She’d been singing this song to me nonstop for days. Her real voice would be tired by now, but her recorded voice called out to me, unfailing. Strong.

How had he known this song, these words, this tormented voice would speak to me?


I hated him.


I hated him.


I hated him.

Chapter Eighteen

I didn’t see Isaac until a few days before the surgery. I saw plenty of Dr. Elgin. I saw her three times a week upon my surgeon’s demand. It was like trying to fit a lifetime’s worth of therapy into six sessions. She commanded me to speak with her eyes and her tinkling bracelets: tell me more, tell me more. Each time I sank into her couch, I sank a little lower in esteem. This was not me. I was spilling my guts, as some people called it; divulging. It was word vomit and Saphira Elgin had her fingers down my throat. I discovered that private things were mostly sour. They sat spoiling in the corners of your heart for so long that by the time you acknowledged them you were dealing with something rancid. And that’s what I did; I threw every rotting thing at her, and she absorbed each one. It seemed that the more Saphira Elgin absorbed of me, the less of me there was. Sometimes I tried to be funny, just so I could hear the dusty way she laughed. She laughed at the inappropriate, sometimes the crass. I liked her so much on some days, and on others I hated her.

At the end of every session the dragon would purr the same thing: “Read Nick’s book. It will give you purrrrspective. Closurrrrre.” I would drive home determined, but then I would get to the title page and see For MV, and quickly close the cover.

The dedication page was beginning to look worn and touched, rivets of fingerprints on the page.

I waited until our last session to tell her about the rape. I didn’t know why except that other than the cancer, the rape was the last thing that happened to me. Maybe I had a chronological way of dealing with things; a writer’s route to solving problems. Her insouciance over the matter was what finally won me over. It was as if the entire time I saw her I was counting down the days until I would have to tell her about the rape, dreading the pity I’d see appear her eyes. But there was none. “Life happens,” she said. “Bad things happen because we live in a world with evil.” And then she’d asked me the strangest thing. “Do you blame God?” It had never occurred to me to blame God since I didn’t believe in him.

“If I believed in God, I would blame him. I suppose it’s easier not to believe, then I have nothing to be angry at.”

She smiled. A cat’s curl smile. And then it was over, and I’d left a free woman, my purgatory served. Isaac would operate on me now. I would be free of cancer, free to move forward without fear. Without some of the fear.

That night I started having the dreams again, hands pushing and pulling at me. Sharp pain and humiliation. The feeling of helplessness and panic. I woke up screaming, but there was no Isaac. I got in the shower to wash away the dream, shivering under the scalding water. I couldn’t fall back to sleep with those images so fresh in my mind, so I sat in my office and pretended to write the book my agent was waiting for. The book I had no words for.

At noon, five days before my surgery, I dressed to go to the hospital for my pre-op appointment. It was March and the sun had been fighting the clouds for a week. Today the sky was uninterrupted blue. I felt resentful of the sun. That thought made me think of the things Nick used to say about me. You’re all grey. Everything you love, the way you see the world. I walked out to my car, stepping around puddles of rainwater from the day before. They were colored like an oyster shell, iridescent from the oil collected from my car or Isaac’s. When I got to the driver’s side door, I saw a cardboard square underneath my wiper blade. I darted a look over my shoulder before plucking it out. He had been here. Last night? This morning? Why hadn’t he rung the bell?

I climbed into the car a little bit excited and slipped the CD from the sleeve. This time he’d written the name of the song on the disk in red permanent marker. Kill Your Heroes, Awolnation. My hands were shaking as I hit play.

I listened with my eyes closed, wondering if all people listened to music with words this way. When the last note played, I started my car and drove to the hospital fighting a smile. I’d expected something to strip me naked like the Florence Welch song had. The title and its tie to the great Oscar Wilde had been enough to make me smirk, but the words, which to anyone else fighting cancer would have felt insensitive, uplifted me. So gloriously morbid.

I hit play and listened one more time, drumming my fingers on the steering wheel as I drove.


I was sitting in the exam room in a hospital gown when Isaac walked in, followed by a nurse, Dr. Akela and the plastic surgeon I saw a few weeks earlier—I think his name was Dr. Monroe, or maybe it was Dr. Morton. Isaac was wearing black scrubs underneath his white lab coat. I had a moment to study him as he looked over my chart. Dr. Akela was smiling at me, standing almost too close to Isaac. Was that possession? Dr. Monroe/Morton looked bored. On television they called his kind Plastics.

Finally, Isaac looked up.

“Senna,” he said. Dr. Akela glanced up at him when he used my first name. I wondered if she was where he went missing to when he wasn’t with me. If I were a man, I’d go missing to Dr. Akela, too. She’d make a beautiful hiding place. Her sense was sight, I decided. Everything about her called loudly to the eyes: the way she moved, the way she looked, the way she spoke sentences with only her body.

Isaac asked me to sit up. “We’re going to take a look.” He gently untied the back of my hospital gown and stepped away so I could lower it myself. I made myself feel nothing, staring straight ahead as the cold air touched my skin.

“Lie back, Senna,” he said softly. I did. I focused on the ceiling as I felt his hands on me. He examined each breast, his fingers lingering around the lump on the right side. His touch was gentle, but professional. If anyone else had been touching me, I would have bolted upright and run straight out of the room. When he was done, he helped me sit up and retied my gown. I saw Dr. Akela watching him again.

“Your labs look good,” he said. “Everything is set for the surgery next week. Dr. Montoll is here to talk to you about reconstruction.” Montoll! “And Dr. Akela would like to go over the radiation treatments with you.”

“I won’t be needing to speak with Dr. Montoll,” I said.

Isaac’s face jerked up from my chart. “You’ll want to discuss reconstruction of—”

“No,” I said. “I don’t.”

Dr. Montoll the Plastic stepped in, suddenly not looking quite as bored. “Ms. Richards, if we get the expanders in now, your reconstruction—”

“I’m not interested in reconstruction,” I said, dismissively. “I’ll have the mastectomy and then I’ll go home without expanders. That’s my decision.”

Dr. Montoll opened his mouth to speak, but Isaac cut him off.

“The patient has made her decision, doctor.” He was staring straight at me when he said it. I pulled my lips tight, in thanks.

“If my services aren’t needed, you’ll excuse me,” Dr. Montoll said, before making his exit. I looked at my hands. Dr. Akela sat on the edge of my bed. We spoke for a few minutes about the radiation I’d have to go through after my surgery. Six weeks. I had to admire her bedside manner; she was warm and personal. On her way out she touched Isaac lightly on the back of his arm. Mine.

Isaac waited until the door clicked shut before he took a step forward. I braced myself for an influx of questions, but instead he said, “You can get dressed now. Are you free for lunch?”