From the acclaimed author of The Evening Spider and The Broken Teaglass comes this psychological thriller about the murder of a psychologist in a quiet New England town and his former patient whose unreliable thread will keep readers guessing until the shocking end.
I hear myself whispering. Not again. Not again.
Why did I ever come back here? Surely because of you. Because I thought of something Iâd always meant to tell you. Because you were the only one I ever really wanted to tell it toâŚ
Therapist Dr. Mark Fabian is deadâbludgeoned in his office.
But that doesnât stop former patient Nadine Raines from talking to himâin her head. Why did she come back to her hometown after so many years away? Everyone here thinks sheâs crazy. And she has to admitâthey might have good reason to think so. She committed a shockingly violent act when she was sixteen, and has never really been able to explain that dark impulseâeven to Fabian. Now that Fabianâs dead, why is she still trying?
Meanwhile, as Detective Henry Peacher investigates Fabianâs death, he discovers that shortly before he died, Fabian pulled the files of two former patients. One was of Nadine Raines, one of Henryâs former high school classmates. Henry still remembers the disturbing attack on a teacher that marked Nadine as a deeply troubled teen.
More shockingly, the other file was of Johnny Streeter, who is now serving a life sentence for a mass shooting five years ago. The shooting devastated the town and everyoneâincluding Henry, who is uncomfortable with the âheroâ status the tragedy afforded himâis ready to move on. But the appearance of his file brings up new questions. Maybe there is a decades-old connection between Nadine and Streeter. And maybe that somehow explains what Nadine is doing in Fabianâs office nearly twenty years after being his patient. Or how Fabian ended up dead two days after her return. Or why Nadine has fled town once again.
But as Nadine and Henry head toward a confrontation, both will discover that the secrets of peopleâs hearts are rarely simple, andâeven in the hidden depths of a psychologistâs filesârarely as they appear.