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“When are you going to trust me?” There was impatience, for the first time in Eve’s memory, in the careful voice “Is it so impossible for you to believe that I care about you? Yes, I care,” Mira said when Eve blinked in surprise “And I understand you better than you wish to admit”

“I don’t need for you to understand me” But there were nerves in Eve’s voice now She heard the or here for a therapy session”

“There are no recorders on here” Mira set her tea doith a snap that had Eve ja her hands in her pockets “Do you think you’re the only child who lived with horror and abuse? The only woled to overcome it?”

“I don’t have to overco I don’t remember—”

“My stepfather raped me repeatedly from the time I elve until I was fifteen,” Mira said calmly, and stopped Eve’s protest cold “For those three years I lived never knohen it would happen, only that it would And no one would listen to me”

Shaken, sick, Eve wrapped her arms around her body “I don’t want to know this Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I look in your eyes and see myself But you have someone who’ll listen to you, Eve”

Eve stood where she was, moistened her dry lips “Why did it stop?”

“Because I finally found the courage to go to an abuse center, tell the counselor everything, to submit to the examinations, both physical and psychiatric The terror of that, the hue as the alternative”

“Why should I have to remember it?” Eve demanded “It’s over”

“Why aren’t you sleeping?”

“The investigation—”

“Eve”

The gentle tone had Eve closing her eyes It was so hard, so trying, to fight that quiet co herself for the weakness “Nightmares”

“Of before you were found in Texas?”