Lydia kept her voice and pose neutral. “Make a choice, Savannah. Trust me or leave.”
Savannah glanced toward the door. She walked to the window, placed her hands on the wooden cross sash and pressed her forehead to the pane. Lydia could almost hear the debate raging in her frightened patient’s mind. Minutes passed before she spoke.
“My name’s not really Savannah,” she whispered.
Lydia offered a gentle smile of encouragement. “Well, if you wanted to make up a name to hide behind, Savannah’s a pretty one.”
Savannah turned around and leaned against the window. “I guess that was what I was hoping for. Something pretty.” She risked a hesitant glance toward Lydia. “More than anyone, you should know there wasn’t much pretty in my life before I became Savannah.”
Lydia tilted her head and again felt the nagging pull she was missing something. “You’ve shared some of your foster history with me. I’d like to hear more.”
Savannah pulled herself from the window and shuffled back to her spot on the sofa. “Have I changed that much? Do you not remember me at all?”
Lydia’s throat tightened. She was certain Savannah had never been a patient of hers. Not in Olympia, not back in graduate school. She would have remembered someone as lovely and as troubled as the woman seated across from her now.
Did she know her from before? Was that the missing piece? She crossed one knee over the other and interlaced her fingers to steady her hands.
“What do you mean, Savannah? How should I remember you?”
Savannah held her gaze. Lush lashes blinked over ice-blue eyes. She inhaled long and deep before blowing out a slow breath. “I was named Greta when I was born.”
Lydia felt the air rush out of the room. The walls around her pulsed in synchrony with her pounding heart. Her ears throbbed with the freight-train roar of memory. She blinked twice and coughed her throat clear.
“Greta Ryder?”
Savannah nodded her head. A weary smile emerged behind her tears. “You remember. I can’t tell you how much that means to me.”
“My God.” Lydia willed her breathing to normalize. “You were six years old. You’d just arrived.”
Savannah wiped her hand across her cheek. “That’s right. You gave me a plastic bag filled with broken crayons and a torn coloring book my first day there. I thought it was so great that a real teenager would play with me.”
Lydia shook her head. “I was thirteen. You were hungry, I remember. Wouldn’t eat with the other kids.”
“You brought me food. A tuna sandwich and three Oreo cookies. Wrapped in a paper towel with little yellow flowers on the edges. Smuggled them into our room before lights out.”
“You were scared then, too.” Lydia allowed herself a brief smile. “I’m detecting a pattern.”
“I wasn’t scared when you were around.” Savannah’s gaze dropped to her lap.
Ethical quandaries marched through Lydia’s mind. Still, she wanted to know more about what had happened to the little girl she said goodbye to twenty-three years ago.“You stayed in the foster system til you aged out?”
Savannah nodded. “You did too. Too bad, huh? Some family lost a hell of a chance to have a daughter like you.”
Lydia cleared her throat and settled back into her chair. Savannah was no longer the vulnerable child she had tried to save. She was her patient. “How did you find me?”
“I went looking for you after I left the system. A social worker told me what happened after… after that night.”
“She shouldn’t have.” Lydia felt a mixture of anger and shame. “At least we were both out of that house. You had a rough road.”
Savannah gave a short, tight nod. “I still manage to screw things up.”
Lydia wrapped her arms around herself. “Tell me how you found me.”
Savannah reached for a tissue. “Do you believe in God, Dr. Corriger?”
“Are you telling me God lent you a GPS to my door?”
“Maybe.” Savannah slipped back into her sadness and stared at the floor. “It was eight years ago. My first assignment. The very first time I ruined someone’s life for money.”
Lydia needed to keep her focused on the question; out of the quicksand of her misery. “How did you find me, Savannah?”
“My clients needed me in Philadelphia. A family was squabbling over an Old Line inheritance. Two guys wanted their half-brother cut out from their father’s estate. Lucky for them there was a morals clause in Daddy’s will.” Savannah raised an eyebrow and smirked. “They hired me to make sure the unlucky brother was caught in a most compromising situation. When I was done he had a choice. He could relinquish his claim or the state’s three largest newspapers would receive photographs of him in bed with me and a particularly cute sailor-boy home on leave.” Savannah leveled a look at Lydia. “Did I mention Brother Unlucky was a prominent prosecuting attorney with a wife, two children, and gubernatorial aspirations?”
“I’m still not hearing how you found me.” Lydia had no immediate interest in the details of Savannah’s job.
Savannah rubbed the back of her neck. “The day I was leaving Philadelphia I treated myself to a pedicure in the hotel spa. I took along a cup of tea and the local paper. There was an article on University of Pennsylvania’s latest graduates with a photograph of you accepting some big award. A brand-spanking new clinical psychologist.” She wiped away another tear. “Your name was different, but I knew it was you. I still have that article.”
Lydia silently scolded herself. A simple photograph allowed her past to find her.
“I’ve wanted to contact you for so long. To thank you for what you did for me,” Savannah said. “But I wasn’t proud of who I’d become. And you’re such a success.”
Lydia wondered what else Savannah knew. “Then why now? By the way, would you prefer I call you Savannah or Greta?”
“I’m Savannah, Dr. Corriger. Greta’s long gone.” The steely cold of Savannah’s defenses had returned. “And I’m here now because I want this all to stop. I want you to save me one more time.”
“Save you from what? No more games, okay?” Lydia waited several long minutes in silence as Savannah got up, crossed back to the window, and considered her next move.
“Did you read about that murder, Dr. Corriger?” Savannah stared into the gloom of the damp afternoon. “That guy from the university?”
“Are you talking about that Bastian fellow again?” She chose her words carefully. “We discussed this, remember? The papers said he died of a heart attack.”
Savannah turned her back to the window and leaned her hips against the wide sill. “Not Bastian.” She shrugged her shoulders. “I’m talking about the other one. The guy who was shot.”
Lydia’s exhaustion disappeared. Her brain snapped to full attention as she swiveled her chair to face Savannah. The murder of Walter Buchner was the lead story on every local news outlet. He was a research assistant at the university. The reporters titillated their audience with descriptions of a gunshot wound to his face.
“I know about it, yes.” Lydia could hear her blood pulsing in her ears. “Why does this death interest you, Savannah?” Lydia’s clinical training taught her that reality wasn’t as important as the patient’s interpretation of it. But Savannah was now more than merely a patient and Lydia needed the truth.
Savannah opened her mouth, but no words came.
“What do you want to say to me, Savannah?” Lydia’s breath accelerated as a rapid replay of her past sessions with the enigmatic beauty flashed through her mind, juxtaposed next to the memory of a small child crying out for help more than two decades earlier. She struggled against the question that screamed in her brain. Every cell in her being wanted to ask if she killed Walter Buchner.
Savannah drew in a loud gasp of air. A sob broke from her throat. She swiped tears away with shaking hands. “You can’t help me, can you?
Nobody can save me this time.” She reached for her coat.
Lydia stood and stepped toward her. “No, Savannah. Please stay.”
