I know that I won’t be able to rest until I know what she meant. The strange thing I was left with in the years after my own traumatic experience was a heightened sense of danger. It’s easy enough to explain in medical terms – my body and brain remained on high alert, resulting in PTSD and anxiety issues which I have been able to resolve. And yet I have been left with an ability to sense danger, and I sense it now, that Leah’s words aren’t just the ramblings of someone in a compromised state of mind, but rather, something potentially dangerous. To herself, but also to me. What did she intend with Supernova? You have told me exactly nothing about yourself, and yet I know – dare I say – everything, she wrote.

No one knows everything about me, not even myself. Not even now, after all the work I have done. All the years in therapy. So straight off, her statement is categorically untrue. She doesn’t know anything about me, let alone everything, and I’m starting to feel I didn’t know anything about her either.

I have to keep reading. I glance around, and the cabin is entirely silent, like a cocoon. I open Leah’s Mac again.

32

Supernova

I’m hoping we can agree that it started pretty innocently, that day you happened to walk into Kaffebrenneriet to order a tall white Americano and I trailed you up Bogstadveien. It was a spur-of-the-moment kind of thing. It was such a rush to watch you when you didn’t know that you were being watched. Back then, at that stage of therapy when it had become a focal point in my life, you were constantly on my mind. An hour on Friday just wasn’t quite enough. Our sessions churned in my mind all week and I was always trying to conjure you up in my mind – your calm, encouraging way of being when I faltered, your gentle and unwavering support. I’d started to feel that you were like an invisible best friend I could carry around inside me, someone who’d always have my back even if you weren’t physically there in that moment.

I’m not making excuses for my behavior; I don’t feel like I’ve done anything wrong. I’ve come to understand what my role is in your life – it’s not the poor, downtrodden client; it’s being your helper, your closest ally. Your savior, even. Of all the things you taught me, the most important thing was the realization that you can’t ever outrun the past. You have to process it, to use your own jargon. Integrate it into the narrative of your life. And I’m going to help you.