I pick a random book off a heavily laden shelf – Dostoyevsky – and run my finger lightly across the cover. I pick up another, Arundhati Roy’s first, one of my own favorites, and feel pleased to see that it is well-thumbed and dog-eared. I let my eyes roam and everywhere they go, they find something beautiful and comforting. Books. Small, carefully curated paintings in the same warm hues as the timber walls themselves. A little black Chinese antique lacquered cupboard with fine crystal glasses lined up on its shelves. I lift one and hold it up to the weak light from the oil lamp I’ve lit, its intricate carvings glinting in rainbows. Leah clearly loves beautiful things.

And then it’s like something in the air shifts, like she’s here with me, having sidled up beside me, becoming clearer and clearer as I begin to sense her and now I can practically see her. She’s sitting on the stone ledge next to the hearth, feet drawn up, beneath a collection of ancient copper pots and pans strung from a metal railing.

She’s singing out loud, softly, rubbing her arms trying to get more warmth into her body. She’s almost childlike in the way she’s sitting, hugging herself, staring into the leaping flames, willing their heat to spread faster around the little room. Her beautiful face is red and glowing, like she’s run here through heavy snow.

Sometimes in our sessions, she came across as almost childlike, too, displaying unusual mannerisms for an adult: picking at her jacket sleeve until it frayed, a constantly jerking foot, or an unusual choice of words. She dressed young, too, especially at the beginning, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if she still wears items from her mid-teens, though she’s over thirty. This is something I see quite often, and can be seen as a desire to hold onto youth and freedom, a subtle rejection of the demands of adult life. I see it particularly often in the very wounded, those clients who come to therapy with life-altering trauma. It’s natural to seek out those feelings of security and protection we felt in childhood when we have had the experience of living entirely unprotected in the world and suffering deep wounds as a result.

A strange sound snaps me out of my reverie, and I hold myself entirely still, suddenly irrationally fearful. I hear it again, a long and exaggerated murmur, like an old animal exhaling slowly, sending air through obstructed passages. There is a series of splutters, like a throaty cough, then silence. Could an injured animal have gotten into the cabin, now dying in a dark corner? I feel the hair on my arms stand up and begin to shiver. I move slowly toward the kitchen nook, peering into corners, but see nothing unusual. I light another oil lamp and turn the torch back on to boost the light.