My stomach tightened, like a snake coiling defensively.

Wait. Wait.

“You were telling me about your mom’s kitchen knife. That she had it with her.”

No. Can’t be.

The snake in my bowels coiled tighter.

Was that—

“Heather,” he said. “I need you to pay attention.” The girl, me, ignored him. She stacked one block on top of the next. She was on block five now. Any second, it would tip.

His fingers moved in front of the camera lens and he snapped them at her.

She—I—looked up.

“Heather, do you like smelly stickers?”

Little Heather nodded.

“Let’s see what I have here,” he said. “Oh, there’s popcorn! Let’s see if it really smells like popcorn.” The sound of his nail scratching paper. “Oh, yes! It does. How about that.”

My six-year-old self looked at him, straightened my back, full attention.

“I’ll give it to you if you can tell me what your mom did with that knife, OK?”

The snake in my stomach, coiled tight, reared its head, ready to strike. Don’t you do it, you little bitch. As if it wasn’t already done. As if I could intervene.

I nodded, my words following. “Mm-hmm.”

“Now, you said there was someone lying on the ground. Was it a woman?”

“No.”

“Was it a man?”

“No.”

“Well, come on now. It had to be one or the other, didn’t it? I thought you were a smart little girl and I thought you wanted a sticker. It was a woman, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

Dumb little bitch.

“Here you go,” he said. His hand moved in front of the camera, handing my younger self a sticker. I took it with both hands and pressed it against my nose, my eyelids closing like it was ecstasy. “Good girl,” he said.

I wanted to whack my little kid self across the face. What a sucker.

“Oh, now, here, I have another one. Pizza. Do you want to be the first one to scratch it?”

“Yes.” I smiled.

“Perfect. Good girl. First tell me what your mom did with that long knife.”

Energized now, my mind on the prize, I rose on my knees and slashed at the air with my make-believe knife. “She slashed at the belly.”

On Claire’s couch, I cringed, my shoulders shrinking. I wanted to become as small as possible. I wanted to disappear. My embarrassment so burdensome, it flattened me.

“Then what?” he said, still off-camera.

“The belly opened up and all these tubes came out. They were kind of white. They slipped out. There were a lot of tubes.”

Déjà vu came on strong. Slashed belly. White tubes pouring out. The image was just out of reach, but it’s close.

On Claire’s couch, the cat rubbed its head against my leg. I patted it stiffly, my palm wet with sweat.

“And what was that like?” he said.