Is she being truthful with me, though? she thought. Can I really say whatever I feel and still be safe? How can that be true? Here in my darkest heart, there are things I won’t even tell myself.

“It’s all my fault.”

“Do you think you’re to blame?”

“Yes. If I hadn’t left them, fallen asleep, she wouldn’t have taken them in the first place, would she?”

“Did you see the person who took them?”

“No. But I thought they said they’d caught her.” Did they say that? She was suddenly unsure. If they caught her, did she have the basket with the other babies with her? The memory was slipping away; she grasped at it. There they were by the river, and the stroller was there, returned like a miracle and she felt such joy in that moment before she looked into their eyes and knew the truth of it. There on the bridge, in the rain, it was Jo Harper, she said, we got her. And for a blissful second, she thought she was whole again. But it was already too late, the boys had already been changed.

The doctor made several long notes on her piece of paper. What is it, she thought, what did I say wrong? Lauren leaned forward to see what she was writing but the doctor tipped the clipboard so she couldn’t.

“What did you see when you looked at Morgan and Riley after they were found?”

Lauren shuddered at the memory. She’d looked into the stroller. What did she see?

“I saw the babies. Morgan and Riley.” It wasn’t them.

“Was there anything different about them, that made you think they weren’t your babies?”

Yes, she thought.

“No,” she said. “They looked the same; it was just that first second. I was wrong. I was mistaken.” Whatever’s inside them now, she thought, it’s not Morgan and Riley.

The doctor was writing, writing. What was she writing? Was Lauren saying the wrong thing?

“After what happened to you, and how it affected you, the police decided to refer you to us. Do you know why they would do that?”

Ah, she thought, now this is because I tried to push them into the river. They could have put me in prison for that, but they didn’t, because they think I’m mad. Instead, they’ve sent me here. So perhaps I still have a chance.

“I didn’t want to harm them. I know it was wrong to try to put them back in the water.”

“I hear that you didn’t want to harm them.”

“They’re still somebody’s babies. I shouldn’t have done that.”

“Somebody’s babies?”

Shit

“My babies. I meant, they’re my babies. I thought they were the wrong ones for a minute, so I suppose I just … I don’t know. But I do know it was wrong to do that.”