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Back Reverie
Chapters (53)
  1. Front Cover
  2. Letter from the Author
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright
  5. Contents
  6. • One •
  7. • Two •
  8. • Three •
  9. • Four •
  10. • Five •
  11. • Six •
  12. • Seven •
  13. • Eight •
  14. • Nine •
  15. • Ten •
  16. • Eleven •
  17. • Twelve •
  18. • Thirteen •
  19. • Fourteen •
  20. • Fifteen •
  21. • Sixteen •
  22. • Seventeen •
  23. • Eighteen •
  24. • Nineteen •
  25. • Twenty •
  26. • Twenty-One •
  27. • Twenty-Two •
  28. • Twenty-Three •
  29. • Twenty-Four •
  30. • Twenty-Five •
  31. • Twenty-Six •
  32. • Twenty-Seven •
  33. • Twenty-Eight •
  34. • Twenty-Nine •
  35. • Thirty •
  36. • Thirty-One •
  37. • Thirty-Two •
  38. • Thirty-Three •
  39. • Thirty-Four •
  40. • Thirty-Five •
  41. • Thirty-Six •
  42. • Thirty-Seven •
  43. • Thirty-Eight •
  44. • ∞ •
  45. • Thirty-Nine •
  46. • Forty •
  47. Epilogue
  48. Acknowledgments
  49. Excerpt from Be Dazzled
  50. One
  51. Two
  52. About the Author
  53. Back Cover

Dr. Poesy held up a quieting hand once again. “I’m going to be honest with you, Mr. Montgomery, in a way that no one else will be honest with you, because I understand you, and I understand your misfortune. Know that I want what’s best for you, and so even if my honesty is harsh, it is not cruel.” He waited for Kane to give a consenting nod before continuing. “First, your story of your misadventure is clearly false. None of it quite works, does it? You attempted to vanish, but very poorly. You destroyed your cell phone, yet what little you posted online you didn’t bother to delete. You stole a car from your own family, but not cash or credit cards. You drove this car, miraculously, through several security perimeters in a very direct route to the river, before swerving at the last minute into a building. A crash of this sort would kill a person, normally, but the EMTs found you conscious and mostly unharmed, sitting in the river several yards away, so you couldn’t have been in the car upon impact. Do you know how they described you in the police report? ‘Polite and detached.’ Those are the exact words. The report says they found you sitting in the shallows, humming to yourself and picking apart flowers. And, only after you were safe, did you suddenly lapse into a coma. That’s odd, too, I think.”

Kane could feel the deep frown on his face, and he forced it away. It was too hard to look at the doctor, so he focused on his clenched fists instead.

“None of it works, does it?”

Kane shrugged. It was all he had.

Dr. Poesy sat back. “And here is where I will tell you the actual truth, Mr. Montgomery. My colleagues disagree with my decision to do so, but I feel it is important you understand the reality of the situation in which you find yourself. Or, at least, the reality so far.”

The lighthearted act was gone, replaced by an inscrutable, clinical stare. When Dr. Poesy smiled, it was like he had just learned how; all in the mouth, nothing in the eyes.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that your story takes place within a much larger story, an ongoing case bigger than the scope of your small town’s police department. You’ve managed to attract the attention of some very powerful, very bad people, Mr. Montgomery, who will go to extraordinary lengths to keep you silent about what you witnessed. As fortune would have it, I reached you first. I can protect you.”

Kane squirmed. “Am I in danger?”

Dr. Poesy dipped a manicured hand into his bag and placed a small square of paper on the table between them. Absurdly, it was one of the postcards Kane had been thinking of before. The ones that showed the mill painted in wistful watercolor.