Jillian leaned across the desk and took Frankie’s hand. Her young eyes had pleaded with her. “I read an article that called you the master of memory. You help people forget bad things, right? Please, can you help me forget what happened in the bay?”

Frankie squeezed the girl’s hand. “I’ll do everything I can to help you, but this won’t be easy, Jillian. You can’t change your memory without reliving it. That’s how it works. So before you forget anything, what I really need you to do is remember.”

As Frankie stared at Jillian through the window of the therapy room, she caught a glimpse of her own reflection. It was strange how you could live inside your skin and still see someone you didn’t know in the mirror. For months, she’d felt like a stranger in her own life. People told her that was how it was when you lost your father. You became a shell, empty, stranded on the sand.

At least you have your memories, people told her in the sympathy cards they sent. Which, to Frankie, was a cruel joke. She of all people knew that memory was unreliable. Memories played tricks on the brain.

She was nearly forty years old. Her brown hair was short, with a few loose strands dangling past her ears. Her face and nose were long and narrow, with a sharply defined chin. She dressed more like a CEO than a psychiatrist or scientist, in dark pantsuits. She was very thin and tall, and she wore high heels to make herself even taller. Her pencil shape attracted notice. In college and medical school, she’d endured whispers of anorexia. They weren’t true. She had skinny genes; her parents were tall and thin, like her. Genetics were funny, though. Her sister, Pam, had an almost identical face, despite being four years younger, but her body had luxurious curves that Frankie envied.

Men’s eyes followed Pam, and she welcomed it. Frankie, who was just as pretty, had spent most of her life shutting men down. They looked at her and knew she had little time for anything or anyone outside her brain. Her cool dark eyes cut people down to size. Her husband, Jason, was the only one who’d ever stood up to her, in the lab or the bedroom, but their relationship was more a meeting of minds than a passionate love match. Frankie reserved most of her passion for helping her patients, which didn’t make for a happy marriage.

In her therapy practice, she worked with kids like Jillian who’d developed crippling phobias. She worked with soldiers returning from overseas who’d seen the worst horrors of war. She worked with victims of physical and emotional abuse—and sometimes, she worked with the abusers, too. The criminals. The sociopaths. Regardless of who they were, they all had one thing in common.