They were haunted by memories, and they wanted to exorcise their ghosts.

Frankie let herself quietly into the therapy room with Jillian. This place, more than anywhere else, was her home. It was lushly carpeted to reduce extraneous noise, and sound baffles were built into the walls. She kept the temperature at a consistent seventy-two degrees, day or night. Built-in speakers allowed her to communicate from outside the room, depending on the patient—but with kids, like Jillian, she preferred to be seated next to them. The wrap-around floor-to-ceiling screen, almost like an IMAX theater, created a 4K high-definition world in which to shape what the patient’s brain saw and remembered.

She customized the visuals on the screen to each person’s needs. Jillian watched the video that Frankie had made for her. Flowers sprouted and blossomed. Tree leaves unfurled. What the girl didn’t know was that, every few seconds, an isolated image of water appeared and disappeared on the screen too quickly for her eyes to perceive. But her brain saw it. At the very first session, Frankie had seen the girl’s hands tightly clasp the arms of the chair as the water images made their way into her mind. Subliminally, her tension grew, but she didn’t choke or gasp. The images of water that her brain saw were happy images. Swimmers. Surfers. Laughter on the beach. And then herself—in a pool, at the ocean, on a kayak. Safe.

“Hello, Jillian,” Frankie said in a honey tone.

“Hi.”

The girl’s eyes were immersed in the images on the screen. She was highly susceptible to hypnosis, which was good. With many of her adult patients, Frankie used a sedative to loosen their consciousness and make them open to suggestion. She rarely did so with children.

“How do you feel?”

“Good. Good.”

“Are you comfortable?”

“Yes.”

“Excellent. It’s time to remember now. Are you ready to remember?”

“Sure.”

“You know how we do this. You’re looking at your memories through your own eyes. You’re telling me in detail everything you see and everything you hear. It’s as if you’re there, and it’s happening all over again. But it’s not really happening to you. You’re just an observer. You’re detached. Do you understand?”

“Yeah.”

“If there’s a little detail you don’t get right, I’ll correct it for you, because I want you to remember exactly how it was. And whatever I tell you is the truth of what happened. It’s important that you remember it that way. Okay?”

“Okay.”