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meaty like Schizophrenia, Stable Paranoid Type. And Julia would be no closer to being cured.
    "Tell me something about your father," the doctor said without looking up. "When you used to play on the floor with him."
    No , Julia thought. Dr. Forrest can't read minds. And believing people can read minds will definitely nudge you into the schizophrenic folder .
    "I'd spell my name with my wooden blocks. And he'd laugh and say, 'No, honey. It's Jooolia .' And he'd take away the second block and put in three O’ s."
    "And what would you do then?"
    "I'd say, 'No, it's not,' and then he'd laugh and hug me and rub my hair and lay out the blocks the right way.” She glanced at the door, regretting the hour’s excursion from her chronic state of denial. “I don't want to talk about it anymore."
    "Recovering good memories is just as important to healing as flushing out the bad ones."
    "Right now I'm tired of remembering."
    "Next week as usual, then."
    Julia nodded. Dr. Forrest scribbled down the appointment. "Call me if you need me." Dr. Forrest handed her a reminder card. "And I want you to try something for me."
    "Yes?"
    "Keep a journal. Jot down some of the things that happen, your dreams, anything. It doesn't have to be formal. In fact, the more stream-of-conscious, the better."
    "I'll try," Julia said, knowing she would do more than try. Dr. Forrest was a good therapist. She wouldn't assign Julia busy work. Everything was done with a purpose in mind. Julia knew a little therapeutic theory from her own college psychology class. And she wanted to please her doctor.
    We’re making progress . . . .

 
     
    CHAPTER FOUR
     
    Dr. Forrest walked her to the door. Julia went blinking into the parking lot. As always after a session, the world seemed unreal, the pieces of it incoherent and unstable. The asphalt was a separate thing from the ground, as if it floated over ether. The mountains and sky didn't seem to quite meet up on the horizon. Though the clouds still veiled the sun, the flecks of mica in the sidewalk sparkled like tiny stars, forming galaxies beneath her feet. Even the trees that lined the streets seemed to exist in a two-dimensional universe of their own, as flat as colored leaves pressed in a keepsake book.
    It was only after she'd started her car and edged out onto the highway that she remembered her bedroom clock. She hadn't told Dr. Forrest about 4:06, either. The oddity wasn't concocted by her imagination. She had the handyman Walter as a corroborating witness. But Julia had unplugged the clock before Walter saw it. She was sure.
    Julia had a feeling that Dr. Forrest would be displeased to hear about the clock. The therapist didn't like Julia's focusing on little coincidences. Maybe Julia would casually mention it next time, or scribble it in her journal. Or maybe just forget all about it. Sometimes the past was best left alone.
    She skirted the main drag of Elkwood, four blocks of downtown where the highest building was five stories. The town billed itself as "The Gateway to the Mountains," and had originally been a trading outpost for the hunters who tamed the wilderness, displaced the Cherokee, and eradicated the buffalo and even the elk from which the town had derived its name. Now it was a growing tourist destination, nestled in a river basin between the Blue Ridge and the Great Smoky Mountains.
    Julia drove across the Amadahee River and the unused railroad tracks that circled Elkwood's small industrial section. Two of the factories were abandoned, their chain-link fences ripped and sagging, the parking lots pocked with grass, stubborn oil stains, and broken bottles. Some of the factories were being torn down and replaced by condominiums and technology parks, the South's New Reconstruction.
    Maybe Julia would write a series about it. Her editor had pigeonholed her, though. She was a "soft" writer at the Elkwood Courier-Times , even though she'd been a straight news reporter for The Commercial Appeal . That was