Page 1 of In the Dark of the Past

Chapter One

River

I told myself I’d stopped counting somewhere around year four. I hadn’t.

Nine years, and still, the crisp, pine-scrubbed air dragged me straight back to the moment I fled. Time was supposed to blunt rough corners. But here, even the wind remembered.

As I crested the hill and rounded the final bend, my breath hitched—snagged tight in my chest, like something inside me recalled what my mind wanted to forget.

Then it appeared.

Bathed in sunlight, Maple Ridge spread out below me, cradled in the valley. A picture-perfect postcard of small-town life. White picket fences, tidy sidewalks, church steeples cutting into a cloudless sky. The kind of place you’d see on a brochure for a restfulness retreat.

But I knew better. Nothing about this town was restful. Or simple.

I cruised down Main Street, the storefronts as quaint as ever, the locals meandering without a care. I felt it then, a sudden surge of nostalgia and resentment battling in my chest. I hadn’t wanted to come back. I’d buried this place, locked it in a box labeled: Nope, never again.

And yet, here I was.

I turned onto a narrow side street, taking in the copious flower boxes spilling over with spring color, and pulled into a parking spot in front of a dove-gray building. My building.

I’d hightailed it out of here at twenty-five, broken beyond measure but too stubborn to fall apart. And I hadn’t. I’d earned my PhD in Clinical Psychology and helped a whole bunch of people over the last eight years. Too bad I couldn’t say the same for myself.

That truth settled over me like a weighted vest.

When the doctors at my last practice retired, the therapists working under them were sadly cut loose. Eight months, dozens of applications, and nothing. Which left me with exactly one option…

Start over.

On my own.

Right back where it all went wrong.

Here, in Maple Ridge.

And with only sixty-eight hundred people, I was sure just about everyone already knew I was coming.

I stepped up to the glass-fronted door I’d had etched last week:

River Bennett, PhD

Clinical Psychologist

Mental Health Counseling & Trauma Recovery

By Appointment Only

But when I reached for the lock, I froze.

It wasn’t locked.

“What the hell?”

Some part of me knew I should be concerned, but growing up here, no one locked their doors. Maybe the cleaning crew or the interior designer had forgotten. Didn’t Monique and Brendon say they were here yesterday for final touches?

I pushed the door open and stepped inside.

The space matched my mood. Calm on the surface, a little frayed on the periphery. Misty lavender-gray walls gave the room a soft hush, and the plush loveseat and chairs were upholstered in a striped chenille that captured Maple Ridge in every thread. The slate of the rock walls, the blues and grays of the sky, the rich greens of the forest. I nodded to myself.