“That’s how I feel. I’m in my head all day long. Have been for almost forty years. Trust me, there’s no one else up there.”

With that, he turns away from me and heads inside. Less than a minute later, I hear the roar of his car.

I listen to him leave and wonder who will return.

Chapter 57

Brant

This is not possible, yet she is not lying. Can’t be. Everything about that interaction screamed truth. I need Jillian. I need to look in her face and find out the truth. I feel stress, pushing on my chest in ways I cannot cope with. Now is the time for a pill. I can feel a blackout coming, pushing on the edge of my sanity with greedy feelings, my mind’s source of relief simple in its black oblivion. I fight the urge, suddenly suspicious of the only relief I’ve ever known, the pale pill that calms my world. Refocuses my anxiety. Lets me sleep. Lets me continue my uninterrupted life.

Is everything I’ve known a lie? How deep does this level of deception go?

On October 12th I blacked out. Woke up with half of Jillian’s face beaten in. They said I had gone crazy. She had tried to pacify me and I had turned on her. Punched and kicked and knocked her backward. I woke up in a children’s pysch ward with absolutely no memory of the exchange.

That was back when I used to have blackouts. It was explained that they were my brain’s way of coping with the pressures that my intellect forced on it. Spots in time where I would act in a manner that made no sense. The longest lasted five hours. Two decades ago Jillian found a doctor who solved my problem. Provided a cocktail of meds that calmed my dark demons. The blackouts stopped, my only moments of dark occurring when the drowsiness side effect knocked me out. I’ve lived without a relapse for decades.

Blackouts. That is what I was told, what I believed.

I push harder on the gas, my hands trembling against the steering wheel. Jillian. At the root of all of this, is Jillian. She will have the answers.

Jillian is standing before her home when I pull in. Wind buffering the long coat around her, her hands tucked in its pockets, a resolute look on the face of a woman I love like a mother. I turn off the car and we stare at each other through the glass, a long look where I read fear and try to understand it. I am so confused. I am so lost. I need Layana. I open the car door and stand. Watch Jillian step backward until she reaches the steps and turns, moving rapidly up them, her black-coated figure framed by her colossal house of white. Around us, dusk hit and lights suddenly come on, illuminating trees and pillars, accents of drama that are unneeded in this clusterfuck of a situation.

I step away from the car and tuck my hands in my pockets against the chill. My shoes are heavy as they take the stairs, her profile illuminated in the open doorway, her hand bracing open the front door. I meet her eyes as I step in. “Jillian.”

“Brant,” she says with a resigned sigh. “Come on in to the den.”

Den is a word used by a woman who doesn’t understand what it means. Dens should be comfortable, not the formal atmosphere that is the bones of this room. I sit on the edge of a divan and watch her face as she settles into an upright chair.

“Layana called me,” she says. “She told me what she told you.”

I watch her hands smooth the front pleats of her pants.

“I never wanted you to date that woman, Brant.”

Not the words I am expecting. “Is she telling the truth, Jillian?”

She looks at her hands, then up at me. “You wouldn’t even believe me if I told you, Brant. She has you so twisted around her finger. Multiple personalities?” she scoffs. “It’s her delusional attempt to explain an affair.” She stands and paces before me, her shoes clicking on the floor like a metronome. “You’re the one who suspected her of cheating.” She points a trembling finger at me. Trembling. From anger or fear? “You know what’s going on here, Brant. She’s found someone else and doesn’t want to lose you over it.”

I match her stance, rising to my feet. “So she invented dissociative personality disorder to explain it? Do you have any idea how insane that sounds?” Jillian won’t meet my eyes. Her gaze skitters over the room. “She doesn’t know,” I continue. “About my blackouts. Has no other ground to stand on. She looked me in the eyes and told me something she thinks to be true. Told me something she says that you told her.” Breath pushes out of my chest in hot waves, the pounding in my head hurting. Rage. That is this emotion. A foreign emotion that I haven’t felt in a long time. Don’t understand. I feel a peeling of my psyche, a loss of some of what I understand to be control. I blink, focus on Jillian, can feel the snarl in my voice as I step closer.

“Brant… you don’t understand.” She falters. “Your medicine stopped all that.”

“All what? The blackouts? Or my stepping into another persona altogether?”

She holds up her hands, and I stop. Realize how close I am to her. How the wide white of her eyes is fear. Of me? A laughable thought. I will my fists to relax and focus on my breathing.

“I don’t know anything about another persona. All I know is that you’ve been doing perfectly. Your work has never been better, your focus more crisp, your creative insight more in tune.”

“Fuck the work. I’m talking about my life, the person I am when I lay my head down to sleep.”

“You don’t mean that,” she straightens. “Your work is everything, Brant. You and I… we’re changing the world.”