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He nodded slowly.

“So then what did the asshole ever do to you? Randall already told me it’s not a military operation. That the Navy has nothing to do with your—”

“Tell me what your dream was about.”

I froze, my mouth still half-open. The question caught me totally off guard. “My what?”

“Your dream,” said Holden. “The one you had last night. The one that woke you up screaming.”

A shiver ran through me, involuntarily. I could tell he noticed it. I hated that he noticed it, but it was already too late.

“Fine,” I said with a sigh. “My dream…”

For some reason I told him. I replayed the entire dream out loud — every last detail — from the surreal shadows of my father’s garage to the skeleton chasing me in hellish slow-motion. I told him about my mother, sitting there in the kitchen, drinking coffee, ignoring me completely. About how no matter how loudly I screamed into her face, she never even looked my way.

When I was finished he let out a low whistle. “Jesus. That’s some dream.”

I eyed him skeptically at first, but it became quickly apparent he was being genuine. There was no judgment. He wasn’t poking fun.

“What do you think it means?” he asked.

“Fuck if I know.”

“Well, did you get along with your mother? Maybe she didn’t pay enough attention to—”

I was already laughing. It stopped him mid-sentence.

“What?”

“I never had a mother.”

Holden smirked. “That’s biologically impossible.”

“Well maybe I did, but I never knew her,” I explained. “My mother was a drug addict, and my father had to beg her to carry me to term. Once she did, she took off immediately. Wouldn’t even stay overnight at the hospital; just pulled the IV out of her arm and left within hours.” I glanced downward. “I’m told she never even held me in her arms.”

Holden’s expression was extreme sadness. Sorrow, but not pity. It was the right expression.

“Andrea, I’m so sorry.”

“Wasn’t your fault,” I choked, forcing a smile. “You weren’t the one who chose drugs over your own daughter.”

He looked at me thoughtfully. “How do you know it’s your mother, then?”

My eyebrows came together. “What?”

“In the dream,” Holden went on. “If you never even met her, how do you know the woman drinking coffee was—”

“Because I know it in my heart,” I said. “Besides, I’ve seen photos of her. Four of them, actually.”

I told him of the time right after my tenth birthday, when my father had finally shown me. The day he’d pulled out that faded little strip of black-and-white photos. Four different pictures of him and my mom, taken in one of those carnival photo booths where you make silly poses together.

“She looked so happy in the photos,” I said. “All laughter and smiles.” A lump began forming in my throat. “I used to think to myself, how could she just go? Why couldn’t she just be happy, like she was in that godforsaken photo booth with my father’s arm around her, and—”

I didn’t even notice that Holden had left the chair. One minute he was sitting there, the next he was standing before me, crushing me against his chest. I melted into him gratefully. I would’ve cried — really, I would’ve. But I’d spent all those tears years ago, and there were simply none left.

“I guess the dream is just an echo of my abandonment issues,” I sniffed. “Sound about right?”

“The way you screamed?” he smiled amicably. “That’s some fucking echo.”