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It was Easter weekend and the trees were budding, little verdant sparkles. It felt comforting to be on a train, rushing through the landscape, watching it whip by.

I wondered again about my urge to leave the city for the weekend. Dom had been supremely supportive over the last few weeks, making me soup and bringing me blankets like I had the chicken pox. During the few days I’d been gone, she and Amelia had gotten into a huge blowout and decided to take a break, so we were renewing our lease for another year.

It had been a big relief to be able to stay put during this time. The news of Catherine’s strange and horrifying death had blown up, both high- and lowbrow outlets covering the cult massacre. Six people had died—including Joe and Steven, who were both gone by the time the ambulance arrived. Seven, if you counted Grace.

Somehow multiple journalists had gotten my name and number, and I now had a dozen voicemails I was ignoring. A photographer had even shown up at my apartment, shocking me with the click-click-click of his camera as I unlocked my door. A week later, a scandal with a much more famous actress broke, and the public eye turned away.

I’d started back at work last week, and luckily the patients had totally missed the story. Amani and Rachel had dug for details, and Diane had called me into her office to confirm I was receiving “support.” That plus Dom’s concern had caused me to start scanning the therapist listings.

I realized now that my old therapist Cynthia had handled our termination badly. She should’ve made sure I was in an okay place before cutting off our sessions, and/or supported me in transitioning to someone new. And even though we hadn’t been working together anymore, she could’ve responded to my desperate text.

In my eyes, she’d messed up. But she was human. And even if I started with the Perfect Therapist, someone with incredible attunement skills, it didn’t mean that we wouldn’t have disagreements and misunderstandings. This time, though, I wanted the chance to work through them. This process was so inevitable that there was even a therapy term for it: “rupture and repair.”

I’d met twice with a woman named Toni. I hadn’t yet told her what had happened at the Center: it was too fresh, and there would be weeks, months, and years to fully process what I’d experienced. For now we were talking about my alcohol use (which I’d curtailed since being back), my family of origin, and everything that had happened with Pastor John and Adam. They were all so connected, so intertwined: the early emotional neglect and the later abuse, both creating pain that only alcohol—a coping mechanism that was often sanctioned and even encouraged—had been able to soften.

I’d also forced myself to tell her about the orgasm situation. I hadn’t felt at all sexual since the Center, but I knew that would eventually change. Regardless of whether or not I still needed to imagine the shed, there was a lot of excavating and healing I wanted to do in this area. It felt time to integrate those deep threads of dominance and submission, light and dark, that would probably always be with me.

Another thing to eventually discuss: The lingering sense that there had been something inexplicable going on out in the desert. That while Moon had been destructive, using her beliefs to justify horrible things, she’d known things about me—my dreams, details of my current life trauma—that she shouldn’t have.

Maybe it’d be helpful to talk to Karen about it—when she was no longer under investigation and could be in contact with me again. The one time we’d texted, she’d mentioned starting to “deprogram” with specialists and also attending grief counseling. I wondered how long it would take to unravel what she’d believed and what she’d done.

Because I myself felt confused by what I’d seen and experienced. If Catherine and I weren’t deeply connected, if she was someone I’d just met just for a short time, then why was my grief for her so intense that I couldn’t look at it directly? There was guilt too—because if Catherine and I had left at 4:00 a.m., maybe Joe would’ve let us go. Maybe she’d still be alive.

There was no way to know.

To ease this, sometimes I let myself imagine that all of it was true: That Catherine and I had been sisters in a past life. That we’d been given the opportunity to save not the world but each other. She’d clearly sacrificed herself for me on the roof. Maybe I’d do the same for her, in a life far into the future. I remembered the kaleidoscope I’d envisioned in the cave, and for some reason it made me think about all those lives, happening simultaneously. Moon had said it to me first: Time is a construct, right? So these lives are all happening at the same time. Was that the reason Catherine and I couldn’t remember saying yes to the snake spirit? Because we hadn’t decided until we were on the roof, or in the spaceship?

I knew that these far-out musings were just me trying to help myself feel better, less culpable. But they usually left me feeling unmoored and wistful. There may be larger mysteries about death I’d never know the answers to. But the truth about Catherine, at least, was concrete: she was gone.

A text dinged from Mikki: Hey! Still on for lunch next week?

I responded with an Of course! Mikki was finishing up her major outlet story, an essay-like piece about her experience and about how she’d initially been pulled in to investigate Moon’s impersonation of a Mexican woman. I’d told her more about Moon and Sol’s belief in reincarnation, but not the visions I’d seen in the sweat lodge and cave. I didn’t want to give their philosophy more credence, nor prompt any more anonymous hate messages from their unhinged virtual followers.

A new text from Dom: Did you see this???? A link to an hour-long documentary on a streaming service: Sex Cult Love . I squinted at the description. They looked for love in the unlikeliest of places—and found each other.

“Wait, what?” I murmured. I grabbed my headphones and clicked play.

Dawne and Ramit filled the screen. They were sitting on stools, in front of a background of a tidy, blank living room.

“My name is Dawne.” Her makeup, so flashy in real life, looked perfect on-screen. “I was at the Center for Relational Healing and left about a week before the massacre.” She turned to look at Ramit.

“I’m Ramit.” He seemed much more uncomfortable, his eyes wide and darting. “I was also at the Center before the massacre.”

“It’s actually really ironic.” Dawne squeezed Ramit’s arm. “We went to the Center to find love, but we found only hate. When Ramit and I reconnected in LA to process what we’d been through, we realized the answer was right in front of us.” A grin overtaking her face, she held up her left hand. “We each found our soulmate.” The camera panned in on the enormous diamond, glittering merrily in the studio lights.

I’d sent my parents an article (the least garish one) so they knew what had happened, but Mom didn’t ask about it beyond “Are you okay?” when picking me up from the station. Her lip curled with unconscious distaste: my suffering still made her acutely uncomfortable. Dad gave me a slightly longer hug than normal when I saw him at the house but didn’t bring it up.

That night—like every night—I hoped to dream about Catherine. But I woke without remembering anything. I took a long walk around the property on Saturday, taking pictures of the flowers springing up. The daffodils were so cheerful-looking.

Mom and Dad were surprised when I said I wanted to go to church with them on Sunday morning. We drove there in silence, my dress hanging on me because of the cave-induced weight loss I was still recovering from. The brick building came into view with the familiar sign out front: OUR SAVIOR CHURCH AND SCHOOL .

Decades later, my parents still went faithfully to the hybrid church/school that had so affected me. In college I’d finally refused to go—a bold move for me—so it had been many years since I’d been back. It looked exactly the same as I remembered. I glanced at the jungle gym on the way in; the rubber surface of the ground looked new. I pictured my younger self standing by the slide, posing for the class picture.

It smelled the same too. A mixture of cleaning products and sweaty children and mustiness. We passed the gym and several classrooms on the way in. Up the stairs, past the enormous picture of a blond, pretty Jesus standing over his flock.

I felt strangely calm. At least until I saw her, standing in a group of people talking in the narthex. My old best friend Melissa, jiggling a baby in her arms.

My chest tightened as she glanced at me, sensing my gaze. She looked shockingly like her mom two decades before. I remembered my last message to her: Maybe ask your amazing husband how he took advantage of me on our eighth-grade trip while calling me horrible things (fat, ugly, etc). Unless you knew already?

But as if nothing had happened, she grinned. “Oh my gosh! Thea!” She hurried over and pulled me in for a half hug. “Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Meyer! Oh yes, this is my youngest, Luke.”

The surprise quickly melted away. Of course she wasn’t going to bring up my message. She and I had both been raised in an environment where people constantly pretended not to see the upsetting things going on around them. I thought suddenly of Mrs. Iona, our eighth-grade teacher, who had placidly ignored the daily bullying happening right under her nose.

I pasted a smile on my face as she chatted with my parents, who excused themselves to get their preferred seats. I scanned behind her for Adam. That old fear reared up, but as Melissa watched me, swaying with her baby, a wave of calm washed over me.

I’d gone through more than either of them could imagine. This was nothing.

“Is Adam here too?” I’d go right up to him, stare him in the face, and shake his hand, if only to let him know that I was here, that I existed.

“He’s on a boys’ trip this weekend.” She smiled less brightly, her lips pressed together. “Anyway, how are you? I haven’t seen you here in forever. What brings you back?”

“Oh, you know. Just wanted to get out of the city.”

She nodded sagely as Luke burbled at me. “I’ve heard it can be a lot.” She grinned. “Please tell me you’re staying for the reunion next weekend?”

“I’m thinking about it,” I lied.

“Great!” She seemed satisfied. “We can catch up more then.”

“Mommy!” A toddler ran up to Melissa and grabbed her leg, staring up at me.

“This is Catherine.” Melissa put a protective hand on her head.

The name startled me. “Catherine?”

“Say hi, honey,” Melissa directed.

“Hi,” she said shyly. While Luke had his mom’s blue eyes and wide mouth, Catherine’s dark curls and dimple were pure Adam.

“Hi there.” I smiled at her. Just a coincidence. Nothing more.

“Let’s go find Mrs. Becker.” Melissa took her hand. “We’ll chat more next weekend, okay?”

“Sounds good.” I squared my shoulders and went into the church.

Thirty minutes later, I studied Pastor John at the pulpit, expounding on Jesus’s miraculous return. The sickly-sweet scent from the Easter lilies filled the sanctuary.

He looked older, though I knew that from his Facebook profile: sandy hair receding, beard patched with white, crinkles around his nose and mouth. He must be in his mid-forties now. It struck me, for the first time, that I couldn’t have been the only teen he’d had an inappropriate relationship with. Who knew—it was possible that he’d felt bad about it, vowed to change his ways. But the way he’d responded to my Facebook message…

You fucked up my life.

I’m sorry you feel that way.

He still had that smirking overconfidence, maybe even more so now, similar to a certain cult leader I’d known.

I’d been waiting for his eyes to meet mine, pulled in by my laser gaze. But there were hundreds in the crowd, and so far it hadn’t happened.

What if I stood up and yelled the truth of what he’d done to me?

I already knew the answer: he would smile sadly, call for security, say that he hoped that poor woman got help.

I was sitting on the edge of the row, and even though it was the middle of the sermon, I got up and headed up the aisle, towards the exit.

In the narthex, I took a deep breath. Mom and Dad would be embarrassed that I’d walked out, but their judgment no longer affected me. I wandered down the hall to get a sip of water from the fountain (how many times had I drunk from it?). One of the nearby classrooms was full of kids, their laughs and exclamations spilling into the hall.

Sunday school. I took a few steps closer, and a familiar woman inside smiled at me.

I approached the doorway. “Holly, hi.” Mrs. Becker —it was Holly Becker, who’d been in our class. “How are you? You’re teaching Sunday school?”

“Yep.” She looked disturbingly similar to her eighth-grade self, her long blond hair still in a high ponytail. She seemed somehow unsurprised to see me. “How are you? Haven’t seen you in a long time.”

“Yeah, I know, it’s been a while. I’m good.” I noticed she was standing above Melissa’s daughter, Catherine, who was scribbling away at a piece of paper. “How many of these kids are from people in our grade?”

“A couple.” She surveyed the room. She’d been another nerdy kid, and I remembered with shame that at some point, I’d stood silently by while Ashley and Adam had made fun of her acne. “How long you back?”

“Just the weekend.”

“I saw what happened.” Holly’s bright eyes found mine. “In New Mexico. Wow. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” I said the words automatically.

She looked like she wanted to ask more, but suddenly Catherine jumped up and ran over to me. She pushed a piece of paper at my thigh.

“Read!” she yelled.

I laughed at her insistence. “Okay. Thank you.”

I turned the paper over. It was messy but discernable: a triangle surrounded by a spiral. The triangle had a door and windows: it was a house.

“Why…” I looked up, but Catherine had already scuttled back to her seat and was violently crayoning a new piece of paper.

“She’s really into tornadoes these days.” Holly pointed to the spiral.

Little Catherine looked nothing like Big Catherine. She was too old to be the reincarnated version of her, anyway.

But it was something. A small reaching out. A sign.

As much as I wanted to keep it, I handed the paper back to Holly. It would look weird for me to hold on to it.

“Hunter!” Holly cried out, swooping back into the room as another toddler started to hit and scream at his neighbor.

I backed away, into the hall. I could hear voices from the church in a rousing call and response with Pastor John.

“He is risen!”

“He is risen indeed!”

I continued away from the noise, down the stairs and outside where the sun shone pale overhead. I sat on a bench, suddenly looking forward to taking the train back to the city that night. To going to work tomorrow. I’d begged Diane, and she’d finally relented, maybe because she was still concerned about me: we were going to start using watercolors in art therapy group, not just crayons. There was a new patient named Jessa who’d reacted with an actual squeal to this news.

I’d also ordered an easel and some canvases for myself, and they were set to arrive in the next few days. I’d already pulled out sketch pads, oil paints, and charcoal pencils from the back of my closet. They sat ready and waiting in the corner of my room.

The playground was empty. I smiled at the ghost of my young self near the slide. All this time, she’d been stuck here. But I’d take her with me when I left. She’d be reunited with her diary, which now sat on my nightstand. And neither of us would have to come back here again.

I’d finally done it: I’d broken the pattern.