The Missing Hours

This story is by Scarlett Boleyn and was part of our 2024 Spring Writing Contest. You can find all the writing contest stories here.

Everyone has secrets. How far they’ll go to protect them is the ultimate litmus test. I should know, as a psychologist I’m something of a professional keeper of secrets.

The trouble with secrets is they’re always lying dormant like a virus in our backstories, poised to splinter our lives. And my secrets are worse than most.

In hindsight, I shouldn’t have taken this case. I wish I’d told Pete the truth. But I owed him big time, and he was adamant that I be the psych on the case. A desire for closure made me reckless. At least I’m telling myself it was closure.

The last time I’d seen Nicky, over two decades earlier in 1999, he’d been a tormented silhouette in the shadows of our willow. The same branches that had provided the perfect hiding places for the notes we’d leave each other when it wasn’t safe to meet up, wept around him.

The police car had sped away, transporting me to my new life; and Nicky was a shrinking figure through the window.

It was my sixteenth birthday – the day of Mama’s murder and the day I’d met Pete. His herculean frame had burst through the locked door and rescued me.

I drag my focus back to the present, to the CCTV of my waiting room and the man that I’m contracted to provide a psychological assessment on for Pete – aka the police. Observing clients when they’re unaware gives me a baseline of sorts. It’s not unusual for me to provide such assessments. What’s unusual is that today it’s on Nicky, or Nikko, as he’s known to his adoring masses. He’s a professional football player now, as famous for his rogue behaviour as his athletic skills.

His name’s still engraved on my heart. Our story ended when my life fragmented that day, and the authorities relocated me–it’s not protocol to leave a forwarding address when you’re in witness protection.

I’m confident he won’t recognize me. I can barely recognize myself.

Witness protection changed me. A name change was just the beginning. The physical metamorphosis followed. And not only my hair, stature, and physique – also gone are my kaleidoscope eyes. My central heterochromia, which had defined me all of my life until that moment, was gone in an instant with green contact lenses. Also, it’s twenty-four years to the day that I last lost myself in his eyes. A lifetime ago.

He’s also changed with the passing of the years. The boy I once adored is a ghost. Every move seems choreographed. Goes with the territory of fame, of always being in the spotlight.

Until his stance suspends time – and he faces the window head on, intent on something in the street below. His fists clench, his shoulders snap back. A chin-jut… his biggest tell… a subtle detail that triggers an unwelcome train of thought, and a visceral reaction in my chest. My thoughts spin back twenty-four years to the night I pulled him out of that fight. How I lied to protect him. I was fifteen. I tell myself I didn’t know any better.

Until it wasn’t, that night had been the most magical of my life. It was two weeks before my sixteenth birthday and my parents were out. Nicky met me under our willow and with my small hand in his large one, we’d trudged the worn path through the old Parrington estate to get to the tree-house at the lake. After clambering over the massive roots of the old Moreton Bay Fig, we’d stepped the notches cut into the trunk till we reached the old platform with shaky rails that allowed a view of the entire estate.

I was fifteen, looking into a sky with a thousand stars, with the school captain’s arm draped around my shoulders. I’d felt like a queen.

When I’d shivered, Nicky had wrapped his leather jacket around my skinny frame, pulling the arms around me like a straight-jacket. It was one of those sultry nights with only a breath of a breeze – we’d both known I wasn’t shivering from the cold.

As I gazed into his eyes, I’d known my future lay within.

“My girl with the kaleidoscope eyes,” he’d called me. For once, I didn’t hate my eyes and how they branded me.

The moment shattered when we heard the crack of bone followed by an agonized howl.

We both understood the score. The Church boys, a rival school gang, had been setting traps on the estate to torture the wild dogs that peacefully lived there.

We were down the tree in seconds – Nicky faster and stealthier than me.

Joe, the gang leader, was smirking at the poor creature writhing in agony in the trap.

Nicky tackled Joe, while I tried to free the dog’s bloodied, smashed leg… and then comforted the poor creature in his last moments.

When I looked up through my tears, Nicky was beating a still body.

Somehow I dragged him away, and we left, blood on both our hands.

I knew his tells back then. I still know his tells…

Nicky made it through the psych assessment and booked a follow-up appointment. Then another. Pete’s orders.

***

And now, only two weeks after Nicky materialized in my waiting room like a ghost on the run, I’m standing next to Pete at the station. We’re observing Nicky through a two-way mirror prior to his interrogation.

This isn’t a drill.

He’s a suspect in the murder of a trader, Lisa.

A trader he’d dated. A trader who’d set him up for a fall.

Pete’s there in his capacity as DI on the case. I’m there in my capacity as Dr. Michaela Bentley, forensic psychologist.

Unbeknown to Pete, Nicky and I embarked on a less than professional relationship during these two short weeks. Seems a perfect circle; both our relationships decades apart have been secrets. The first was because of our age difference, and my strict father. Now it’s our respective careers.

Only I’m aware of this final turn, though. Nicky still hasn’t seen my eyes without the contacts. To him, I’m not his girl with the kaleidoscope eyes – I’m his hot shrink.

The red light above the window flashes.

Nicky’s face turns towards us behind the mirror. He’s not stupid. He knows someone’s out here, probably even knows it’s us.

For two long hours, I watch Nicky being interrogated by two detectives – one young and intense, the other seasoned and lay-back.

The entire time, I sense Pete watching me. He’s too invested in this case – has been from the outset. I try not to question his motives. Knowing him as I do, it only generates more questions.

“He doesn’t have an alibi.” Pete’s flat tone slices the silence.

I drag my gaze from Nicky to Pete. He’s ashen. His lined face has taken on an extra dimension of weariness.

“There’s something I need to tell you, Michaela.”

My heart somersaults. I face him full on, ignoring the mirror.

“I’m listening.”

“When they tested his DNA for the earlier incident, I privately ran it against mine.”

“Why?”

“I had an affair with his mother when his father was in ‘Nam. She approached me when Nick got in trouble. That’s why I…”

“Got me involved so fast.”

He nods, choking on words he can’t admit to.

“Nick’s your son.”

Nods again.

I have a solution, but it entails revealing secrets. Secrets that will compromise the case, and impact my career… and probably Pete’s.

Not to mention his imminent retirement after four decades serving in the force.

So I find myself caught between a rock and a hard place. And the irony hits me. This time, I’ll be telling the truth to protect Nicky.

“There’s something I need to tell you, Pete.”

His eyes narrow, full of questions.

“I was with Nicky that night. He has an alibi.”

Pete’s face is a mask of relief, but shadows as the reality hits. It’s like he can read the algorithm of options running through my mind. His sigh breaks my heart.

“Michaela, you’ve worked so hard… you’ve left your past behind… this could unravel back to the tree-house when you were kids… this could ruin you…”

I wasn’t aware that he knew about Nicky and me back then… until now. An image flashes into my mind before taking flight too soon – a shadow I glimpsed from the tree-house that night. I chase it… a herculean frame. Who was Pete investigating back then, before we’d even met? Me… or his son?

I think of Nicky’s face that last night in the tree-house.

“Some things are worth the risk, Pete. Make the call.”

As he informs the super, I turn to the window, just in time to see Nicky’s chin-jut.

And I flashback to waking dazed, in a cold empty bed, at Nicky’s house… to the missing hours the night of Lisa’s murder.