Nick woke before dawn.
The room was dark, the city still asleep beyond his windows. He lay motionless, staring at the ceiling, his mind already awake and spinning. Today was the day he had been dreading for twenty-five years.
He was going back to the basement.
Not the real basement — that building had been torn down years ago, turned into a parking garage. But Dr. Chen had given him an exercise. She had asked him to close his eyes and walk through it in his mind. To see it. To feel it. To finally leave it.
He had been avoiding it all week.
Today, he couldn't avoid it anymore.
---
He sat up. The photograph was on his nightstand — the boy with the scar, the girl with the yellow ribbon. He picked it up.
"I'm going back," he told the little girl. "I'm going back so I can finally leave.
