Factoring Humanity by Robert J. Sawyer Read Free Book Online Page B

hitting home again. “Of course. But there’s no way he could have done anything to me.”
    “It’s natural that you don’t remember it,” said Gurdjieff. “Almost no one does. But it’s there, hidden beneath the surface. Repressed.” She paused again. “You know, my own memories weren’t repressed—for whatever reason, they weren’t. But my sister Daphne—she’s two years younger than me—hers were repressed. I tried to talk about this with her a dozen times, and she said I was nuts—and then one day out of the blue, when we were both in our twenties, she phoned me. It had come back to her—at last the memories, which she’d suppressed for fifteen years, had come back. We confronted our father together.” A pause. “As I said, it’s too bad you can’t confront your father. But you will need to deal with this, to get it out into the open. Eulogies are one way.”
    “Eulogies?”
    “You write out what you would have said to your father had you confronted him while he was still alive. Then you present it at his graveside.” Gurdjieff held up a hand, as if she realized how macabre this sounded. “Don’t worry—we’d do it during the daytime. It’s a wonderful way to bring closure.”
    “I’m not sure,” said Heather. “I’m not sure about any of this.”
    “Of course you’re not. That’s perfectly normal. But, trust me, I’ve seen lots of cases like yours. Most women have been abused, you know.”
    Heather had seen studies suggesting as much—but to get the “most” conclusion, they included everything down to having to kiss a disliked relative on the cheek and schoolyard tussles with little boys.
    Gurdjieff looked up above Heather. Heather rolled her head and saw that there was a large wall clock mounted behind her. “Look,” said Gurdjieff, “we’re almost out of time. But we’ve made a really good start. I think we can lick this thing together, Heather, if you’re willing to work with me.”

7
     
     
    Heather called Kyle and asked him to come by the house.
    When he arrived—about 8:00 P.M., after they’d both eaten separately—he took a seat on the couch, and Heather sat down in the easy chair opposite him. She took a deep breath, wondering how to begin, then just dived in. “I think this may be a case of false-memory syndrome.”
    “Ah,” said Kyle, sounding sage. “The coveted FMS.”
    Heather knew her husband too well. “You don’t have the slightest idea of what I’m talking about, do you?”
    “Well, no.”
    “Do you know what repressed memories are—in theory that is?”
    “Oh, repressed memories. Sure, sure, I’ve heard something about that. There’ve been some court cases, right?”
    Heather nodded. “The first one was ages ago, back in—oh, what was it now? Nineteen eighty-nine or so. A woman named . . . let me think. I taught this once before; it’ll come back. A woman named Eileen Franklin, who was twenty-eight or twenty-nine, claimed to suddenly remember having seen the rape and murder of her best friend twenty years previously. Now, the rape-murder was an established fact; the body had been found shortly after the crime was committed. But the shocking thing wasn’t just that Eileen suddenly remembered seeing the crime being committed, but she also suddenly remembered who had done it: her own father.”
    Kyle frowned. “What happened to the father?”
    Heather looked at him. “He was convicted. It was later overturned, though—but on a technicality.”
    “Was there corroborating evidence, or did the original conviction rest solely on the daughter’s testimony?”
    Heather shrugged a little. “Depends how you look at it. Eileen seemed to be aware of things about the crime that weren’t generally known. That was taken as evidence of her father’s guilt. But upon investigation, it was shown that most of the supposedly telling details had indeed been reported in the press around the time the little girl had been killed. Of course, Eileen