Dr. Stanford didn’t know what to make of Thomas’s story. It would definitely be much easier if he would just tell her things just as they happened but, supposing so far that he wasn’t just making the entire thing up, he did give her a lot of clues.

It is not her job to investigate what happened to the children, obviously, just to get them to talk, and to assess their mental health. Get them on their way to recovery, too, hopefully. But she won’t just hand over her notes to the police either and as she trying to remain as objective as she can while redacting what Tom – Thomas – had told her, she can’t help but wonder about what she can take from what he told him.

There was the forest but that didn’t narrow down much. It could have been actual woods, a big garden, a painting somewhere… Or even just a story they told each other as they were going to sleep to keep the fear away.

The castle was a little bit more specific. There aren’t any castles anywhere near here, but it could refer to a few places just at the top of her mind. There is a restaurant called the castle but that wouldn’t really make sense that they would have spent the night there. Somewhere near, maybe? The industrial area of the town has a water tower that the kids nickname ‘Rapunzel’s tower’. It could also be the abandoned playground by the lake. It’s fenced, it’s abandoned, and if they slept under the old wooden castle-shaped slide area… it could fit what Thomas had been talking about.

But what did he mean by the two moons? Was he being literal? He could be referring to a tag, an actual painting, some type of lighting…

And he mentioned a couple of times being able to hear birds even if they couldn’t see them. What was that about?

She sighed. That wasn’t the most worrying part. What she wanted to find out even more than where they were or where they slept that first night, was if one of the children did die, and which one. Maya had seemed the most willing to speak but Edwin had whispered something in her ear and she had not talked at all since then. Nothing other than polite sentences that at most expressed her basic needs.

Dr. Stanford had not been there and she is still waiting for the notes with the transcript of what the nurse with them at the time thinks he said to her.

Edwin had not really volunteered anything. Nothing useful anyway.

Thomas had seemed to be the mutest of them all until he started spilling his hypothetical story. Dr. Stanford wasn’t sure why he was giving his story this format but she was willing to meet him halfway and scavenge for the clues herself if she had to.

In what he shared, she had tried to find clues about who might have died and… she didn’t really have much. He did try to explain why he disliked Lizzy more than he tried to explain any of his other feelings. Either because he was trying to detach himself emotionally, reminding himself why he disliked her, or because his feelings had changed later, perhaps. If it were the latter, did his feelings change because a friendship grew out of whatever they had to face together, or did they change because we always saw the deceased differently than we saw the living?

The one very worrying thing is that all three teenagers refused to see their families. It had later become a hospital decision anyway but at the police station, before they were brought in for a mental assessment, they had refused to see their families, and apparently, Maya had even thrown a tantrum. A toddler-type of tantrum that was surprising given her age and what people who knew her said of he character. Including Thomas.

And Thomas himself, in the first part of his story, did mention how desperate he has been to be reunited with his father. So why refuse it now? What happened to them and how deep was the trauma that resulted?

Given their mental state, it was too soon for them to see their family, especially if they had to be forced to do so. But perhaps it would be a good idea to put the three teenagers in the same room some time soon and see what happens. She feels like she could learn a lot from the way they would interact.

It couldn’t be too soon though because Thomas was talking, true, but she had a feeling that it might be a fragile development and that he could go mute just as easily.

She had to wonder, though, how long his story would be. They were gone for sixteen months. And… how would traveling, war, magic and all the rest fit in there? Most importantly, what clues would he hide behind those aspects of the story?

Of course, Dr. Stanford was eager to find the other missing students, preferably alive, the sooner the better, and hopefully leading to the arrest of whoever was responsible for what happened to them. But, at the same time, a tiny selfish part of her wanted Thomas to continue her story until she would put all the clues together by herself.

It was obviously not something she actually wanted, but she thought it was important to listen to your desires, even to just be able to dismiss them more effectively.

In an ideal world, Thomas would greet her tomorrow by telling her where to find four very alive teenagers. In her fantasy world, Thomas would continue his story to the point they were found in the woods.

She might have both, actually. Find a way to make him give her real answers, or real enough that the police would be able to track all the children, but he could continue his story later, in therapy. Clearly, it was a way for him to exorcise whatever really happened to him, months of feelings he might not have been able to express, and she was willing to listen.

It might not have been a figure of speech when she told him that she was hooked already…