86 - Fred

"How are you feeling, Fred?”

I must have launched my worst or most desolate look in the direction of my psychiatrist, because his reaction was too immediate for my taste. I must have made the landscape face that was becoming my favorite mask in the last few days. I must have shown everything but the truth about the way I felt.

Because I'd rather not feel it. I would rather hide and act like everyone else would like Friederich Hanson to act. That I didn't care about the life of another missing person. That I did not lose nights of sleep and days in a catatonic state, always waiting for news. But that Friederich Hanson was dead. He died the day Rebecca Smith disappeared.

"Well," I spoke as a feigned and very usual answer. "I think we are progressing in the investigations.”

I didn't even know who I really wanted to deceive with that story of progress. It was obvious that there was no progress. Rebecca, the woman I fell in love with, had been missing for more days than I would like to tel