From the author of the acclaimed novel Embers on the Wind comes a mind-bending novel of love, family, betrayal, and secrets…

Eddie Asher arrives at Hudson Valley Psychiatric Hospital panicked that he may have murdered his brother’s fiancée, Lucy, with whom he shared a profound kinship. He can’t imagine doing such a terrible thing, but Eddie hasn’t been himself lately.

Eddie’s anxiety is nothing new to Pär, the one Eddie calls his Other, who protects Eddie from truths he’s too sensitive to face. Or so Pär says. Troubled by Pär’s increasing sway over his life, Eddie seeks out Dr. Richard Montgomery, a specialist in dissociative identities. The psychiatrist is Eddie’s best chance for piecing together the puzzle of what really happened to Lucy and to understanding his inexplicable memories of another man’s life.

But Montgomery’s methods trigger a kaleidoscope of memories that Pär can’t contain, bringing Eddie closer to an unimaginable truth about his identity.

Excerpt

December 3, 2024; Little A

Pär

1993

Eddie’s wild heart and shaking legs propel him down the subway platform, up the stairs, and into the bitter cold. One with the wind, he races toward the park, long the site of his and Lucy’s rendezvous. Is he hoping to find her there? As if the past few hours, weeks, months were a dream?

Eddie tries to conjure September, when they walked here together, hands entwined, immersed in one another, only mildly distracted by their betrayal of Robert—Eddie’s brother, Lucy’s fiancé. There was guilt, yes, but no sense of danger, no universe in which Eddie could have conceived of harming Lucy. When the memory fades, Eddie flees the park, plunges himself into the bowels of the subway once again, lands on a C train as the doors are closing. He cannot sit. He paces the car until a woman with children hustles them off the train at West Fourth Street and ushers them into a neighboring car that doesn’t have Eddie in it.

Along the journey home, something clicks for Eddie. Though I have only recently revealed myself to him, Eddie identifies me as the culprit, which kicks off a harangue: How could you do it? Why? Why? Why? and the like, all vocalized aloud. As I lack both substance and voice, this performance only enhances Eddie’s perceived derangement, frightening more fellow travelers. Like a chemist stepping back to view an unfolding reaction, I observe what I’ve sown: madness. See what power I have? Not just over Eddie’s body but his mind too! How shall I use it?

Eddie’s hysteria coupled with my own navigation carries us back to his apartment, where he calls Joanne, his mother. After ranting gibberish into her answering machine, Eddie paces some more, shaking loose the recollection that Joanne is away visiting friends in Tel Aviv. It is 9:15 p.m. in Brooklyn, which—if Eddie were inclined to calculate—brings Israel to 4:15 a.m.

He discards his next impulse, which is, absurdly, to call Robert. Robert! To whom Eddie believes he owes what little sanity he has but whom he’s wronged beyond forgiveness. Eddie wails aloud, then hops up to storm about the place again, pulling at his hair.

“You pushed her!” He does not know my name. To Eddie, I am still You or The Other. “You killed her! How could you? Why? Why?”

Rabid, he hurls our body about, crashing into furniture, flinging papers, mail, magazines, books, anything that isn’t nailed down. He throws open cabinets, searching for alcohol, of which there is none. (Only a single beer in the fridge, where it does not occur to him to look.) I’m riding this out at first, letting it go on, observing his utter lack of competency, considering how I might take advantage. But then Eddie ransacks the medicine cabinet for pills, pouring any and every kind he can into his hand. I shake these away before they get to our mouth. What’s next? Razor blades, which I knock to the floor.

I didn’t think Eddie was capable of suicide, but now I reassess, ready to fight for our life. To think that I’m the one who wants to save it. But I do. His eyes land on the only sharp kitchen knife he owns. He raises the blade, aiming it toward our throat. No! We struggle. He falters; my will is stronger. I make him hurl it far across the room.

“Enough of that!” I tell him. “No more!”

Whether he hears me or not, Eddie gives up—at least for now—on offing himself, myself. Ourself. We stand amid the chaos he’s made of the apartment. A book is splayed, face down at our feet, the title catching Eddie’s eye. He kneels and picks it up. Ha! The Splintered Self. I swear I didn’t orchestrate this; how could I have? Call it happenstance, a higher power, fate, or what you will; occurrences like this make me believe. I seize the moment, will Eddie to open the book and investigate, let him think, So this is what’s wrong with me! attributing me to yet another mental disorder. Good. Let him call me an “alter ego,” a different “personality,” a “dissociative identity.” Give him the hope that he might be fixed, that there might be a life without me. Drop his guard. How easy it will be for me then!

But my fantasy of a coup comes under threat before I can formulate a plan. As Eddie lists against the wall, reading—first the blurb, eyes welling, then the introduction through flowing tears—his atoms readjust, like a Rubik’s Cube or a rotary safe, turning, churning, until: click! A physical staunchness I’ve never known in Eddie cuts off my power, rendering him—at least for the moment—complete and singular. In charge. The room dims, fades to darkness.

When the fog lifts from my eyes, I am running; Eddie is running. I am breathless, with no idea where we are, as the body hurtles up a dirt road that turns paved only once an unfamiliar building looms into view. It’s huge, like a medieval castle left to the elements.

At least, I reassure myself, I am still here, still capable, if deeply shaken. Whatever happened to Eddie under the influence of that book was a warning to me, a preview of my own obliteration. Never have I conceived of such a thing. All along, at least since our adulthood, I’ve been able to determine when to take over, whether I am present with Eddie or not. I have never faced the threat of oblivion. That damn psychiatry book! I should have disposed of it when I had the chance.

Now Eddie pulls himself up a stone path through weedy, overgrown terrain, mounts the front steps of the building, and rings a bell at the side of a heavy wood and wrought iron door. When there’s no answer, he knocks, then heaves himself against it, crying out in desperation for someone to let him in.

At last, the door on our right swings open, presenting the form of a large Black man, a few shades darker than Eddie, our age, maybe younger, dressed in white scrubs. He holds out his arms, palms up.

“Easy. Easy, man. I got you.”

It’s Eddie who lets us fall into him, trusting easily, either because the man is also Black, because he’s young, or calm and even-throated, or because Eddie is forever in search of a savior. I, on the other hand, resist, fight against being “gotten,” screaming till Eddie’s voice grows hoarse, dry, and finally extinguishes itself.

“Hey!” The man is stronger, skilled at restraining people, gets us into a hold we cannot defy. Darkness drinks us in once more.

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About the Author

Lisa Williamson Rosenberg is the author of Mirror Me (December 3, 2024; Little A) and Embers on the Wind. She is a former ballet dancer and psychotherapist specializing in depression, developmental trauma, and multiracial identity. Her essays have appeared in Literary Hub, Longreads, Narratively, Mamalode, and The Common. Her fiction has been published in the Piltdown Review and in Literary Mama, where Lisa received a Pushcart nomination. A born-and-raised New Yorker and mother of two college students, Lisa now lives in Montclair, New Jersey, with her husband and dog. You can visit her at lisawrosenberg.com.