Opening
In these chapters, Brooke Sullivan collides head-on with the past she’s tried to bury when a routine prison exam delivers her ex-boyfriend—the man she believes tried to kill her—back into her life. The encounter rips open old trauma and plants a devastating doubt: she never actually saw her attacker’s face. As the narrative braids past and present, suspicion shifts, loyalties blur, and the central mystery ignites.
What Happens
Chapter 6: A Pressure Wound
Brooke seethes at the prison’s medical neglect while treating Mr. Carpenter, a paraplegic with a severe pressure sore caused by a thin mattress. She demands a pressure-relief mattress, but her supervisor, Dorothy, refuses and curtly tells her to “use your problem-solving skills.” The moment defines the institution’s cruelty and marks Dorothy as a gatekeeper who blocks ethical care.
Dorothy then announces a new patient from the yard. Back in the exam room, Brooke watches Officer Marcus Hunt march in a shackled inmate with a bloody head bandage. As the man nears, Brooke’s composure breaks—she recognizes Shane Nelson, her high school boyfriend and the person she helped send to prison for life. The past she compartmentalizes is suddenly standing in front of her.
Chapter 7: Eleven Years Earlier
Eleven years earlier, teen Brooke climbs into a car with her best friend, Chelsea Cho, heading to a party at Shane’s farmhouse. They pick up Kayla as a date for Brooke’s childhood friend, Tim Reese, and Brooke notices with a jolt that Kayla is genuinely into Tim—who’s recently grown conventionally attractive. Her perception of Tim shifts, and a subtle tension threads through the night.
When they collect Tim, something’s off. It’s supposed to be an overnight party, but he brings no bag, no change of clothes, and shrugs that he’ll wear the same outfit tomorrow. The detail pricks at Brooke; as a kid, Tim always arrived prepared. The small inconsistency plants the first seed of doubt and foreshadows Deception and Betrayal.
Chapter 8: The First Encounter
Back in the present, Brooke forces herself into nurse mode as Shane enters her exam room. Hunt’s hostility is palpable, but Brooke insists on treating Shane alone, leaving the door cracked. The air is thick with history. Prison has hardened Shane, yet he’s still striking—and he looks painfully like their son, Josh Sullivan. When she asks about the injury, he shrugs it off as an accident—ran into a fence—telegraphing a yard tactic to avoid snitching.
Dorothy announces they’re out of lidocaine, so Brooke must stitch Shane’s head without anesthetic. He endures it calmly, as if used to pain. While she works, he fishes for personal details and reveals he knows she’s single and has a child. Panicking, Brooke lies—she tells him Josh is five, not ten—to shield the truth of his paternity, a stark act of Maternal Instinct and Protection. Grief surfaces too: Brooke shares that her parents died; Shane says his mother, Pamela Nelson (Margie), passed believing her son a murderer.
Chapter 9: The Farmhouse
The narrative cuts back to the party night. Chelsea, Brooke, Tim, and Kayla arrive at the Nelsons’ dilapidated farmhouse. Shane greets Brooke with an intimate kiss; she notices the sandalwood aftershave she associates with him. The sweetness curdles when Brooke catches Tim watching them with an unreadable expression. Shane isn’t thrilled Tim’s there, but he forces cordiality for Brooke’s sake.
Shane pulls Tim aside. Their conversation is low, intense, and completely out of Brooke’s earshot, leaving its content ambiguous and feeding the theme of The Unreliability of Memory and Perception. Brandon arrives with pizza and vodka, flipping the night into party mode while unspoken tensions hum beneath the noise.
Chapter 10: “I Didn’t Do It”
In the present, as Brooke finishes stitching, Shane’s urgency spikes. He swears he’s innocent: he loved Brooke, would never hurt her, and claims Tim knocked him out with a baseball bat. He says he woke to flashing lights and handcuffs. Brooke bristles—rage and terror knot together—and rejects his plea as manipulation.
Hunt returns and manhandles Shane, sneering “piece of shit” as he hauls him away. The outburst hints at a personal grudge. Alone, Brooke touches her throat and tumbles into sensory memory: her necklace cutting into skin, the press of a body, sandalwood in the dark. Then the realization hits with terrible clarity—the power was out. The room was pitch black. She never saw her attacker’s face. If Shane didn’t do it, she has helped condemn the wrong man.
Character Development
These chapters recast everyone under harsher light: Brooke’s ethics clash with an institution that refuses care, Shane steps out of the “monster” frame, Tim’s boy-next-door image frays, and Hunt’s aggression hints at compromised professionalism.
- Brooke: Compassionate and confrontational at work; shaken by Shane’s return; lies about Josh’s age to protect her child; finally admits she never saw her attacker.
- Shane: Stoic under pain; still tender toward Brooke; shares family losses; asserts innocence and implicates Tim.
- Tim: In flashback, behaves out of character (no overnight bag); watches Brooke and Shane with intensity; has a secretive conversation with Shane.
- Hunt: Displays excessive hostility and rough handling, suggesting personal animus and a potential conflict of interest.
Themes & Symbols
The unreliability of memory surfaces as the story’s pivot. Brooke has built her certainty on scent, touch, and panic rather than sight. Flashbacks reframe “small” details—Tim’s unpreparedness, his stare, the unheard conversation—as major signposts. As Brooke recognizes the gaps in what she remembers, the past stops being prologue and starts actively reshaping the present.
The past haunting the present comes to life when The Past Haunting the Present walks into Brooke’s clinic in shackles. Her professional identity, her trauma, and her son’s secret converge. Deception and betrayal ripple outward: Brooke lies about Josh’s age; Shane accuses Tim; the justice system may have failed; and the prison withholds basic care. Sandalwood—once the scent of intimacy—mutates into a trigger, a sensory “clue” that both binds Brooke to Shane and misleads her about the night of the attack.
Key Quotes
“Use your problem-solving skills.” Dorothy’s dismissive command crystallizes the institution’s posture: shift responsibility to frontline staff while denying resources. It frames Brooke’s conflict not as a single incident but as systemic neglect.
“I didn’t do it.” Shane’s plea is the chapter’s fulcrum. It challenges the story Brooke has told herself for a decade and introduces an alternate narrative that points directly at Tim.
“Piece of shit.” Hunt’s slur, paired with unnecessary force, signals a personal bias that could taint procedures and testimony. It also raises the stakes of Shane’s safety inside.
“The room was pitch black. I never saw his face.” Brooke’s internal breakthrough detonates the novel’s central doubt. Sensory fragments—sandalwood, pressure, panic—are revealed as insufficient proof, recasting the past as an open case rather than a closed wound.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
This sequence serves as the inciting incident. Shane’s reentry into Brooke’s life converts a survivor’s coping strategy into a live investigation and reframes the novel from healing-after-trauma to potential miscarriage of justice. The dual timelines become a working method: the past supplies puzzle pieces the present finally knows how to read. By the end of Chapter 10, the narrative’s premise flips—Shane’s guilt is not a given, Tim becomes a viable suspect, and Brooke is no longer just a victim but the person most capable of uncovering what really happened.