Reborn In a Murderer’s Embrace (Dexter) novel Chapter 343

[Phoebe was sick again today. The medicine Damian gave her seems pretty potent, and it's making her react badly. The poor kid's become withdrawn since she started on it.]

[Edward took Phoebe to the orphanage today. When she got back, her clothes were torn, and I was worried that she might have gotten into a scrap with the other kids. I asked Edward about it, but he said that Phoebe was a good girl today, didn't fight or get physical with anyone. She even cried!]

Between the lines, I could tell my mom was thrilled about me crying. I tried to piece together those hazy, unclear memories.

Before I met Colin, I indeed never cried. I didn't cry at birth, which led the doctors to think I was mute, although I ended up speaking earlier than most kids my age. Even later, when they would provoke me or hit me, I never cried.

The day I first cried at the orphanage, as recorded in the diary, I was wearing a red dress. It must have been when those bullies at the orphanage tried to yank it off me.

As I flipped through the journal, I noticed how meticulously my mom documented my life, missing not a single day. But the entries stopped cold during the days I was sent to the psychiatric hospital. Not a word about Damian's treatment.

[Today Phoebe lost her temper with the neighbors. They were complaining about us keeping a large dog and even tried to drive Howler away.]

...

My mom's journal is filled with the mundane details of my life at home, but what's odd is that there's not a single mention of Colin and Carter, as if on purpose...

I was close with Colin and Carter, and my parents must have known about my romance with Colin. So why is there no mention of it in the diary?

It only noted that Phoebe made a friend at the orphanage who seemed to trust and like her a lot.

And then there's the entry that says I seemed to naturally attract kids with congenital personality defects, that they trusted me and played well together.

As I read through entry after entry, most were just boring daily stuff, but those two sentences sent chills down my spine.

Putting it together with what Robin and Finn said, these didn't seem like journal entries at all, more like notes from an experiment.

I took a deep breath and kept reading.

Why did Dexter say I was purposely forgetting Colin? And that Colin had hurt me?

Sure enough, there was an entry from early in my eighteenth year, noting that Phoebe said she was an adult now and wanted her own independent life. She had started to rebel.

And adolescence, indeed the age of hormonal surge, Phoebe was just like any other teenager, perhaps even more intense.

The next entry.