Confidential(45)

“I never said you don’t know me. Our relationship is very real. It’s not one-sided.” As in, he had feelings for me, too?

I didn’t even know what my exact feelings for him were. But I had to be a mother, and I preferred his sperm to make it happen. Beyond that . . . “In my gut, I know that you and I would make a good baby.”

“And have you decided that you’d be a good mother?”

He didn’t mean it to be scathing, but it stung. “I’m a hard worker. Whatever I do, I’ll do my best.”

“You’d run yourself ragged; I’ll give you that. But what about the toll it would take on you and on the child? Parenthood isn’t just about working hard.”

“What is it about, then?” I said, stony. He wasn’t answering me about the sperm; instead, he was telling me I shouldn’t be a mother at all.

“Are you angry with me?”

“Such a therapist, answering a question with a question.”

“So you are angry. Can you tell me why?”

“Because you’re questioning my fitness as a mother.”

“No. I’m questioning the difference between theory and practice, what it would feel like for you to actually practice motherhood, day after day.”

“Do you think I’m incapable of love?”

“Of course not. What makes you ask that?”

I flushed. This was a mortifying conversation. “If you want to say no, say no.”

He didn’t, though. He was quiet for a full minute.

“So you might say yes?”

Finally, he nodded. “I’m open to considering it. That’s if we can do some more work around your decision-making process. If I can be assured that motherhood is really what’s best for you and, by extension, best for the baby.”

Our baby. This could happen. “You want me to stay in therapy with you and we figure it out together?”

“Let me think on it more, okay? I wasn’t exactly prepared for this.” He smiled, and I smiled back. Mortifying to exhilarating in 120 seconds.

“And if I decide that it’s best—if we decide that’s the next step—then I’ll be finished with therapy?”

“You’d have met your treatment goal.”

“I guess I would have.”

His smile was oddly tinged with sadness. He glanced at the clock. “I’ll see you next week, then?”

“I guess you will.” I didn’t know what my smile was tinged with.

As I was leaving the building, I once again managed to stumble. But unlike last time, it was because I was so busy grinning. I stopped and adjusted the strap on the back of my heel, and when I looked up, I saw a woman sitting in her car who appeared to have her attention trained on me. It was hard to be certain, since she was wearing sunglasses. At dusk. And some sort of head scarf, but not like a hijab. No, this was more like a disguise.

I scanned my surroundings. There was no one else she could be looking at. A chill went through me. But I told myself that I didn’t know her, and there was no reason for me to be of interest to any strange women.

Then she lifted the sunglasses so that I could make no mistake: She was staring at me. Glaring at me, and she wanted me to feel it.

She was a handsome woman, with olive skin and a slightly bulbous nose. She dropped the sunglasses back down, started her car, and roared out of the parking space without checking for traffic. A horn blared after a narrow miss, but she just took off, as if her mission was complete.

Was I part of her mission? It made no sense. And yet . . .

She was watching me, I was sure of it.





CHAPTER 37





LUCINDA


Dr. Baylor looked up from the pages he was holding. “I knew it,” he said.

“Knew what?” I asked, though I was already smiling.

“Knew you were gifted. This story needs to be told.”

“Do you think it could go somewhere someday?”

“You mean, could you publish it?” I nodded. “I’m no literary critic, but it seems like it to me. You’d just need to think through all the ramifications.”

“Are you talking about my mother?”

“And about you. People will assume this is autobiographical. Are you ready to have your past made public?”

That was all I’d been thinking about—that and Dr. Baylor’s arms around me. “I’m an abuse survivor. Yes, I could be ashamed that my abuser was my mother’s husband and that I wasn’t loyal to her, but . . .”

“But what?” He leaned in. I had him on the edge of his seat. There was something different in how we were interacting. There was a crackle to it. Was he also remembering what it had felt like to hold me?

I couldn’t afford to remember it just then. I had something important to tell my therapist. “As I’m writing, some things are coming back to me. Some things about my mother and the years when she was on drugs.”

“You’ve always said you can’t recall much about your early childhood. Is the writing jogging your memory?”

“Yes.” Another deep breath. “It’s nothing concrete. I mean, they’re just images, almost like dreaming. I’m seeing the house and men coming through it. Men coming toward me. Then it’s black.”