Confidential(64)

He must have been thinking about me. He was just having to wrestle with his professional ethics, his conscience, whatever. He’d call.

If he didn’t do it soon, though, I’d have to figure out how to prod him a little. How to push the thought of me to the front of his brain.

I’d been doing a little cyberstalking, trying to get some clues as to the best way to approach without approaching. I couldn’t just send him a friend request—again, too desperate. But could I show up in his social media feeds by some other, subtler means? Perhaps a targeted ad that he wouldn’t know was targeted, one for my company, with a great press shot of me.

The problem was, I hadn’t been able to find him on any social media, not under the name Michael Baylor. It’s possible he was protecting his privacy by using a pseudonym to avoid situations just like the one I was mulling. As a therapist, he probably wanted to remain a blank slate for his clients so they could do all their transferring. Wasn’t that what he called it? Transference, that was it. He said that was why I wanted him to impregnate me, because I was confusing him with someone else. Like with my father.

Bullshit. That wasn’t at all what this was about.

I didn’t have to date him. I didn’t need to hear a bunch of his high school anecdotes or get the rundown on all his ex-girlfriends. I’d felt him in the room with me. I knew him.

I could tell he had a good heart and he wanted to help people, but he was no altruist. No goody-goody. He had a more dangerous side that he had to rein in, and that was part of what attracted me. He’d get close to the third rail and pull back.

He was going to call. He wouldn’t be able to resist.

The fact was, the kind of therapist who was always by the book wouldn’t have lasted more than a session with me. And he definitely wouldn’t be the man I wanted to father my child.

The problem with donor profiles was that the people (women?) who wrote them sanded off all the men’s rough edges. They’d been neutered. No hint of danger there. It’d be like mating with Big Bird. It might sound crazy, but even though we were just talking about sperm, I wanted to feel like the donor was sexy.

Dr. Michael was, for some complicated reason, sexy.

Though I didn’t intend to sleep with him. I planned to get his donation, go to the clinic, and have the professionals handle the rest. That was the safest route, for many reasons.

Dr. Michael was the one. Now I just had to become the one myself. I had to be mother material, and fast.

Call, Michael. You know you want to.

Before I had to do something truly desperate.





CHAPTER 51





LUCINDA


There were houses, other people’s houses. Men’s houses, mostly. Cassie was told to wait somewhere—it could be any room; it didn’t seem to matter to her mother. Mommy had other things on her mind. Mommy wanted the men to put the needle in her arm, though there was no thread attached to it, and then she’d get that look on her face, like she was floating, and afterward she’d sleep. Sometimes the men only waited until the floating, and sometimes they waited for the sleeping. But that didn’t matter, either. Cassie knew Mommy wasn’t going to help her, even if she screamed.

She never screamed, though, because she knew these were not good men. Why didn’t her mommy know that? How could Cassie tell her? Cassie was only five. She didn’t have the words, even if she hadn’t been so scared. She was a late talker, and she didn’t have all the words the other kids her age had.

The closet could save her at home, but she was too afraid to go opening doors in the men’s filthy apartments and houses. She thought that if they caught her, they might do something awful. More awful than what they already sometimes did. But they didn’t always do it, and that’s why she needed to just stay as small and quiet as she could. She hoped they wouldn’t notice her. Just don’t move, she’d tell herself. Just stay still and maybe . . .

But maybe not. One of the worst parts was that she never knew. She might be left alone, or she might have their dirty fingers or their dirty mouths on her body, or they might want her fingers or her mouth on theirs. Sometimes they tried to bribe her with candy; sometimes they didn’t bother, they just grabbed her. She was only five. It was a small mouth, and one time she threw up, and the man threw her. She smashed into the wall and she cried, but silently. Her mommy didn’t wake up, not for a long time.

So at home, the closet saved her from the bad thing, but the bad thing got her anyway, in the end.

Poor little Cassie. Poor little me.

“That’s it,” Dr. Baylor said. “Let yourself go there.”

“I don’t want to.”

“The sadness is better than the shame. The sadness is deserved. The anger, too. You can get mad at her.”

“I don’t want to do that, either.” Every day, a small part of me was waiting to hear from her. All this time, and I still didn’t know what to say. I wanted to start from now, as if none of it had ever happened. As if she hadn’t failed to protect me when I was little, and as if I hadn’t failed to protect her years later, when I should have gone to her and told her that Adam was . . . that he was . . .

Dr. Baylor scooted his chair forward. “Pretend I’m her. You’re not five years old anymore. Find your words.”

“There’s nothing to say. It was a long time ago, and she tried to make it up to me. She was a good mother.”