Confidential(83)

Still, hours later, I was sitting in my room, struggling not to call him. Sex was where I could lose myself, and I really needed that. It was itchy inside my skin, where I couldn’t scratch. I needed Michael.

And I needed Dr. Baylor, too. There was so much I didn’t understand about my own life, my past, who I used to be, who I was right then. He’d been my conduit for more than a year; he connected me to myself. Without him, what did I have? Without him to narrate my story, who was I?

I’d been there in his office, dying to tell him about Adam’s letter so we could make sense of it together, but I couldn’t. Not after what I just heard from Flora. The office had been my safe space, and now it wasn’t.

He could see something was going on as I babbled in obfuscation. When he probed, I was bobbing and weaving like a boxer, and finally, at the end of the session, he said, “I expected this, that I’d have to regain your trust.” I gaped at him. He knew what Flora had told me? Then I realized: he was talking about when he’d threatened to refer me out to another therapist, when he’d nearly abandoned me.

Even if Flora was telling the truth about their relationship, it didn’t make him a monster. It could be the opposite, that he was only human. He couldn’t control who he loved or who he stopped loving. I’d replaced Flora in his heart, and he couldn’t help that. Now she just had to accept that.

I recalled how angry Flora was when I’d approached her car, and how she’d sounded in the waiting room. No wonder Michael had broken up with her, and now she had an ax to grind. She might have changed her approach with me so she could seem nice, but I had no reason to trust her. Dr. Baylor—Michael—he’d given me lots of reasons.

Plus, I knew from the Adam letter that I did seduce men. I pushed until they relented. I outlasted them. That meant I was at least partially responsible for how this had played out. I’d wanted Michael to put aside his professional and personal ethics; I wanted him to love me. Maybe you couldn’t entirely fault me for what happened with Adam because of my age, but I was an adult now. I’d made choices, too. Flora might want to put it all on Michael, but she was obviously pretty persistent herself. And good-looking. I could see that woman wearing a man down.

I was so alone. I couldn’t stand to be this alone, so I had to call.

“Mommy?” I whimpered.

“Oh, sweetheart.” My mother’s voice commingled abundant love and relief. “I’m so glad you called.”

“I didn’t know who else to talk to. Things are just so fucked up.”

“I know. Adam’s death is bringing up a lot of feelings for me, too.”

“It’s not about Adam.”

“What is it, then?”

I’d called her because I was that desperate, that low on options. Because I needed to get these things out of my head, and I hadn’t been able to write in weeks.

But could I really go through with this and just blurt it out? Michael and I were in this together, and if I told anyone else—

He didn’t have to know. He might not even deserve to know.

I trusted my mother. Since she’d been clean, she’d always been good to me, if you didn’t count when she went MIA after learning about my affair with Adam, and she’d apologized for that a hundred times already. If there was anyone on this planet who wanted only the best for me, who was singularly invested in my happiness, it was Mom.

I jumped off the high dive, and I told her everything: about Adam, and my therapy, and the unorthodox treatment sessions late at night.

She asked the occasional question just to clarify, but mostly, she was listening. When I’d finished, she said, “Your therapist knew all about Adam and had sex with you anyway. He wanted you to think that you could exorcise the demons of one old pervert through another.”

I wanted to protest, but she was right. Dr. Baylor had told me about trauma repetition, and that you couldn’t resolve what happened before by doing it over and over. Then he’d fucked me.

Over and over.





PRESENT DAY





CHAPTER 68

DETECTIVE GREGORY PLATH

Another call from the victim’s mother. She’s been crawling up my ass since I got assigned this case, and she’s been no help at all. It’s like she didn’t know her own son. She doesn’t have one scrap of useful information to contribute to the investigation. She just goes on and on about how he wouldn’t hurt anyone, it must be a random act of violence, he had no enemies, he was the best human being, did I know how much he’d done for her, how he paid all her bills and listened to her, he’d been the only one who listened to her and now she’s all alone . . .

What’s that pop psychology term that’s all the rage? A narcissist, that’s what she is. I feel for the doc, having to put up with that. No wonder he didn’t tell her anything; it’s not like she would have heard him anyway.

But I might have a break in the case. I resisted the temptation to go through his records because I don’t know this guy; I’m not going to risk my career just because one of his women gets under my skin, because she looks down on me like she’s daring me to officially call her a suspect and bring her in with her $1,000-an-hour lawyer, because (I wouldn’t admit this to anyone) she reminds me of my own mother who I had to stop talking to twenty years ago for my sanity.