An Anonymous Girl(23)

Then I felt a sudden warmth and softness cocoon me.

Dr. Shields had removed her wrap from around her shoulders and placed it over mine. It still seemed to hold the heat from her body.

I realize I’m absently stroking the wrap again now as I sit in the dim restaurant.

Dr. Shields’s gesture felt protective, almost maternal. Immediately, the tension in my limbs had begun to ease. It was like she somehow pulled me out of that dark moment and back into the present.

It was not your fault, she’d said.

I take the last sip of wine, listening to the classical music playing over the speakers, thinking that of all the things she could have said, these seem like the only words that could have truly comforted me. If Dr. Shields—someone so wise and sophisticated, someone who has spent her career studying the moral choices people make—could absolve me, then maybe my parents could, too.

There’s something they don’t know about that day.

My parents never asked where I was when Becky fell. They just assumed I was home in another room.

I didn’t tell a lie. But there was a small, still moment at the hospital when I could have spoken up. While a team of doctors tended to Becky, my parents and I waited in a small private area just outside the ER. “Oh, Becky. Why were you playing around with that window?” my mother wondered aloud.

I looked into my parents’ red-rimmed, anguished eyes. And I let that moment pass.

I didn’t know the omission would continue to swell and gain in strength with every passing year.

I didn’t know that tiny bit of silence would deafen all of my relationships.

But now Dr. Shields knows.

I realize my fingers are playing with the stem of the empty glass and I pull them away as the server approaches. “Another glass of wine, miss?” he asks.

I shake my head.

My next session is in two days.

I wonder if Dr. Shields will want to talk more about that event, or whether I’ve told her enough.

My hand freezes as I reach into my bag to retrieve my wallet.

Enough for what?

The thought I had a moment ago, that now Dr. Shields has information I’ve hidden from my family for fifteen years, is no longer a comfort. Maybe Dr. Shields’s accomplishments and beauty have blinded me and dulled my self-protective instincts.

I’d almost forgotten that I was Subject 52 in an academic study. That I was being paid to share my innermost secrets.

What is she planning to do with all the private information I’ve given her? I was the one who signed a confidentiality agreement; she didn’t.

The waiter comes back to the table and I unzip my wallet. Then I see the bright blue business card tucked between the folds of my bills.

I look at it for a few seconds, and slowly ease it out.

Breakfast All Day it says on the front.

I remember waking up on Noah’s couch, a blanket tucked around me.

I turn the card over, feeling a sharp corner gently scrape my palm.

Taylor, Noah wrote in his blocky penmanship.

I skim over his words offering to cook me French toast.

That’s not why I’m staring at the card.

I suddenly know how I can learn more about Dr. Shields.





CHAPTER


FOURTEEN


Tuesday, December 4

The cherry notes of the Pinot Noir melt away the icy rawness of the commute home.

The seared beef tenderloin and grilled asparagus are removed from the Dean & DeLuca containers and arranged on a china plate, flanked by heavy silverware. Chopin’s piano chords fill the room. The single dish is carried to one end of the glossy oak rectangular table.

Dinners used to look different here. They were cooked on a six-burner Viking stove and adorned with sprigs of fresh rosemary or leaves of basil from the herb garden in the window box.

The table also held two place settings.

The psychology journal is laid down; it is impossible to concentrate on the dense words tonight.

Across the table, an empty chair remains where my husband Thomas once sat.


Everyone who met Thomas liked him.

He appeared on a night when the lights flickered, and then darkness swept in.

The last client of the day, a man named Hugh, had departed my office only a few minutes before. People come to therapy for different reasons, but his never became clear. Hugh was an odd one, with his sharp features and nomadic existence.

Despite his wanderings, he fixated on things, he divulged early on.

Ending his sessions was difficult; he always wanted more.

Whenever he left, he lingered outside the door, his footsteps not beginning for a minute or two. His pungent scent could be detected in the waiting room even after he was gone, evidence of the time he’d spent there.

When the entire building went dark that night, even the lights outside the windows, it seemed natural to assume Hugh was involved.

The worst of humanity comes out in the shadows.

And Hugh had just been told that his therapy needed to be terminated.

Sirens began to wail in the distance. The noises and lack of illumination created a disorienting atmosphere.

To exit the building, it was necessary to take the stairs. It was seven P.M., late enough that all of the other offices appeared closed.

Although residents lived in the building, their apartments were only on floors five and six.

The sole light in the stairwell came from the screen of my phone, the only sound the tapping of my shoes against the steps.