The Bad Daughter(3)

She felt the stirrings of another panic attack and took a series of preventive deep breaths. When that didn’t work, she splashed a handful of cold water on her face. “Okay, calm down,” she told herself. “Calm down. Everything is fine. Except your face is all scrunched up.” She examined her reflection once more, noting her pursed lips and pinched cheeks and making a concerted effort to relax her features. “You can’t let Melanie get to you.” She took another series of deep breaths—in through the nose, out through the mouth, inhale the good energy, exhale the bad. “There’s a woman patiently awaiting your wise counsel,” she reminded herself. “Now, get back there and give it to her.” Whatever the hell her name is.

But when Robin returned to her office, the woman was gone. “Hello?” Robin called, opening the door to her inner office and discovering that room empty as well. “Adeline?” She returned to the exterior hallway and found it likewise deserted. Great. Fine time to remember her name.

Obviously, Adeline had fled. Scared off by Robin’s “tough” facade and “scrunched-up” face. Not that Robin blamed her. The session had been a disaster. What gave her the right to think she could counsel others when she herself was such a complete and utter fuckup?

Robin plopped down into the blue chair that Adeline had abandoned and looked around the thoughtfully arranged space. The walls were a pale but sunny yellow, meant to encourage optimism. A poster of colorful flowers hung on the wall opposite the door, meant to suggest growth and personal development. A photograph of autumn leaves was situated beside the door to her inner sanctum, a subtle reminder that change was both good and inevitable. Her personal favorite—a collage depicting a curly-haired woman with glasses and a worried smile amidst a flurry of happy faces and abstract raindrops, the capitalized words WHY DO I GET SO EMOTIONAL? floating above her head—occupied the place of honor behind the chair she usually sat in. It was intended to be humorous and put clients at ease. She’d found it at a neighborhood garage sale soon after she and Blake had moved in together. Now he was increasingly “working late.” How long before he brought up the idea of moving out?

“Why do I get so emotional indeed?” she asked the woman in the collage.

The woman smiled her worried smile and said nothing.

The phone in Robin’s inner office rang.

“Shit,” she said, listening as it rang two more times before voice mail picked up. Was it Melanie, phoning to berate her for not returning her previous call promptly enough? Robin pushed herself slowly to her feet. What the hell, might as well get this over with.

The first thing she saw when she entered the adjoining room was the telephone’s blinking red light. She sank into the comfortable burgundy leather chair behind her small oak desk, a desk that had been Blake’s when he first began practicing law; he’d passed it on to her when he graduated to a bigger firm with a bigger office, one that required a more imposing desk.

Was that why they’d never followed through on their plans to marry? Was she not sufficiently imposing for a man of his growing stature?

Or maybe it was the pretty new assistant he’d hired, or the attractive young lawyer in the next office. Perhaps the woman he’d smiled at while waiting in line at Starbucks had been the source of second thoughts on his part.

How long could she continue to ignore the all-too-familiar signs?

She picked up the receiver, listened as a recorded voice informed her that she had one new message and one saved message. “To listen to your message, press one-one.”

Robin did as directed.

“Hi, this is Adeline Sullivan,” the voice said. “I’m calling to apologize for running out on you like that. I just didn’t think we were a good fit, and to quote a therapist I know, ‘I thought I’d save us both some time’ and just leave. I hope you aren’t angry. You can bill me for the session. You did give me some things to think about.” She left the address where Robin could send the invoice. Robin promptly erased the message. Would that everything else was so easy to erase. She closed her eyes, her fingers hovering over the phone’s keypad.

“Go on,” she urged herself. “You can do this.” She pressed the button to listen to her sister’s message again.

“First saved message,” the recorded voice announced, followed by her sister’s abrupt command.

“Call me.”

Robin didn’t have to look up Melanie’s phone number. She knew it by heart. It was chiseled into her brain. She punched in the digits before she could change her mind.

The phone was answered almost immediately. “Took you long enough,” her sister said without preamble.

“What’s wrong?” Robin asked.

“You better sit down,” Melanie said.





CHAPTER TWO


The next morning, Robin woke up in a strange bed in an unfamiliar room, the conversation with her sister playing on an endless loop in her head.

“It’s Dad,” Melanie had said, her voice flat and unemotional.

“Is he dead?”

“He’s in the hospital.”

“Did he have a heart attack?”

“No.”

“A car accident?”

“No.”

“Someone shot him?”

“Bingo.”