Suddenly One Summer (FBI/US Attorney #6)(37)

Eventually, the fight had just left her.

Her mom had struggled with depression for years—Victoria could remember several occasions on which she’d come home from school to find her mother still in bed, with the shades drawn. The “bad times,” as Victoria had thought of them when she was a child, would last anywhere from a couple of days to a week or two, but then they’d go away, and things would be normal for a while.

She’d known that something was off leading up to That Day, six months after the divorce had been finalized, when she was ten years old. She’d noticed that her mom had started taking a lot of days off of work, had heard her crying in her bedroom when she thought Victoria was asleep, and had seen the bills piling up on the kitchen counter, along with the letters from the bank warning her mother that she was delinquent on her mortgage payments. She’d tried talking to her dad about it during their decreasingly frequent phone calls, but by then his second wife’s baby—also a daughter—had been born, and he always seemed preoccupied with his new family.

Still, despite it all, Victoria had been in a good mood when she’d arrived home from school on that particular afternoon. She’d been invited to her first slumber party, at Denise Russo’s house, and had raced excitedly into her mother’s bedroom to tell her the news. At first, finding the shades drawn, she’d just assumed her mother was sleeping again.

But when she’d seen the empty bottle of sleeping pills tipped over on the nightstand, she knew instantly that something was very wrong.

Hang in there, Victoria. Help is coming, I promise.

The voice, from all those years ago, faded away as she looked at Dr. Metzel, feeling the need to set the record straight.

“Before we go down some unnecessary path, you should know that I had a lot of therapy after my mother swallowed those pills. Two years of it, in fact. So I think I’m good there. A-OK on that front.”

“Yet you just had a flashback to that day a little over a month ago, triggering your first panic attack.”

Well, that. “That’s just because of the similarity in the 9-1-1 calls. It’s not like I’m thinking about my mother’s suicide attempt when these other panic issues have popped up on the subway or during my exercise class.”

He considered that. “Okay, what are you thinking about during those moments, then?”

“Mostly that I don’t want to faint or have another episode in public.”

“We touched on that before. Your concern about what other people might think if you had a panic attack in front of them. To not look ‘weird,’ as you put it. Is that something you’ve always been focused on?”

She considered this. “I suppose it’s something I’ve paid attention to for a while.”

“Where do you think that comes from?”

She had a sneaking suspicion where he was going with this and decided to cut to the chase. “Are you asking if it’s something that started after my mother’s suicide attempt?”

“I think it’s possible there’s a connection. But I’d like to know what you think.”

She sighed. So much for not going down this path. “Suicide is unsettling. It’s morbid. People don’t know what to do or say when they hear about something like that. And believe me, everyone knew what had happened with my mom: the neighbors, all the kids and teachers at school, even the parents. Some kids teased me, others went out of their way to be extra nice, and some just looked at me weird and ignored me. But no one simply acted normal. So I acted normal, hoping that, eventually, everyone else would do the same.”

“And now, as an adult? Why do you think you still feel that same desire to appear ‘normal,’ as you put it?”

She shrugged. “I like the way people see me. They see a strong, confident person. What’s so bad about that?”

“Nothing. But there’s a difference between wanting people to perceive you as a strong, confident person, and being fixated on it to the point that it manifests itself in a panic disorder.”

Victoria fell quiet, not quite sure what to say in response.

“Maybe we should switch gears for a moment,” Dr. Metzel said after a pause, likely sensing her unease. “Let’s talk about your personal relationships.”

Any topic of conversation that didn’t involve the words fixate or manifest or disorder was just fine with her. “Okay. What do you want to know?”

“Do you date?”

“Sure.” She was a single woman in her thirties, living in a fun, vibrant city. Of course she dated.

“When’s the last time you were in a serious relationship?”

“Define serious.”

“It’s hard to quantify, but let’s say a relationship that lasted more than three months.”

Victoria thought about it. “Marc Joyner.”

Dr. Metzel readied his pen. “And why did things end between you and Marc?”

She laughed, not seeing how this was even remotely relevant. “It wasn’t like it was some big, tragic breakup or anything. He was heading off to UCLA, while I was going to Duke, and we both realized a long-distance relationship wouldn’t work.”

Dr. Metzel did a little scrunchy thing with his eyebrows. “Are you saying that your most recent relationship to last three months was in high school?”