Suddenly One Summer (FBI/US Attorney #6)(55)

On the opposite side of the desk, Will had his feet propped up on the chair next to him. He turned his head and looked at her. “I’m guessing today didn’t improve that opinion much.”

Indeed, it had not.

Nineteen

THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON, Victoria proudly told Dr. Metzel about her successful train ride the previous Sunday—an achievement she’d repeated just that morning by taking the subway to his office.

He seemed pleased with her progress, and encouraged her to continue with weekend excursions, when the train cars weren’t so crowded, so that she could continue to “experience the feared environment” under safer, more controlled circumstances.

“And I also took an exercise class,” she told him. Granted, it had been a yoga class at seven A.M. that morning, which meant no crowd and no hot and sweaty room to trigger her fear of light-headedness, but still. Baby steps.

He walked her through another version of a relaxation technique, then tried something new: he asked her to hyperventilate, and then hold her breath, with the idea of re-creating the sensations of a panic attack.

She got about a minute into that, and then began to feel light-headed. Immediately, she stopped.

“I’m not sure about this exercise.” Feeling as though her heart was racing, she tried taking a deep breath.

“It’s okay, we can stop,” Dr. Metzel said reassuringly. “Remember your relaxation techniques.”

She nodded and closed her eyes. I feel quiet. The muscles in my forehead are relaxed and smooth. My shoulders are loose. My legs and feet feel warm and heavy.

After several moments, she felt better and smiled weakly at Dr. Metzel. “Guess I’m not cured yet.”

“You’ll get there. The point is for you to remember that you are in control.”

She nodded, then glanced at her watch and saw they still had ten minutes left in the session.

“With the time we have left,” Dr. Metzel led in, “I was wondering if we could talk about your relationship with your parents.”

“Sounds very Freudian.”

He smiled. “Let’s start with your mother. Did her suicide attempt impact the relationship between you two?”

No beating around the bush there, apparently. “Of course. How could it not?”

“Could you expand on that a little?”

“Afterward, I felt very protective of her. My mother is an only child, and my grandparents on that side were already in a nursing home at the time, so she didn’t have anyone else to look out for her. My father was no help, naturally—in fact, after her suicide attempt, his entire family completely distanced themselves from my mother and me.”

“Were you worried she would try to kill herself again?”

Only every day I left for school, for about five years. “It was a concern, yes.”

“That must have been very difficult on you.”

Victoria paused, surprised to suddenly feel a slight burning in her eyes. For Pete’s sake, Slade. This was something she’d resolved a long time ago. “It wasn’t easy, no.”

Dr. Metzel held her gaze. “Were you angry with your mother for trying to kill herself?”

She shifted uncomfortably in her chair. Okay, see, now this was why she didn’t like therapy. “I mean, what kind of question is that? You want to know how I felt? I felt happy when she got better. There.” She pointed to his notepad. “Write that one down.”

Dr. Metzel let that sit for a moment. “What’s your relationship with your mother like today?”

They were moving on—good. “She still lives in central Florida, where I grew up. We see each other a few times a year. Either I’ll fly down there or she’ll come up here.”

“How about your father? Any contact there?”

“Nope. Nada.” She debated whether to admit this next part. “I looked up my two half sisters on Facebook a couple years back. I guess I was just curious.”

“Have you considered reaching out to them?”

She shook her head. “How do you start that conversation? I’m not sure they even know I exist.”

Dr. Metzel jotted something down and then flipped through his notes. “I want to circle back to something we started talking about during our last session, before we ran out of time. You mentioned that you haven’t had a relationship that lasted more than three months since high school.”

Oh, brother. “The summer after high school. And really, I still don’t see how that’s relevant to . . . well, anything.”

“I think if you dig a little deeper, you might find it’s relevant to a lot of the things we’ve been talking about.”

“Ah, you have a theory.” She cocked her head. “Okay, I’ll bite. Let’s hear it.”

Dr. Metzel’s voice was calm and matter-of-fact. “Your father left you, started a new family, and hasn’t been in contact with you since. Then your mother, the only parent you had around, tried to kill herself—leaving you fearful, as a child, that she might try to do it again. My theory, Victoria, is that because of all this, you have significant trust, abandonment, and control issues that are continuing to impact your ability to have healthy, intimate adult relationships. Issues that you are reluctant to acknowledge, given your near-compulsive need to always seem ‘okay.’”