“You have good genetics,” he assures me.
“My mom died of cancer last year after a decade of chemo.”
He cocks his head to the side and smiles, his eyes genuinely soft and kind. “Perhaps your father.”
“I don’t know who he was.”
“Then I’m sure you get it from him.”
I rush over to the table to grab a hairbrush and then hand it to him. “Here . . . throw this to me.”
“Why?” he asks.
“Please?” I walk several feet away.
He looks uncomfortable.
“Please,” I ask again.
He quickly tosses it underhand. I catch it with ease in my left hand, which should be paralyzed. It takes a few moments for Dr. Richards to respond, and finally he smiles, “You were given amazing DNA.”
CHAPTER FIVE
I am in my psychologist’s office and I hope that the last six weeks since the attack aren’t announcing themselves by dark circles under my eyes. Who am I kidding, I’ve looked in the mirror. Fatigue is playing games with all the shadows on my face.
The green velvet couch where I’ve dropped myself sits just across from a wall-size window on the fourteenth floor, and I can see the Transamerica Pyramid on Montgomery Street. Abstract works of art line the office’s brick walls.
“How are you doing now that you’re home?” Dr. Stella asks. She’s a sixty-year-old woman with frizzy dark hair who manicures her nails with diamonds, yet she resembles a pit-bull trainer more than a psychologist. Her muscles bubble up around her neck and her boob job sits high on lean pecs.
“Fine,” I say immediately, but Dr. Stella’s face contorts, sending her left eyebrow high and the apple of her right cheekbone swells. After these many years, my poker face is painfully obvious. “For the most part I’m fine except for the large knife I keep just beside my bed. I’m obsessed with whether I’ve locked the door or not, even though I know I have. I check it a hundred times right when I get home, but that doesn’t seem to help. So even in the middle of the night, I check again. And I haven’t gone out much . . . actually I haven’t gone out at all.”
She’s searching for the best words to challenge me—of that I’m always aware.
“Do you feel that’s a good choice?” She scratches her head with her pencil.
“I feel like you don’t think it’s a good choice.”
“It’s not that. We just had a good discussion last week about why your mom always told you to get back on that horse.”
“At that moment my mom didn’t know that she would be dead soon, or that I would call off my engagement, and especially that this would happen.”
“You’re right . . . but you’ve told me enough about your mother, Willow, that I think I understand who she was. What did she say about fear?”
The sound of Dr. Stella’s dog—sleeping on a bed in the corner of the room—scratching his ear is suddenly very loud and my leg itches, which seems to be from these nasty ill-fitted pants that I shouldn’t have worn.
“She said that fear is worse than death.” The lights suddenly glisten in the bottom of my eye.
One thing Dr. Stella isn’t afraid of is “aha moment” silence, but right now there is rush hour traffic in my brain because of that sudden realization: “Fear is worse than death.” She finally repeats, then again lets the silence hover until I squirm. “Have you had many visitors?”
“Ian comes over whether I ask him or not, and his helicoptering drives me crazy.”
“Do you blame him?”
“Yes. Always. For everything,” I say in slight jest. “Just as I’ve said before, everything is about him. It always has been. We spent an hour the other day contemplating why he didn’t get the sergeant position on the police force. Meanwhile I’m having a panic attack about some sound I hear in the hallway. I’m sweating profusely, shaking . . . and he doesn’t notice. At all. I mean at all.”
“Well, we already figured out years ago that he’s a narcissist.”
“Yeah. And even though it’s nice to feel protected, I don’t need to take care of him right now.”
“As you shouldn’t. Anybody else? Somebody that makes you happy, comfortable . . .”
“Dr. Richards. He’s come by several times and there’s something about him that makes me feel safe.”
“That’s nice of him.”
Pooter, the dog, comes over and sniffs my sweating hands. His cheeks feel like suede, so without thinking I let out a large sigh and my exhausted arms wrap around his neck. Sweetly, the dog sniffs my ear, but doesn’t pull away. “Willow,” Dr. Stella quietly calls, “we’ll get through this. I promise.”
“I miss my life. I miss the kids . . . the schoolhouse.”
“Maybe it’s time to go back?”
Just this idea alone makes my breath stop. “Maybe. But . . .”
Dr. Stella takes a sip of her water, so clearly providing me time before her next question. “What’s going on, Willow? I know you. I can see that there’s something deeper going on here.”
Don’t say anything, I tell myself when my neck clamps as a warning. The smell of the pumpkin spice candle is slightly nauseating, so I reach over and pick up the metal lid. “Do you mind?” I ask her.
“Not at all,” she says, seeming proud that I am so straightforward. I quickly cover the candle and extinguish the flame.
