Chapter Fourteen

Fourteen

"You're on the verge of making a big change in your life," Susan Silverman said.

"How do you know that?" I said. I'd just arrived at her office. I was ten minutes late. We'd barely exchanged hellos.

"Just making a guess," she said, "because you look very tense. And change tends to stress you out, no?"

"I'm tense because I nearly committed murder at least three times on Route 16. I hate holiday traffic. Plus, I don't like being late."

"Ah," she said. "My mistake." She looked as though she didn't believe me. And the truth was, she was right not to. There was a reason for doctor/patient confidentiality—it provided the freedom to be honest. And from my own experience, therapy worked only if you told the truth.

"Okay, you win," I said. I took off my coat and hung it on the hook. "I'm late because I took a whole bunch of turns to lose a RAV4 that I think was following me."

"Pardon?"

"I drove here from an urgent care in Watertown." I glanced at Susan Silverman, alarm clouding her serene features. "Oh, no, I'm fine. It was for a case I'm working on."

"Whew." I followed Susan from the waiting room into her office. She took a seat behind her desk. As always, I admired her outfit—a pale gray cashmere sweater and an immaculately tailored charcoal pencil skirt, paired with an elegant string of pearls and matching earrings. I'd never seen Susan wear the same thing twice, yet, sartorially speaking, she always managed to knock it out of the park.

I took the chair across from Susan. She also had a couch, and the first few times I'd seen her, I'd felt obligated to use it, with Susan sitting in a chair beside me. But once she sensed my awkwardness and told me I could sit anywhere I liked, this chair became my chosen perch, with Dr. Silverman sitting behind her desk, as though we were having a business meeting.

I loved this chair, truly. After years of therapy, the soft leather felt like the embrace of an old friend—one I could say anything to without fear of being judged. "So anyway, when I was leaving the urgent care," I told Susan, "I noticed a suspicious character in the parking lot."

"What do you mean by ‘suspicious'?" Susan said.

"Well, he was sitting in his car, for one thing," I said. "But also, he was wearing a baseball cap. Who wears a baseball cap at this time of year?"

Susan shrugged. "I never thought about it."

"I mean, what's next? Flip-flops? A Speedo?"

"I…suppose it's unusual." She sounded as though she was trying her hardest to be charitable.

"Anyway, the cap was covering his face. Like he was pretending to be asleep."

She nodded. "It was an urgent care, yes? Couldn't he have actually been asleep? Couldn't he have just been someone's ride?"

"Yeah, but I never forget a face—or even a baseball cap—when it belongs to a guy who was holding a gun on me."

"Wait, what, now?"

"That job I was on back in July," I said. "Early on, I talked to this disgusting criminal named Moon Monaghan. He has ties to Desmond Burke."

"Your former father-in-law."

"Yes," I said. "And during that entire conversation, Moon had one of his lackeys sitting in a car about twenty feet away, aiming a gun at me in case I did or said anything he didn't like."

"Yikes."

"Like I said, Moon's the worst."

"Clearly."

"Anyway, I could have sworn this was the same car, the same lackey."

"Was the car unusual?"

"No. A black RAV4."

"And you said the man's face was covered."

"The baseball cap, though."

"Okay."

"Also his size. And his attitude. Exact same."

"Okay."

"You don't sound like you believe me."

"My job isn't to believe or disbelieve," Susan said. "I'm just here to listen." If she hadn't gone into psychiatry, Susan would have made a great politician.

I sighed. "Anyway, I called Desmond, and I asked him why Moon was having me tailed."

"What did he say?"

"He said he would talk to Moon, but he didn't know of any reason why he would do that. In fact, he said Moon wants little to do with me because he finds me confusing."

"Interesting."

"And then Desmond started asking me about my weekend with Richie. He asked if his son had popped the question yet, and when I said no, he told me to forget he ever said it."

"Aha."

"Aha?"

"I feel like I have a better idea as to why you're so tense."

"I told you why I'm tense."

"Because you believe you were being followed by a man in a baseball cap."

"I was being followed by him."

"Are you sure that's the only reason?"

"Isn't that enough of a reason?"

"How did you feel when Desmond Burke mentioned that Richie planned to propose to you?"

I exhaled. "Tense," I said. "Very, very tense."

I expected her to say "Aha" again, but thankfully she didn't.

As usual, Susan had successfully opened the floodgates. The words banged around in my heart until I had to say them out loud. "Richie wants me to retire."

"He does?"

"Well, not retire per se," I said. "But he wants me to stop taking dangerous jobs, which is pretty much the same thing."

"How do you feel about that?"

I folded my hands in my lap, lacing my fingers together tight, as though to keep them from escaping my hands. "Richie worries about me," I said. "It's understandable. He loves me. He wants me to stay alive."

"I am wondering how you feel about it," she said. "Not Richie."

My throat caught. I felt an awful pressure against the backs of my eyes. I wasn't going to cry—I knew that. But I wanted to very badly, which was, in a way, worse. "I feel…like I'm being forced to choose between the two things I love most."

Susan nodded slowly.

"And…and I'm mad at Richie for making me choose."

"Is he making you choose?"

"Well, it's not like he's issued an ultimatum. But…"

"But what?"

"I don't want him to worry about me."

She nodded again.

"What do you think?" I said.

"Do you care what I think?"

"Of course I do."

"Why?"

"Because…"

Susan steepled her fingers under her chin and watched me for a long while. "I think," she said finally, "that you should probably stop caring so much about what other people think. Including me. Including Richie. We might get worried for you. We might disagree with your choices. But trust me, they are your choices. You're the only one who has to live with them. And no matter how worried or upset we may be about what you choose to do with your life, we will survive."

Susan's cheeks flushed. In all the time I'd known her, I hadn't ever heard her say so many words at one time, or show this type of emotion. It made me think about her own relationship, about which I knew very little—though enough to understand that she might have had firsthand experience with fears like Richie's.

I felt a tingling in my chest. Nerves, I thought. Because I was, in fact, very, very tense.

It wasn't until the session was nearly over and I felt the same sensation, this time at my side, that I realized it wasn't nerves, but my purse. More precisely, it was Dylan's phone, zipped inside and set to vibrate. Someone was calling him.