He dropped into his usual leather chair as the doctor settled into one kitty-corner to him. She was wearing a knee-length skirt, and as she crossed her legs Paul made an effort not to look. Dr. White— early forties, brown hair to her shoulders, eyes to match, well packaged—was an attractive woman, but Paul had read about that so-called transference stuff, where patients fall in love with their therapists. Not only was that not going to happen, he told himself, he wasn’t about to give the impression it might.
He was here to get help. Plain and simple. He didn’t need another relationship to complicate the ones he already had.
“Stealing a magazine?” she asked.
“Oh, no,” he said, flashing the cover. “There was an article I wanted to read.”
“Oh, God,” she said, frowning. “That might not have been the best one to put out there.”
Paul managed a grin. “The headline did catch my eye. Otherwise, I might have tried a golf magazine. Even though I don’t play.”
“Those are my father’s,” she said. “He’s eighty-three, and he still gets out on the course, occasionally, if I can go with him. And he loves the driving range. He can still whack a bucket of balls like nobody’s business. A lot less chance of getting lost when you don’t actually head out onto the course.” She extended a hand and Paul gave her the magazine. She took another glance at the headline as she tossed it onto a nearby coffee table.
“How’s the head?” she asked.
“Physically, or mentally?”
“I was thinking, physically?” She smiled. “For now.”
“Dr. Jones says I’m improving the way I should be, but with a head injury like I had, we have to watch for any effects for up to a year. And I’m still having some, no doubt about it.”
“Such as?”
“The headaches, of course. And I forget things now and then. Sometimes, I walk into a room, and I have no idea why I’m there. Not only that, but I might not even remember getting there. One minute, I’m in the bedroom, the next I’m down in the kitchen, and I’ve got no idea how it happened. And I haven’t gone back to squash. Can’t run the risk of getting hit in the head with a racket or running into the wall. I’m kind of itching to get back to it, though. Maybe soon. I’ll just take it easy.”
Anna White nodded. “Okay.”
“Sleeping is still, well, you know.”
“We’ll get to that.”
“My balance is getting pretty good again. And I can concentrate pretty well when reading. That took a while. It looks like I’ll be back to teaching in a couple of months, in September.”
“Have you been to the campus at all since the incident?”
Paul nodded. “A couple of times, kind of easing into it. Did one lecture for a summer class—one I’d given before so I didn’t have to write it from scratch. Had one tutorial with some kids, got a good discussion going. But that’s about it.”
“The college has been very patient.”
“Well, yes. I think they would have been anyway, but considering it was a member of their own faculty who tried to kill me . . . they’ve been accommodating, for sure.” He paused, ran his hand lightly over his left temple, where the shovel had hit him. “I always tell myself it could have been worse.”
“Yes.”
“I could have ended up in the Volvo with Jill and Catherine.”
Anna nodded solemnly. “As bad as things are, they can always be worse.”
“I guess.”
“Okay, so we’ve dealt with the physical. Now let’s get to my area of expertise. How’s your mood been lately?”
“Up and down.”
“Are you still seeing him, Paul?”
“Kenneth?”
“Yes, Kenneth.”
Paul shrugged. “In my dreams, of course.”
“And?”
Paul hesitated, as though embarrassed. “Sometimes . . . just around.”
“Have you seen him since we spoke the other day?”
“I was picking up a few things at Walgreens and I was sure I saw him in the checkout line. I could feel a kind of panic attack overwhelming me. So I just left, didn’t buy the things I had in my basket. Got in the car and drove the hell away fast as I could.”
“Did you honestly believe it was him?”
Slowly, Paul said, “No. I knew it couldn’t be.”
“Because?” She leaned her head toward him.
“Because Kenneth is in prison.”
“For two counts of murder and one of attempted murder,” Anna said. “Would have been three if that policeman hadn’t come by when he did.”
“I know.” Paul rubbed his hands together. It had been more than just luck that a cop came. The officer in that cruiser he and Kenneth had driven past had decided to go looking for that Volvo with a busted taillight.
Anna leaned forward onto her knees. “In time, this will get better. I promise you.”
“What about the nightmares?” he asked.
“They’re persisting?”
“Yes. I had one two nights ago. Charlotte had to wake me.”
“Tell me about it.”
Paul swallowed. He needed a moment. “I was finding it hard to see. Everything was foggy, but then I realized I was all wrapped up in plastic sheeting. I tried to move it away but I couldn’t. And then I could see something through the plastic. A face.”
“Kenneth Hoffman?”
Paul shook his head. “You’d think so. He’s been in most of them. What I saw on the other side was myself, screaming at me to come out. It’s like I was simultaneously in the plastic and outside it, but mostly in, and feeling like I couldn’t breathe. I was trying to push my way out. It’s a new variation on my usual nightmare. Sometimes I think Charlotte’s one of the two women in the back of that car. I have this vague recollection, before I blacked out, of being terrified Kenneth had killed Charlotte.”
“Why did you think that?”
He shrugged. “She hadn’t come with me to the play. My mind just went there.”
“Sure.”
“Anyway, thank God Charlotte’s there when I have the nightmares, waking me up. The last one, my arms were flailing about in front of me as I tried to escape the plastic.”
“Are you able to get back to sleep after?”
“Sometimes, but I’m afraid to. I figure the nightmare’s just on pause.” He closed his eyes briefly, as though checking to see whether the images that had come to him in the night were still there. When he opened them, he said, “And I guess it was four nights ago, I dreamed I was sitting at the table with them.”
“With?”
“You know. Jill Foster and Catherine Lamb. At Kenneth’s house. We were all taking turns typing our apologies. The women, they had these ghoulish grins, blood draining from the slits in their throats, actually laughing at me because the typewriter was now in front of me and I don’t know what to write and they’re saying, ‘We’re all done! We’re all done!’ And you know how, in a dream, you can’t actually see words clearly? They’re all a-jumble?”
“Yes,” Anna White said.
“So that’s why it’s so frustrating. I know I have to type something or Kenneth, standing there at the end of the table, looking like fucking Nosferatu—excuse me—will kill me. But then, I know he’s going to kill me anyway.” Paul’s hands were starting to shake.
Anna reached across and touched the back of one. “Let’s stop for a second.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“We’ll switch gears for a bit. How are things with Charlotte?”
Paul shrugged. “I guess they’re okay.”
“That doesn’t sound terribly positive.”
“No, really, things are better. She’s been very supportive, although having to watch me go through all this has to get her down at times. You know, before all this happened, things weren’t exactly a hundred percent. I think Charlotte was going through something, almost a kind of reassessment of her life. You know, ten years ago, is this where she would have imagined herself being? Selling real estate in Milford? Not that there’s anything wrong with that, you know? I think her dreams were a little different when she was younger. But my nearly getting killed, maybe that had a way of refocusing things. They’re better now.”
“And your son? Josh?”
Paul frowned. “It hit him hard when it happened, of course. Thinking your dad might die, that’s not easy for a nine-year-old kid. But I wasn’t in the hospital long, and while I had some recovering to do—and still am—it was clear I wasn’t going to drop dead right away. And he splits his time between his mom and me. So he’s not necessarily around when I wake up screaming in the night.”
Paul tried to laugh. Anna allowed herself a smile. They were both quiet a moment. Anna sensed that Paul was working up to something, so she waited.
Finally, he said, “I wanted to bounce something off you.”