Three girls, ranging in age from early to late twenties. Girls. Funny how one always referred that way to females as small as these three, but they were women, though almost sexless in their thinness. Not likely to be blood relatives, they were sisters in the way their skin stretched to cover their cheekbones and bare throats, identical in their short, shaggy haircuts, their baggy dress code, their gangly wrists devoid of jewelry, even a watch, their fingers unadorned, as if the extra weight couldn’t be tolerated. Hair and eye color was what differentiated. Without that, these girls could have been triplets.
Max couldn’t remember their names. One, two, three, they’d entered, been introduced, looked her up, then down, silently guessed at her weight, glared at her, and finally taken a place on the blue velour sofa, the overstuffed chair, and the plushly carpeted floor. Different positions, different places, all three had grabbed a pillow and hugged it to their bodies. For comfort. For disguise.
Max wanted to do the same thing. A pillow would hide the size of her stomach. It wasn’t self-consciousness. It was Bethany. Anorexia terrified her in much the same way obesity terrified Prunella’s current patients. Terror that they could some day, some way, be what the other one was.
It was all about comfort zones. It was all about food. It was all about control.
Watching them, Max realized the afternoon sun through the windows didn’t quite reach them. She also realized they probably wanted it that way.
Dr. Shale still wore the pink and black suit, but she’d removed the jacket, the rose-colored blouse beneath soft and feminine. She glanced at her watch. Max did, too. Five after three. She wondered if Jada was chronically late.
Just as Prunella opened her mouth, presumably to speak, the door burst open. Jada flew in, flung herself across the room, and landed in the chair opposite Max’s seat on the sofa.
Sitting forward on the edge of her seat, Max glanced from Jada to Prunella and back again. She tilted her chin forward, did her best imitation of shock and hoped to hell it worked.
It took Jada a full ten seconds to notice her. A hell of a long time, Max’s facial expression felt frozen to her bones.
The emotions washed across Jada’s gaunt features. She did a double take, her mouth fell open, and her eyes widened. Shock, wonder. Then came pissed. She narrowed her gaze, her brown eyes flared, and her lips thinned.
Her voice, when it came, was brittle as glass. “Did my mother send you here?”
“Your mother?” Of course, that was the last thing Max had expected her to say. She couldn’t help the repetition.
“You two know each other?” Prunella. It was unexpected turn for her, too.
“She’s gonna marry that cop.”
“The one next door?” one of the three popped out with.
So they all knew about Witt, had probably heard tales of his naked, gleaming chest in the hot sun while he slaved at dusting the leaves of his mother’s plastic plants.
“What other cop do I know?” Jada answered with a lacing of sarcasm.
“Ladies, why don’t you let Max talk?” Ah, Prunella, giving her fledgling patient the chance to sink or swim.
Max looked straight at Jada as she spoke. “Your mother doesn’t have anything to do with this. I had a problem, I took it to the good doctor, she let me come here. End of story.” She sounded defensive, which she figured was exactly how she’d sound if this had truly been divine coincidence.
Jada swept her gaze from head to foot. “Why don’t you stand up and show us how much of a problem you’ve got?”
Max was ready to do it. She wasn’t ashamed of her weight, at least not most of the time.
Prunella Shale figuratively stepped in. “I invited her, Jada.”
Jada glared. “Well, you didn’t ask us.”
Prunella met the glare head on and kept her voice soft but firm. “Just like I didn’t ask the others a few weeks ago when you came here right out of the hospital. I make those decisions.”
So Jada had been in the hospital. Well, that provided an answer to at least one of Max’s questions; the reason why she hadn’t attended Wendy Gregory’s funeral. Perhaps the reason why Virginia hadn’t either. She was looking after her daughter.
“Now let’s move on.” Sitting in the only straight back chair in the room, the doctor crossed her legs in a let’s-get-down-to-business gesture. “I’d like to devote this session to you, Jada. I think your feelings about what happened to your sister bear talking about.” You, your; Prunella’s carefully chosen words kept the focus on Jada, not Bethany. That’s what she’d gone through umpteen number of years of schooling to learn.
“Bethany? What the hell for?” Jada’s words were harsh, her tone flippant.
“Your mother told me she died on Wednesday.” Jada’s lip twitched at Dr. Shale’s mention of Virginia. “How do you feel about that?”
She took a deep breath, turned to look out the window, and then, like the others, she pulled a pastel pink pillow across her middle. “We didn’t get along. I’m sorry she’s dead. But we weren’t really friends.” She tipped her head and looked Prunella in the eye. “Do I lose points for not being distraught?”
Prunella didn’t get a chance to answer.
“You know you hated her.” That from the first arrival, Number One.
“You’re probably glad she’s dead.” Number Three.