Two months later, Dr. Benton smiled at me from across the room. It was mid-March, and the signs of spring—my favorite time of year—were beginning to show. Daffodils bloomed outside in her garden. Bradford pear trees were covered in white petals. What was going on outside the windows of the room made me feel good, but what was going on inside the room grated on my nerves more than a little.
Dr. Benton just seemed so self-assured, so all-knowing. She had every answer, whether it be in the form of a platitude, a coping technique, or a prescribed medication. I was talking to her on a weekly basis now, part of an agreement with Grace to help me get past my mental struggles. The problem was, I no longer seemed to be having serious mental struggles. I’d killed or maimed everyone who had tormented me. I’d accepted what I’d done, and I’d forgiven myself. It still bothered me that Sean was so far away, but I’d gotten into the habit of staying in touch with him on a regular basis, so that anxiety had eased. My mother’s will had finally gone through probate, so I had about $400,000 stashed in stock index funds. I was sleeping pretty well with the help of the same drug Katherine Davis said got her arrested for DUI.
Grace and I still weren’t living together, and I hadn’t given her ring back and asked her to marry me, but we were talking every day and getting along better and better. We laughed a lot, and she’d even started doing some good-natured needling. She’d called me Al Capone a couple of times, which, at some level, was probably pretty damned healthy. She hadn’t pressed me for details about the shootings, but if she had, I would have given her second-by-second accounts. I also would have told her about having Rupert Lattimore’s face melted, but I don’t think that would have gone over too well. I’d heard Rupert had undergone several terribly painful surgeries and that more were planned. I’d also heard he looked like he’d been tossed straight into hell. As far as I was concerned, getting oiled up couldn’t have happened to a more deserving person.
The cops had quit bothering me. Word of the fake DUI charge had gotten around pretty quickly once Katherine Davis caught a legitimate DUI. I’d called my friend Bob Ridge and told him what they’d done, and he’d talked to Earl Anderson, the patrol officer they’d conned into filing the charge. Bob told me the department was doing an internal investigation, but that nothing would ever come of it. Katherine Davis’s real DUI charge was dismissed when the arresting officer failed to show up to court three times. I was certain that was arranged by her aunt Dawn. I was actually in the courtroom the day they dismissed the charge against her. I smiled at her and waved as she turned to walk out of the courtroom. And as for the state trooper in West Virginia, I knew I’d never hear from him again. By killing Rex Fairchild, Pappy had pretty much destroyed his case. I’d killed Pappy, and I thought my call to Sammy Raft had cemented things.
“Are you dreaming?” Dr. Benton asked me. Our hour was almost up, and I was grateful for that.
“Right now?”
“When you sleep. You told me you’ve been sleeping better. Have you been having nightmares?”
The truth was that yes, I still had nightmares, but they were less frequent and less intense than they had been in the past.
“It’s been quite a while,” I lied.
“That’s remarkable, Darren,” Dr. Benton said. “You must be extremely strong mentally.”
“I’ve had a lot of practice.”
“Yes, yes, you have, unfortunately. But you’re still dealing with the triggers every day, correct? You’re still going to court, still going into jails, still dealing with judges and clients and policemen and prison guards and all that.”
“I’m pretty choosy about what I take right now because I’ve come into some money, but yes, I still have to deal with all those things on occasion.”
“Amazing. When I first saw you, I honestly didn’t think you’d be able to continue to practice law, especially criminal defense. You have to have developed some coping mechanisms subconsciously, some things you probably don’t even understand.”
I didn’t want to mention killing people to her. Doing so had lightened my psychological load considerably. “I guess I have. And you’re right. I can’t really identify or articulate anything I’m doing, but I just seem to be getting along better.”
“How are things with Grace?”
“Coming along. I think she’s trusting me more every day.”
“You’ve never mentioned what caused her to have trust issues in the first place, and she hasn’t said a word. Would you be comfortable sharing what caused her not to trust you?”
“It was a combination of things,” I said. “After my mother was killed, I became unavailable emotionally to her. I shut her out. She tried to help me, but the more she tried, the more I resisted. It just deteriorated to the point where she returned the engagement ring I’d given her and asked me to leave.”
“That had to be difficult.”
“It was. For both of us.”
“But you stayed true to her and she stayed true to you, and now it appears your relationship is back on the mend.”
Grace was hiding her pregnancy by wearing loose clothing. It wouldn’t be long, though, before anyone who really knew her would point and say, “Is that a baby bump?” I found myself largely ambivalent about her pregnancy, mostly because I didn’t know how things would turn out between the two of us. If we got back together and got along, I’d embrace the child. If things went south, though, I honestly didn’t think I’d have much room for a baby. I hadn’t told Dr. Benton about the pregnancy yet, mostly because I didn’t think it was any of her business, and I certainly hadn’t told her about my brief affair with the rat, Katherine Davis.
“Love is a powerful force,” I said, because it seemed like the right thing to say at the time. I’d learned to work Dr. Benton.
“Maybe the most powerful force,” she said. “How are you feeling about the future, Darren? Are you optimistic? Pessimistic? Afraid?”
“I’m uncertain,” I said. “Optimism is a choice, and I’ve made that choice, but I’ve learned that I can’t know what’s coming. I know bad things happen. They’ve already happened to me, and I feel sure more bad things will happen before it’s over. But I’ll be able to handle the bad times better in the future. I feel fairly certain of that.”
“Because you’ve developed coping mechanisms,” she said.
Because I’ve learned that I’m not afraid to blow somebody’s brains out when they deserve it; because my rule of law and your rule of law are two entirely different sets of principles.
But I kept my thoughts to myself. “I guess you could say that,” I responded. “I guess you could say I’ve developed my own way of coping.”
“Good for you, Darren,” she said. “I wish I had more patients like you.”
I chuckled. I couldn’t help it.
“What’s funny?” she asked.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t think you really want more patients like me.”
“Why is that?”
Because you’re a lousy shrink, and you’d probably eventually wind up dead and stuffed in that closet over there.
“I’m not anything special,” I said. “A little different, maybe, but nothing special.”
She rose from her overstuffed chair, indicating our session was over. “So I’ll see you next week? Same time?”