Then, looking back up, she added, “I cannot thank you enough for what you did for me today. Somehow you knew how hard it would be for me to crawl back to my father, and I am so grateful for your help with this job. I promise, I’ll work hard, and I won’t let you down.”
“You don’t have to promise me anything,” he replied. “I’m just glad you’re not going back inside. I would miss seeing you every Wednesday.”
“Well, now we get to see each other more often than that. Like tomorrow, for example. I’ll be here,” she smiled. As she turned to go, she caught a glimpse of the black White Sox jacket hanging over the railing where he had left it. “Don’t forget your jacket. You have a tendency to leave it places.”
With that last piece of advice, she climbed onto the dock, and Grant watched her long, limber legs carry her away. He smiled as he headed toward the bridge. She said she would go to a baseball game with him! Even better, she would be working with him every day. He was quite proud of himself.
10. The Slippery Slope
What’s been on your mind, Sophie?” Hunter began their second therapy session.
“Not much,” Sophie replied breezily, pasting a smile on her face. She was resolute not to reveal too much, determined to tread carefully this time around. In addition, she felt a bit distracted. Her mind kept floating back to the man she’d just left behind on the ship. Grant’s kindness had been astonishing, and she could not get over the compassion he’d shown to a stranger.
Hunter sat back in his chair. An awkward silence descended upon them. She averted her eyes from his hazel gaze and stared instead at the fish tank, observing Nemo swimming lazy circles around the fake coral of his enclosed aquatic home. Sophie felt similarly trapped at the moment.
Her gaze then traveled to the set of framed documents over Hunter’s desk. She stood to get a closer look at his credentials, but then realized she was behaving exactly like Logan Barberi had during his first session with her—cagey and evasive, attempting to deflect the focus from client to therapist. She knew she must be frustrating the hell out of Hunter with her silence.
“Ten percent,” she finally said, sitting back down.
“Ten percent?”
Numbers had always come easily to her. Whereas most psychology doctoral students barely survived the rigors of graduate statistics, Sophie had thrived in the class, impressing her professor so thoroughly with her math skills that he had asked her to tutor the following year’s crop of students. Numbers were nice, neat, and tidy, unlike the messy ambiguity of people. Perhaps she should have taken her father’s advice and become an accountant for his construction business. Surely she would find herself in a better life situation now.
“I was just thinking about something I learned in my Professional Issues class,” she explained. “Ten percent of male therapists admit to having sex with their clients. Only one percent of female therapists report doing that.”
There was a slight lift to Hunter’s eyebrows. Of all the possible topics his client could begin with, this is what she selected. Was she coming on to him? “Were the male therapists heterosexual or homosexual?” he quietly asked.
“I don’t think this study reported the therapists’ sexual orientation,” she said. Did he realize she knew he was gay? Sophie wasn’t sure how to handle the situation.
Hunter began to speak and then faltered. Thank God he was out as a gay man in his personal life. He’d been out for fifteen years now, and it made life so much easier. Secrets could be quite destructive. However, he was not out to everyone professionally. He treated each client individually, only revealing his sexual orientation to particular clients, and only if it seemed clinically relevant to do so.
Was Sophie’s comment a subtle way to test him about therapeutic boundaries? If she was a psychologist, had she perhaps heard about him being gay from a colleague? Deciding this situation warranted a disclosure, Hunter said, “Well, I definitely won’t be in that ten percent when it comes to you then. I’m gay.”
She met his eyes for one of the first times in the session and swallowed anxiously. “I know. It was the deciding factor in me choosing you off that list. Well, that, and I heard that you are very good at what you do.”
“Thank you,” Hunter responded. “Though I have certainly made my share of mistakes over the years.”
“Haven’t we all,” Sophie said.
“I want to be a good therapist to you, Sophie,” he said. “I sense that it’s quite difficult for you to talk openly in here. Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable?”
“You’ve been fine. I just … I … I’m just so mortified about what has gotten me here. I don’t know if I can talk about it. I never imagined myself in this position … on parole after a year in prison, my career in ruins, on the other side of the couch …”
Ah, he thought. She had mentioned the study as a way to talk about herself. “You feel embarrassed to be in that one percent of female therapists?”
She sighed. “Precisely. Why couldn’t I be like the other ninety-nine percent? I committed the cardinal sin of therapists. I exploited my power. I exploited my client.”
“It sounds like he may have exploited you as well. Not many therapists spend time in prison as a result of falling in love with their client.”
“Not many therapists fall in love with a Mafia kingpin,” she countered. They sat quietly before Hunter broke the silence.
“Has he been bothering you since you got out of prison?”
A disgusted look crossed her face. “Apparently he’s nowhere to be found. Logan conveniently disappeared right when I was arrested, and no one has heard from him since.”
“Whoa. So, the man you loved betrayed you, and then left you alone to deal with the fallout?”
“Yes.” She felt bile in her throat, a rage that crept up her body with advancing tendrils of hostility and helplessness.
“You must feel so angry and bitter, and totally paralyzed when you try to move forward—like there’s no way to get closure with him disappearing like that.”
“Exactly!” she replied. “I haven’t had the chance to say one word to Logan since this all went down. He just … he just … left me. He screwed me over and then left me hanging.”
Watching her breathing quicken and her jaw clench, Hunter asked, “What would you like to tell him, if he was right here in this room with you?”
Her face contorted with anger. “I’d say, ‘How could you do this to me? You said that you loved …’” Abruptly she stopped. “What is this, the empty chair technique?”
“No techniques, Sophie. Just two people talking. Just two people trying to make sense of the past so that they can move on to the future.”
She folded her arms across her chest defensively, and Hunter sighed.