TJ: I feel as if we’re having two conversations here.
FM: Now you know how I feel, right? When did you speak to her? How long have you been letting me sit here making a fool of myself? Since the first time? Since the beginning?
TJ: Calm down, please.
FM: I hate it when people say that to me. I am calm, okay? I’m allowed to raise my voice when something upsetting is happening to me. I’m allowed.
TJ: Do you want to end the session?
FM: No, I want to know what else you know about me. All of it.
TJ: You know that’s not how this works.
FM: Well, none of this is working out the way it was supposed to, is it?
TJ: How about . . . What if you just told me your story in your own way? Without my prompting you or anything. Just tell me whatever you want to tell me.
FM: Why should I do that?
TJ: You might find it helpful to unburden yourself.
FM: Like therapy?
TJ: It doesn’t have to be like that. And I’m not a therapist.
FM: Then what would be the point?
TJ: You’ll have to decide that for yourself. But I’ve found, doing this all these years, that often there’s a certain kind of catharsis in telling someone your story.
FM: And if I do that . . . what? You get your big scoop, right? And I’m . . . I just go back where I came from like none of this ever happened.
TJ: It doesn’t have to be like that.
FM: Oh, sure, right. You don’t know what’s going to happen. No one does.
TJ: Why don’t you tell me, and then we’ll see?
FM: Just tell you the truth? The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
TJ: This isn’t a court of law.
FM: Maybe not. But I’m going to be judged anyway, aren’t I?
Chapter 31
The Friend of My Enemy
Cecily
“Everything I tell you is confidential, right?”
“Of course. Why do you ask?”
I’m back in therapy, back in the confines of Linda’s office, the tie I thought I cut turning out to be just another loose end to get tangled in.
“Because I have to tell you something I can’t tell anyone, so I have to know it’s safe.”
“I have to keep confidentiality unless I think you’re a threat to yourself or others. Are you?”
I think of the flashes of red rage I’ve felt off and on since Kaitlyn walked back into my life. But if I didn’t strike her last night, I’m unlikely to do it now.
“No, it’s nothing like that.”
“Is it illegal?”
“That’s a good question. If you fake your own death, is that illegal?”
“Is this a hypothetical discussion or something you’re planning?”
“What? Oh no, no, it’s not about me.”
“But it is about someone.”
“Maybe. I’m still fact gathering here.”
Linda shakes her head. “Well, I’m not a lawyer, but theoretically, if you faked your death to get an advantage, insurance money, say, then yes, I think it would be illegal.”
“What if it was just to get away? Not for financial reasons. Not directly, anyway, and I don’t know how this person could’ve known about that anyway . . .”
“Cecily, why don’t you simply tell me who you’re talking about, and we can take it from there?”
“And you’ll keep whatever I tell you to yourself?”
“Yes.”
I lean back on the couch, unleashing a trace of the previous occupant’s perfume. I don’t recognize it, but it smells expensive. I’ve smelled it before, and my mind wanders to who it might be. Do I know her? Linda specializes in people in highly confidential positions. She has separate in and out doors so patients don’t run into one another in the lobby. I never thought I’d need that kind of privacy, but I’m happy for it now.
I force the words out. “Kaitlyn’s alive.”
“Kaitlyn Ring?”
“Yes.”
“Are you certain?”
Linda’s looking at me in a way she hasn’t before. As if I might be crazy. It didn’t occur to me that this might be an issue, that I’d be the one treated with suspicion.
“I’ve spoken to her,” I say. “So yes.”
“How is that possible?”
“If what she says is true, and I’m adding a big ‘if’ here, she was having some kind of panic attack a few moments before the explosion, so she left the building. That’s why she was at the elevators a few minutes before . . . I don’t know if I ever told you that part?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, either, because it’s Initiative business, but anyway, you said it was confidential, so . . .”
“Take a breath, Cecily.”
I inhale deeply.
“Take two.”
I do it again. In and out slowly like Linda showed me early on in our sessions when everything would come spilling out of me in a manic stream.
“Better?”
“Yes, thanks.”
“So she was leaving the building, and then what?”
“She’s not sure. Everything blew up and she came to a block away. She doesn’t know how she ended up there—she thinks she was thrown by the blast; it’s super unclear—but the next thing she knew she was buying a bus ticket for Montreal. That’s where she’s been all this time. Montreal. Looking after someone else’s children! Can you believe that?”
“This is a bit hard to absorb, I’ll admit.”
“Right?”
“How did you learn all this?”
“She showed up at my house last night.”
“She’s back?”
I nod. “She read that story in Vanity Fair about Franny. I don’t know if you saw it, but Franny’s engaged to Joshua.”
“Yes, I did see that.”
“I’m sure you’d have a field day with that one. Man gets engaged to his wife’s secret daughter. Only she’s not her daughter.”
“What?”
“Apparently, Franny’s a fraud.”
“This is a lot of information to absorb, even for me,” Linda says. “How are you doing?”
“I’m a fucking mess. But I haven’t even gotten to the best part yet.”
“There’s a best part?”
“Yeah, good point. It’s probably the worst part. She’s the woman.”
“The woman?”
“The other woman. The woman who was sleeping with my husband. It’s Kaitlyn. It was Kaitlyn this whole time.”
Saying it out loud rips something apart inside me, and now I’m crying like I haven’t since my early sessions. Hard-core crying that will end in hiccups, like Henry.
When I finally made it back upstairs last night, Henry had fallen asleep cradling his DS, and Cassie was reading the new Veronica Roth book. I’d said a quick good night and told her I’d fill them in in the morning but that the information ban was still in place. Then I’d texted Linda that it was an emergency, and could she please fit me in?
“That’s disappointing news,” Linda says. “I’m sure.”
“Disappointing? That’s all you’ve got to say? I find out my life is actually some Lifetime movie plot and that’s ‘disappointing’?”
“Perhaps that wasn’t the best choice of words, but you seem very angry with me right now.”
“Maybe I am.”
“Why?”
“Because I wasn’t prepared for this. What have I been doing here all this time if something like this can just blindside me and send me back where I was a year ago?”
“Are you back where you were a year ago?”
“Of course I am. Look at me. I’m a mess.”
“I don’t see a mess.”
“You don’t?”
“I see a woman who’s survived some big shocks only to have several more thrown at her. So it’s no surprise that you feel off-kilter today. It would be more surprising if you didn’t.”
My shoulders start to shake. “How could she do this? How could she do this to me?”
“She must’ve been very sad. Very confused.”
“I’m thinking more that she’s some kind of sociopath.”
Linda gives me a half smile. “That damn book.”
“What?”
“The Sociopath Next Door,” Linda says. “Everyone thinks they can diagnose a serious clinical condition now.”
“But am I wrong? Isn’t it totally crazy what she did?”
“I don’t know Kaitlyn, so I can’t say. But you’ve told me before that she suffered from clinical depression, and affairs are a common side effect, shall we say, of depression.”
“They are?”
“It’s a way of feeling something, when everything else feels like nothing.”
“So I’m just a side effect? My family’s a side effect?”