From: Anne Berger, Head of School, Miss Chesterfield’s School
Sent: Tuesday, May 28, 2016, 11:08 AM
To: Hamilton, Kate A., PhD
Subject: Update Lily Hamilton Auermander
Dear Mrs. Hamilton,
I’m pleased to report this month Lily has made significant progress academically and has almost caught up to her classmates. All her teachers report she has become less introverted, and participates more frequently.
She has a very nice small circle of friends here. She is closest to her roommate, Sarah Goodman, according to the resident teacher on her floor. Indeed, they are both enrolled in the three-day-a-week after-school photography spring module while the other girls play field hockey.
Her arm and shoulder have healed, per the specialist in Boston, who she has seen once a month following your request. He insists there is no need to see her again until six months’ time. I shall forward X-ray discs. She continues to see our school counselor twice a week.
During our meeting this morning, Lily finally chose a plan for the summer after reviewing the options. She agreed to spend all or almost all of the summer with you. She understands you are in France presently, but that you may return to Connecticut at some future point. She is willing to go to France, and in fact, I understood she prefers to go there, likely to avoid any physical reminders from last year. She’s also been invited by her roommate’s parents to spend a week or two with them on the Cape late August. I’ve taken the liberty of forwarding your email address to the Goodmans.
While Lily has agreed to all of this, she reiterated that she preferred to continue no contact with any member of the family through the end of the term.
Please forward airline ticketing information so we may coordinate appropriate transport to Boston/Logan airport between June 13 and 15.
I strongly urge you to e-sign the reenrollment documents sent last month. Your daughter is quite happy and thriving here.
Best wishes,
Anne Berger
The words on the screen blurred on my laptop sitting on my makeshift desk in the bedroom. Oh God, she was coming. She was coming. She wanted to see me. I mentally counted the days. Fifteen or so.
My head felt heavy in my hands as my fingers dug into my scalp. Pushing back the heartbreak of hope, I was determined not to count on anything ever again. Because she could change her mind. Her father’s family could attempt to change her mind. But no matter how hard I tried to stop it, happiness crept in. I didn’t want happiness. It would be too painful if something prevented her from coming. I swallowed and opened my eyes to reread the email.
She wanted to come here. Not to her roommate’s house as had been planned. Not Connecticut. Not home to her. The image of the redbrick colonial floated in my mind and my gut froze. That house was not home. It had never been a home. It was a trophy house in the suburbs where the husbands took trains to Manhattan and almost every wife stayed behind to coordinate and implement a complex social life that revolved around country clubs, tennis ladders, horses, manicures, and gourmet cooking by housekeepers in immaculate, open-concept kitchens. Gin and tonics, and whiskey served promptly to guests at seven. False gaiety and posturing throughout dinner. If it was done correctly, husbands and wives and children never had to have serious conversations. All fury and pain boiled under a tightly held veil of secrecy. It was thus, and where, a reign of intermittent, iron-fisted tyranny amid a silent siege had held court, inside that house of brick. There’d been no way out. No choice but to play the court jester and serve the eighteen-year sentence until it was safe to leave with my daughter, whom I’d supervised like a hawk. I’d never guessed Lily would trump my carefully planned move by bolting before everything was ready.
I’d never fit in there. Not in the neighborhood and not with the other wives. I didn’t play tennis, didn’t do lunch, and I certainly didn’t get manicures. After dropping Lily to school, work was my escape just like all the husbands. My only true friends were an eclectic group of fellow doctors and scientists, especially Alice, a vet with a vicious sense of humor who specialized in pigs.
My ex-husband had fit in perfectly. Darien was the pinnacle of success. Soho had been my version of paradise before pregnancy had upended plans. Darien was supposedly a more suitable place to raise a child. Except it wasn’t.
I wrote a quick reply to the headmistress, could not stomach the reenrollment forms until I saw Lily, booked her flight, and chucked off espadrilles to get ready for dinner.
Then again, I’d never really fit in anywhere, if I was honest.
My mother, who’d insisted I call her Antoinette the day I turned sixteen, said my father and she had always wondered where I had come from as I was so different from both of them. I’d taken it as yet another personal failure for a long while, and then realized it was the opposite after Psychology 101 at university. I’d never liked golf, country clubs, risky ventures, and the social scene. And they didn’t like what I loved: books, stories, animals, hiking, swimming, being alone, and trying to figure out people.
Apparently, I was the only person on both sides of the family who was not born with a golf club in one hand and a tennis racquet in the other. I was neither a Hamilton nor a du Roque.
My uncle was dead set on proving my theory right.
He appeared unannounced half an hour before dinner. Actually, it was his ten-year-old Mercedes that announced his arrival. There was something about the sound of tires on pea gravel that always sent a wave of foreboding.
After a jovial welcome by Jean, and a hurried request to Magdali to set another place at the table, I offered my uncle a Chivas neat, his preferred drink.
Jean-Michel du Roque was every inch a Frenchman. His thinning gray hair slicked back like a bathing cap, his impeccable blue suit, white shirt, and muted Hermès tie and gold Santos de Cartier watch were all perfectly coordinated right down to his polished brown Oxfords. He was the epitome of taste and style. He was a man who oozed charm and knew how to get his way and make others happy to do it. He was a man who children did not like.
Decades ago, I’d been equally fascinated and disgusted by his potent brew of servile flattery and condescending manipulation. His followers in the familial cult had been sucked in like moths to a flame.
Jean-Michel took great pains to come around the oval mahogany table to pull out my chair and properly seat me before assuming the chair opposite his father.
“Alors, Kate. How good it is to see you. And how wonderful that you have come to visit us.” He held his knife and fork like a skillful surgeon going right for the heart. “I spoke to Antoinette last evening and when she said you were here, well, naturellement, I knew I should immediately come down from Paris to see you. And, voilà, here I am.”
“Here you are, indeed, Jean-Michel.”
“Oh, please, chérie, you must call me Oncle. I take such great pride and honor in being uncle to such a brilliant and beautiful niece.”
See what I mean?
“Well, since Jean and Antoinette don’t want to be reminded that we’re all a hell of a lot older, I figured you might not either. But, forgive me? I apologize for making that assumption, Uncle John-Michael.”
He choked on a sliver of baguette.
“D’accord,” he acquiesced with a pained look.
Score one for the outnumbered American team.
Magdali served a roast with green beans and potatoes before decamping to the comfort of the kitchen. I wished I could go with her. It’s funny how if a child forms a strong opinion of someone, it is very difficult to change that view as an adult. I knew my uncle had some excellent qualities, but my dislike ran so deep, it was almost impossible to see glimmers of them. I tried again.
“How are you faring, Uncle?”
“Happy to see you all grown up actually,” Jean-Michel said, sipping a nice little Brouilly I’d bought.
I searched for a polite answer.
“Still shy, I see,” he murmured with a smile. “What an interesting coiffure. Très naturelle.”
I used my napkin. “Still making unkind comments disguised as polite conversation, I see.”
“Kate!” Jean’s fork clattered to the plate in a heretofore never-seen clumsiness at the table.
“What?” I stopped eating. “What is the point? I’ve never seen a reason to beat around the bush. Why are you here, Jean-Michel? What do you want?” Learning how to be direct, the opposite of the last twenty years of my life, was actually becoming a little too much fun.
My uncle laughed. “Not so shy after all. Chérie, really, this must wait. We must go around the tree, as you say, because it is never a good idea to ruin a perfectly cooked blanquette de veau with unpleasant conversation.” He smiled again, revealing classic subpar French dental work. “Why are you here?”
“Antoinette didn’t tell you? How keeping in tradition.”
“Kate is here to try to convince me that I need another nurse or a retirement home,” Jean inserted.
“Papa,” Jean-Michel said. “There is no question you will remain here. This is the house you were born in and the house you will die in—like your father and his father before him and so on and so forth. Naturellement.”
“Naturellement,” I repeated.
“Yes,” my uncle said very quietly. “Naturellement. Unlike Americans who throw their grandparents in the poubelle—the trash.”
“Your respect for the blanquette de veau is slipping, Jean-Michel. Pass the salt,” I said. “Please.”
“Kate!” Jean pleaded.
The silent intermission provided ample time for rearmament.
“Bon,” Jean continued. “How long are you here, Jean-Mich? Magdali will prepare your room, of course.”
“Not long,” Jean-Michel replied. “I must return to Paris and then to Chantilly pour le week-end. There is a petit tournoi de golf and the horses will run.”
“Ah,” Jean said. “How I wish I could go with you and see it. It’s been so long since—” He abruptly stopped after glancing at his son’s expression.
Jean-Michel’s ascension to the head of the du Roque guild was obvious. I almost pitied Jean until I remembered his own brutal oligarchy and his attempt at a coup to assume control of my parents. Americans always win, thank God.
“And how is my dearest grand-niece? Antoinette hinted Liliane is at a strange pension—boarder school, you say?”
When would I learn to stop expecting anything but betrayal from my mother? The only real question was who was the grand master of the marionettes—brother or sister? I was willing to bet my last sou on Antoinette. “Lily is happy, thank you.”
Jean-Michel opened his mouth and I interceded. “And she will come here the second week in June and stay until I return to the States.” I looked at my grandfather. “If you agree, of course.”
“Mais bien sûr! Of course. Finally, I shall see this famous great-grandchild of mine!” A smile, rare as a day without three battling weather elements here, lit up his lined face.
Jean-Michel’s showed not a hint of emotion. “I shall, of course, come back when she arrives. And I—”
“Please don’t,” I interrupted. “She requires peace and quiet.”
“Why, I’m hurt to think you would—”
“I would, and I will.”
“How long will both of you stay?” Jean-Michel carefully placed his fork and knife side by side at an angle on top of the plate.
“Long enough,” I replied. “What have you come here to take back to Paris? I noticed a lot of the family paintings are gone.”
“Someone has to provide for the family.”
I glanced at his gold watch and Hermès tie. “I’m happy to take over the role for the time being.”
Jean cleared his throat. “Kate, I don’t think you know how much your uncle has—”
“I know exactly how much he has done. He’s selling all the silver, and the artwork.”
“And why would I be selling my future inheritance unless there was other recourse? I’m the future owner of our familial home after all.”
“Technically, Antoinette owns a future half.” I stared him down. “So the things you are taking are actually half your sister’s.”
“The things I am selling are our father’s. You should be ashamed of thinking anything else!”
“Kate,” my grandfather’s voice sounded so old. So tired. “I asked him to sell these things. It’s needed to pay our bills.”
“Perfect. Let’s see the sale receipts.”
“Are you suggesting—” Jean-Michel began.
“I am.”
“I’ll not sit here and listen to—”
“Two of those paintings—the Picasso Biarritz beach scenes—should have brought enough cash to keep the villa going for a decade and maybe even replace the roof. I did the research.” Blood was singing in my veins. The same blood as my tiny, feisty, hot-blooded Peruvian great-grandmother who’d ruled the roost during the German occupation. The one who’d protected it when the Nazis had appropriated it. She’d refused to move out, instead squeezing the family into the now lichen-filled basement for eighteen months, and serving the officers vichyssoise tainted with hints of foxglove, watered-down rat poison, arsenic, or anything she could get her little hands on.
Jean-Michel rose and took on a faintly hilarious Napoleonic air of bruised pride. He probably practiced the pose in the long mirrors, which were losing flakes of silver on the backside. He was going to say something boring and clichéd, but for once he did not. Instead, he turned and crossed the long swath of floor toward the gilded French doors without another word.
“Jean-Michel,” Jean called out. He tapped his cane but Uncle would not turn around.
He kept walking, straight to the doors, which he exited and slammed shut.
“You must apologize,” Jean said.
“I won’t. He should apologize to you for not showing you receipts.”
“Children and parents rarely live up to one another’s expectations, Kate.”
Finally a rational answer for how our family functioned.
STILLNESS SHIMMERED THE thin air, broken only by the grateful songs of birds breaking their fast. Palest pink clouds looked like faded patches of ancient wallpaper covering a flat blue early sky. Edward Soames took the lead on the trail toward Santiago de Compostela, a sacred burial site of saints eight hundred kilometers away from the Pyrenees rising from the Bay of Biscay. The littoral had borne the sins and secrets of the millions of pilgrims who had walked or crawled on their knees to finally worship the distant hallowed grounds. It would take a miracle before any secrets were unearthed from Edward Soames, who walked faster than most people jogged. His head was bent forward like a dog on a hunt.
For a military man, he certainly had zero respect for the quality or quantity of the clothes he wore. Today’s number was blindingly atrocious—a wooly blue plaid shirt that looked as if it had seen finer days during the Paleolithic period. Apparently, his view of my yoga wear was equally unimpressed.
“You don’t have proper hiking gear,” he stated, not looking behind.
“Your concern is duly noted.”
“You should wear hiking boots next time.”
“Next time? Let’s see if we can get through this morning before we talk about a next time.”
“I didn’t realize therapists were so brutal. In my experience they are far more kind initially—luring you in with false empathy and empty promises of a rosy future.”
“Yes, we’re kind of like spiders. We spin this invisible, inviting web and then, when someone flies into our sticky space, we strap you to our couches and suck you dry.”
“About right,” he said, and stopped at the top of a rise. His hand shaded his brow as he gazed below. He moved toward an outcropping of rock and lay down. It had been a long, hard slog to the top.
The fingers of a deeply blue lake caressed the feet of the mountains. Toward the sea to the right, a few stunted, gnarled trees struggled to survive the harsh weather; their western profiles bent from the brutal winds. Wildflowers, yellow and violet, blossomed within pockets of bracken and gorse dotted with ferns. I glanced at the major, who had settled into a snooze, his post-traumatic stress at bay. Beyond his crossed arms and feet lay the geography of my childhood.
It had been my mooring in the cyclone of George and Antoinette’s ever-changing lives. During the year at Miss Chesterfield’s and their divorce, a period of abject silence ensued on both sides. My roommate, Elle, had often commented on it.
“They’re always so busy,” she had said.
I had watched her put aside a small stack of letters from her parents and two brothers and then reach for a geometry textbook. “Yup.”
“Look at the bright side. They’re so oblivious, you could get away with murder here.”
“Yup,” I had replied.
“I don’t know why you study so hard,” she had said, using her protractor to draw a geometric figure. “You okay with them getting divorced?”
“Yup.” An economy of words had never hurt me in my life. Then and now.
Major Soames’s snoring was impressive, and I allowed my mind to drift back to more than two decades ago when my own brand of post-traumatic stress had taken root.
It appeared neither of my parents had thought enough to ask the other who would be in possession of their (or at least my mother’s) mixed gene pool the following year. Yes, that fifteenth summer, no parental unit appeared at LAX after the flight from Boston, post Miss Chesterfield’s. Evidently, I’d been cast off the merry-go-round of perpetual movements. There was just only so much parenting Antoinette, George, or I could handle.
Very graciously, in all their weed-stoked generosity, the three UCLA graduate students, who had apparently sublet our rental house at some point during the divorce, offered me the cot in the garage, which had been converted into a dance studio complete with incense, mini fridge, hot tub, and a spare bike or two on the walls. It was silently understood in this pre–cell phone era that Mom or Dad would collect me in time.
Or maybe not.
Liberty was sweet. Hell, it was far better than boarding school. What girl could resist foggy mornings hitching rides to SaMo High before sunlit afternoons on the back of a surfer friend’s Yamaha? Darwin’s Theory became my religion—adapt or die, my motto. And surely, surely one of them was coming if only to curb my use of their credit cards. By the ninth week, assimilation was complete; emotions blurred under a circle of friends and the rotation of subletting tenants, who adopted me like a beloved pet, retrieved from the garage to sit at my parent’s dining table on the rare night someone made dinner.
It was heaven for a teenager.
It was supposed to feel like repressed sadness and insecurity to a trained psychotherapist, but it didn’t. Just seemed normal. It was—
“This is a pleasant surprise,” Edward said, sitting up and looking again at the vista.
I exhaled, unaware I’d been holding my breath. “The best part is that the views are always changing, along with the weather.”
“True,” he replied. “But I was referring to your silence.”
I did not reply. Instead, I moved past him and took the lead down the other side of the hill.
“Is this how all your sessions go?” He called after me. “You just let silence do your work until the patient ties themselves up with curiosity?”
“Is that what you are? Curious?”
He must have gotten up and followed as his voice was close behind me. “Yep. Like wondering why you looked like petrified wood. Not one iota of emotion just now.”
“Well, since talking to you last time was like having a conversation with the pyramids, I thought you might enjoy silence.”
“Huh,” he grunted. “Are your eyes good, Doctor?”
“What?”
“Eyes. Good?”
“Yes. Why?”
“I’ve got a pricker I can’t get out.”
I stopped, indicated a boulder to sit on, and bent over his hand. It was long and thin, and it looked like it hurt like hell, but he said not a word. I knew he wouldn’t.
“So what’s the précis of therapy under Kate Hamilton? And can you prescribe drugs?”
“Précis?”
He shook his head. “Crib notes. Short version of a long story. Come on, Kate, keep up.”
“In the colonies, they’re called CliffsNotes, major.”
For the first time that day I saw his teeth. His version of a smile needed work.
“CliffsNotes. Roger. We have them too.” He took off his sunglasses, wiped his eyes, and replaced the glasses. “So?”
“What do you want to know?”
“How you purportedly cure people.”
“Purportedly?” I said. “Your confidence is staggering. Is this how you inspired those under your command?”
His eyes became focused. “What’s the cure? The short version, Doctor.”
“It’s like I told you before. Revisit your childhood. Or in your case, revisit your war experiences. Maybe both.”
“And?”
“You asked for the short version. I gave it to you.”
“A bit longer,” he said. “Please.” Such an effort for so little a word.
“All right,” I relented. “We revisit the past horrors of war you’ve experienced. You did five tours, correct?”
“Yep.”
“Where?”
“Iraq, Afghanistan three times, and Bosnia before that,” he clipped out.
God, that seemed like a lot. “Well, oftentimes, just talking about what happened and finally feeling repressed emotions can make a huge difference. Or . . .”
He was shaking his head. “Or what? I’ve heard all that before. Doesn’t work.”
“Or, if there is a childhood wound, perhaps reopened by the trauma of war, with time and work, there’s discovery of unmet needs, resulting belief systems and fears, an attempt to take off false armor or identity, and with any luck, and a lot more time, much of it gut-wrenching”—why sugarcoat it?—“the person ends up deciding if they want to be courageous and make different choices, or sink back into the mire of the tried and not so true. Is that short or long enough for you?” I took a step closer to him.
“What if I already know my past, know what happened, and have no false armor? What if it’s too late to make different choices? Damage done. Talking just doesn’t change facts.”
“Don’t you realize almost anyone can say that? Talking, having the guts to hash out old events, doesn’t change the past, but it can make a huge difference for the future.”
“Has it made a difference for you?”
“We’re talking about you.”
He raised his brows. “Now there’s a no.”
“It’s more complicated for someone like me. I know too much.”
“Sounds like an excuse to me, Hamilton.”
“Therapy is just one way of getting to the cause of a client’s pain, anxiety, depression, and a host of other issues.”
“That’s when drugs are thrown into the mix.”
“Sometimes. Sometimes not. It all depends on the condition presented. And . . .”
“And what?”
“Someone’s natural resilience.”
He unfolded himself and stood, picking down to select a rock, which he threw into the valley below. His eyes on the horizon, he said, “Well, at least you’re not talking about mindfulness. What the fuck does that mean anyway? The Ministry of Defense therapist I was forced to see after the last deployment kept talking about mindfulness. Total bollocks if you ask me.”
I had to laugh. “It’s essentially living life in the present moment, about—”
“For fuck’s sake, is there any other way to live? Do we have a choice? We live each moment as it comes.”
“You like to say fuck a lot.”
“What? Now you’re going to try to take away one of my few present joys?” His smile deepened. “Pretty fucking unmindful to my way of thinking.”
“A lot of people live in the past,” I said. “Or live for the future.”
“Nothing all that wrong with doing both, don’t you think?” He picked off a piece of grass from the plaid monstrosity he called a shirt. “I say learn from your mistakes and build a better future.”
“I see.” I pressed my fingernails into my palms. I wasn’t going to sell him on anything. He’d have to come to a decision to seek help on his own, no matter what his great-uncle wanted.
“Look, no man in his right mind believes in therapy. At least in England they don’t. It’s for the weak. Okay, maybe we’ll go for a little marriage counseling upon threat of divorce, but that’s it. Americans, as I understand, have an affinity for talking about feelings, but not us. Not me.”
“No surprise there.”
“Brits have far less suicides than Americans,” he continued.
“You’ve examined military suicide rates, have you?”
“Twenty a day in America, the land of the free.” The striated muscles in the hollow of his cheek tensed and then relaxed. “The way I see it, Doctor, I might be willing to start this experiment if only to get my family off my back, but I’ll only do it if you are willing to do the same. And absolutely no drugs. Got it?”
What? “I’m sorry?”
“Yeah. I’ll go through that examination of my past and other moronic crap, if you do the same.”
“That’s not how it works. I must become a pseudo person to you—a mother, father, brother, commander, whatever. There is no tit for tat.”
He blinked. “Take it or leave it. Trust is a two-way street.”
He was a master manipulator and controller. And that off-kilter look in his wide gray eyes tinged with ashen darkness hinted at zero emotion, indeed, possibly a borderline psychopath, albeit a good psychopath, the newest favorite animal under the microscope of many psychology texts now. “You were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, correct?”
“Such a dry, pretty little phrase.” He laughed. “I don’t know a soldier who spent any amount of time in a war zone who hasn’t suffered some form of PTSD.”
“Understood.” I pulled off the long-sleeved cover I wore over a T-shirt now that the sun had emerged from the clouds.
“You said you couldn’t protect someone last time,” he began.
“And you said you’d tell me what happened to make you the person your wife and children left behind when they returned to England.”
“Brutal,” he said and smiled. “You want to know what’s wrong with the military?”
I waited. Denial via a change in subject was just so last Freud.
“When you go into a war zone, you see the worst things you never imagined. And you see men in all their glory. The best and the worst. The real and the unvarnished. You learn about love and hate on a whole new level. What is love between a man and a woman when you compare it to the bond between soldiers? I’ve seen eighteen-year-old boys throw themselves in front of certain death to protect their mates. Soldiers don’t talk about feelings. They show and live their truths. In a marriage, it’s all about words, and petty emotions, and the mundane. To-do lists. ‘Clean the garage, water the garden, buy crisps and bin liners at Tesco’ lists. All part of the ultimate goal of a man going out into the world to provide. And it’s mostly a one-way street. To be fair, I’m a dick, but I get it.”
“I see.”
“You don’t see it at all. You have to live it to get it. And you’re missing some key anatomy to get it.”
“Keep going. Explain it to me.”
“I just did. I thought therapists were good listeners.”
Unresolved anger—such a polite word for a pressure cooker of merde.
“Anyway.” He stopped abruptly.
“Let’s keep walking. There’s room to walk side by side up ahead. Why is your marriage a one-way street?”
“It’s not really. She ran the household when I was away for months at a time and I owe her for that. But, really? We have nothing in common except our children. We made the mistake of marrying far too young by reason of raging hormones.”
“And now?”
“We have nothing in common and the hormones have gone dormant.”
“Common in a long-term marriage. How do you feel about that?”
“Really? Come on, Kate, you must know how most men feel about that.”
“Yup.” I stopped abruptly.
“What was your marriage like?”
I forced myself to reply. “Not the best.”
“You’re divorced.”
“I am.”
“Why not the best?”
“We didn’t suit each other.” Understatement of the century. “My father said he was shocked we actually married. He said he’d have put his money on Oliver marrying a nubile, young secretary, and I a rich, old man.”
“When did he say that?”
“On my wedding day.” Why was I telling him this?
“Any other little gems he told you?”
I swallowed. What did I have to lose? He wasn’t a patient. I wasn’t his friend. He was someone I’d never see again after I left here. “He said that I should never ever deny my husband his rights.”
“Never?” Edward raised his eyebrows. He looked ten years younger in his shock. “An intriguing view. But, seriously? I’d never tell my daughter that. Your father sounds like a worse dick than I. And I should know. Sorry. But not really. He sounds like a fucking sad excuse for a father. You know that, right?”
“He was impossible, but everyone loved him. He was the most charming, funny, intelligent man I ever knew.”
“And meaner than a snake. What father says that to a daughter?”
I hadn’t remembered those things for years. I looked at the ground. What was bringing up all these putrid, bone-sucking memories?
“Okay. No need to go on,” he said. “Next question.”
It looked like I was going to be a sister figure to him. More realistically, if I was honest, he was going to be a brother figure to me. “Do you have any siblings? Mother and father still living?”
He looked at me as if I’d grown five heads.
“I realize I’m jumping around here, but I sense, ahem, that your patience is limited. Just trying to move ahead at breakneck speed.”
“How very untherapeutic.”
“Indeed,” I agreed. “So?”
“Three older brothers. All dead. In Northern Ireland, Bosnia, and the last in Afghanistan. One sister, living in Wales, where my parents moved to be near her new family.”
“Why didn’t they stay in England, to be near you, your wife, and children?”
“I was not their favorite.”
“They told you this?”
“They did.”
“When?”
“Who the fuck cares, Hamilton? There are always favorites in families. My sister is the light of their lives. Bingo on Thursdays, pub night quizzes on Wednesdays, and lunch after church on Sundays. It’s all good.”
“Do you have a favorite between your two children?”
Incredulity and disgust marred his features. “They’re like chalk and cheese.”
“And which do you prefer? Chalk or cheese?”
“Winnie loves animals, constantly has a smile plastered on her face and has a social life that rivals the royal family’s. She never stops talking, orders me around—a real ballbuster, which I love. My son wants to murder her half the time but is too busy playing some bloody vampire video game to actually do it. He is far too smart and stupid for his own good, and has a way with words that makes me laugh like no one else can whilst he’s doing everything he can to infuriate me.”
“So you love them equally but differently.”
He stopped in his tracks. “Don’t you dare say my parents should have loved us all equally.”
“Okay.”
“Do you love your children equally, Kate?”
“I only have one child.”
He waited, refusing to keep walking.
“A daughter. Lily.”
“The one you didn’t protect.”
He was getting too close. I started walking and he had no choice but to keep up.
“Why didn’t you protect her, Kate? That’s your job, for fuck’s sake.”
“It’s complicated.” God, I sounded pathetic. “So when did your marriage begin to fail?”
“Answer me,” he barked. “Why didn’t you protect her? There’s no excuse. None.”
There was a look of such darkness and disgust in his eyes that finally reason and the doctor in me returned. Or perhaps it was just my way—my favorite way to deflect someone. We were two of a kind, Soames and I. Two solitary creatures of the wild who didn’t know how to get along with the rest of the people in the world. And I had tried. There was a reason I’d chosen psychology as a profession. At least he was finally showing me he cared too much to be a psychopath. Or else he was a hell of a good actor, and I’d seen a lot of those. “You’re too intelligent for me to play games. Such an extreme reaction is really a reflection of yourself. Who did you fail to protect?”
He stopped again along the path. A complete and total blank slate replaced the tumult of emotion in his expression. It froze the marrow in my bones.
I’d taken a chance. Pushed him too hard. “I apologize. You asked me a question. We agreed—or at least you commanded— that we each share our lives with each other. And I get why. It’s to build trust. And really? You are doing me a favor. I could use a booster class on trust along with you. And hey, you’re not paying me.”
“Do you have many clients, Kate?”
“Of course I . . . Why do you ask?”
“You talk too much.”
I bit my mouth to keep from laughing.
“And you never ever laugh,” he continued.
“Me? Why, I’ve attended funerals with more laughter than spending an hour with you. And stop changing the subject.”
“I laugh all the damn time,” he replied. “Inside.”
“Okay. Live a little and try laughing on the outside from time to time.”
“When didn’t you protect Lily?”
I paused. “Last year. And, to be honest, I’d failed her a number of times before then. But last year was the ultimate betrayal.”
“What happened?”
I just couldn’t open my mouth. My throat constricted and it was so damn predictable and clichéd, I felt sick to my stomach. I reached toward an enormous, wild, white parasol-like flower just emerging from its veined envelope of protection. How could something so delicate survive the harsh winds of the Pyrenees? “May I not answer that just yet?”
“Kate, I’ve sent so many men to their deaths. Tried to deny my part in it. And that’s just the tip of my mountain of lies and irresponsibility. How can anything you might have done compare?”
“Because she is my child. Because if there is one absolute in life it is the duty of a mother to love and protect her children, like you said. I should know. Every day I see the walking carcasses of humanity whose mothers and fathers betrayed them. It’s just inexcusable. It’s what causes depression, unfulfilled lives, divorce, suicide, crime, even war.”
“Let’s turn around.”
“Why?”
“We’re at a stalemate,” he said. “We’re not going anywhere.”
“I know. We’ve already established a pattern.”
“And what pattern is that, Doctor?”
“The one where you try and control the situation by deflecting all my questions by turning them on me.”
“Really?”
“Yes, it’s kind of like psychological hot potato.”
“I like potatoes.”
“Or you try to be witty and you’re not.”
“Americans. No sense of humor at all.”
“Well, at least I’m not French.”
“You’re half French,” he said dryly.
“Lucky for you.”
“You’re good at deflecting too, Kate. I can tell we’re going to be good friends. The best really.”
“Men and women can’t be good friends unless they’re related.” I reaffixed the scrunchie holding my ponytail.
He raised his eyebrows. “Says who?”
“World history.”
“I think you’re referring to the problem of sexual desire.” I rolled my eyes. “It’s the reason why therapists meet their clients in controlled circumstances, where the session is all about the client and I am but a pseudo figure or mirror.”
“Don’t worry, Katie. I’m not remotely attracted to you.”
“Well, thank God for that.”
“I’m married and, to be fair? I’m not attracted to anyone. What’s the point? It all ends badly. We’ve nothing more than a living, breathing death sentence at the end.”
“Are you on any medication?”