“You seem especially frustrated today,” Dr. Jacoby said, narrowing her eyes a bit. “Is something going on?”
Quinn realized Dr. Jacoby was looking at where she’d scratched her arm raw. She pulled down her sleeve. None of the pregnancy books said anything about skin symptoms outside of places affected by pregnancy weight—belly, butt, hips—the places where Quinn was starting to see stretch marks. But Quinn’s skin symptoms went way beyond that. It was so uncomfortable everywhere that she wanted to wriggle out of it entirely.
Not that that’s what she was most frustrated about at the moment. She was frustrated with her brother.
He’d never called back on her mom’s phone. She’d finally gotten his number (and Jesse’s) programmed into her own and had spent the last couple of days texting him and leaving voicemails. She’d expected him to answer right away, but he hadn’t. His voicemail was one of those pre-set ones, so she had Hassan double-check that he’d put in the right number. He showed her the number Gabe had given him, and yes, he’d entered it correctly. Which meant that Ben was purposefully ignoring her. Either that or he didn’t get reception wherever he was traveling for work, but that seemed really unlikely.
He’d told her that she should call if she needed him. And now she had, and he was ignoring her.
She couldn’t tell Dr. Jacoby about any of this, though, because she didn’t want to admit that the reason she was so desperate to talk to Ben was so he could take her to see Marco in New Haven. Quinn wasn’t sure if doctor-patient confidentiality would extend to something like that and couldn’t risk Dr. Jacoby telling her parents. (She’d considered telling her parents about Marco, and her suspicions about that night, but had visions of her father taking action on his own, getting lawyers to subpoena Marco to do a DNA test, confronting him himself . . . Quinn needed to be a hundred times more sure than she was now that Marco was involved before setting all that in motion.)
Anyway, there were plenty of other things she was frustrated about to mention to Dr. Jacoby.
“I keep having those dreams,” she said, standing up and beginning to pace. “You know, the underwater ones. And more often now, I’m my grandmother for at least part of the dream. And . . . the thing is that the dreams are so beautiful when I’m in them. And when I wake up, I’m so . . . happy. It’s like my brain is purposefully avoiding reality.”
“What do you think it means, dreaming that you’re your grandmother?” Dr. Jacoby said. “Don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe there’s only one correct interpretation. But I’m wondering what occurs to you.”
Quinn sat back down in her chair. “That I feel guilty because I’ve messed up my dad’s life as much as she did?”
“The guilt you feel might have something to do with it, sure,” Dr. Jacoby said. “What about the fact that the dreams take place underwater? Your grandmother drowned, right? That’s how she took her life?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Were you thinking about her at all when you went for that midnight swim last May, after you kissed Marco?”
Quinn was confused by her train of thought. “What do you mean? No. Why would I have been thinking of her?”
“Well, it seems pretty risky to have gone swimming at night like that, alone, at a beach with tricky currents. So I’m just wondering if you remember thinking about the fact that she’d drowned.”
“Wait,” Quinn said, shifting in her seat. “Are you asking if I was trying to kill myself?”
“Not necessarily actively trying. But, yes, I’m wondering if you think you might have been tempting fate.”
Quinn couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “It wasn’t like that. Not at all! I’m a really good swimmer. I didn’t need to stay out of the ocean all those years. And I was happy that day.”
Dr. Jacoby laced her fingers together. “But the last time you’d swum at that beach—the last time you were in the ocean at all—you almost drowned, didn’t you?”
“Not the last time. I kept swimming there for the rest of that summer, until my dad found out and got mad.” His wet khaki pants as he charged through the water, the pain in her arm, his hand coming toward her . . .
“He was mad because you were taking risks?”
Quinn nodded.
What is wrong with you?
“And, shortly after all of that is when you began therapy for the first time?”
“What?”
“When you were seven? That’s when you started seeing a therapist, right?”
“What are you talking about?” Quinn said, a flush spreading up her neck. “I was in speech therapy. Not this kind of therapy. You must be confusing me with another patient.”
“Oh.” Dr. Jacoby looked flustered in a way Quinn had never seen before. “I’m sorry, Quinn. I thought . . . I’m sorry.”
“And were you trying to say that I was trying to kill myself when I was seven, when I kept swimming there?” Quinn said. “Because that’s crazy. Seven-year-olds don’t kill themselves. And I wasn’t trying last May, either. And I don’t see what any of this has to do with anything!”
“Quinn,” Dr. Jacoby said in an irritatingly soothing tone, “I can see that I’ve upset you. Do you want to look at why?”
Quinn stood up and started pacing again. “Because I’m not suicidal! I wasn’t back then, and I wasn’t last May. That’s the exact opposite of how I felt when I went for that midnight swim. I felt happy. I felt alive! And it had nothing to do with my grandmother. I’m not like her.”
Do you want to be like her? Do you want to end up like her and die in the ocean?
“If you had experienced suicidal tendencies, Quinn, there would be no shame in it. I was just trying to explore your thoughts about why you’d engaged in risky behaviors. Not saying that you were actually consciously trying to take your own life. And I’m sorry I was wrong about you being in therapy back then. I really do apologize.”
Quinn felt hot tears behind her eyes but refused to let them out.
She wasn’t suicidal like her grandmother. Wanting to die had nothing to do with her dreams about Meryl or why she’d taken that swim. If there was one emotion she’d felt that day it was love—she’d been bursting with it.
Start with what you know. This she knew.