MY COLLEAGUES AND I keep an ice pack in the communal office fridge. I sit at my desk, icing my throbbing ankle.
For twenty-six years, all I’ve wished was for my mother to somehow still be alive.
Dad and I went through the unimaginable after we lost her. She’d been my rock, my cheerleader, my everything, and I found life without her unbearable.
All the things I’d previously taken joy in as a teenager, like hanging out with friends at the beach, going to concerts, and playing on my high school soccer team, I struggled to do. Life was marching on for everyone around me, while I was slowly withdrawing from it.
Dad had his own challenges as a new widower and single parent. In addition to her career as a therapist, Mom had been in charge of everything in our house, from grocery shopping to paying bills to calling a plumber whenever a sink was clogged. After she passed, Dad had to shoulder all of it alone, along with his job as a partner at a law firm in downtown LA.
He was barely keeping his head above water, so he didn’t notice when I started rationing my food, skipping breakfast, and barely touching my dinner. It was only when I flat-out refused to eat at all and my clothes began hanging on me like I was a Halloween skeleton that he realized I had a problem.
He tried everything in his power to get me to eat, and I was horrible to him. I threw bowls of food, accused him of abusing me by forcing me to eat, and even hit him on several occasions. My brain was so deformed from months of starvation that any will I’d had to live had all but disappeared. I was on a death march, and he was in my way.
The stress was too much for him to bear, so he started smoking again, a habit Mom had helped him quit when I was a toddler. He died of lung cancer over a decade after she passed. I’ve spent the better part of the last twelve years blaming myself for what I put him through, even questioning if I was responsible for his death.
Now, hearing that Mom could still be alive, however unlikely it is to be true, how can I not wonder if Dad and I might’ve been spared all the suffering we went through? If she’s really alive, does she know anything about what happened to us after she disappeared? Did she keep tabs on us from a distance? Or did she orchestrate her death to cut us off for good?
Maybe she was secretly unhappy in her life with us. She didn’t act like it, but I’ve read enough novels about unhappy housewives who one day decide to pick up and leave, to their families’ great surprise.
And what about what the fake patient said—how Mom is in trouble? Again.
Was she leading a double life while married to Dad? Was she in some kind of trouble?
No. She can’t be alive. We buried her. We held a memorial service at a family friend’s funeral home. Though, Dad and I never did see the body.
He told me the police said it was too mangled after the hit-and-run accident for viewing. Instead, he said he gave them her dental records, and they identified her that way.
But what about the bracelet the woman dropped on the ground before running out of here? Everyone who knew her knew she wore a bracelet with a lima bean charm—she never took it off. It’s in every picture of her for the fifteen years after I was born. Someone trying to get to me who knew that specific detail about her could weaponize it to hurt me. But who would that person be?
The ice pack is thawing. Wet droplets drip onto my ankle. I focus on them instead of the bracelet staring at me from the white carpet. The sunlight from the window catches on the gold chain, making it sparkle.
I memorized every centimeter of Mom’s bracelet when I was little. Dad bought it for her after she held me for the first time at the hospital and dubbed me her “little bean.” My name and birthdate were engraved on the lima bean, and there was a small scratch on the top left-hand corner.
I can’t tell from my desk whether the engravings or the scratch are there. And I’m scared to check. Because a sense is taking hold that this may be the last moment before everything I know to be true about my life is turned upside down. Before I find out that the person I thought loved me more than anyone else on the planet possibly abandoned me.
Courage, I tell my patients, is not the same as fearlessness. Courage is action in the face of fear. I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and stand up.
I limp over to the carpet, my throbbing ankle providing little distraction from my thumping heart pounding so forcefully that it feels like it might break my chest wide open right here, right now.
I close my eyes and pick up the bracelet, first holding it tightly in my fist and then slowly opening my eyes and the palm of my hand.
My name, birth date, and the small scratch in the left-hand corner are all there.
My head suddenly feels heavy. The room starts to spin. I collapse on the couch to buffer myself, clutching Mom’s bracelet, and trying to calm down by taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly.
Could she really be alive? And, according to the fake patient, living in the same state as me? My mind can’t wrap itself around this possibility.
I reach for my cell phone with a shaking hand and cancel all my morning sessions. I can barely form thoughts, let alone give anyone advice.
I don’t know what to do next, but I know I don’t want to do it alone.
I’m standing in front of Eddie’s house off Pico Boulevard, pounding on his door. He opens it, clearly confused to see me here on a weekday morning at this hour.
“Everything okay?” he asks. “We’re about to leave for school.”
Sarah appears behind him, holding her pink and purple tie-dyed backpack. “Hi, Beans!”
“Wanna join us?” he asks me.
I’m temporarily pulled back into the reality of my life. If I accompany Sarah and Eddie to her school, he might think I’m getting closer to saying yes to moving in together. I don’t want to mislead either of them, but I’m struggling to find an excuse for why I can’t.
Sarah looks up at me with her wide, blue eyes. “Triple please,” she says.
Her words tug at my heart. Whenever Eddie and I take her to get ice cream, we get a triple scoop cone and share it because of a story I once told her about the last trip I took with my parents before Mom died. Mom, Dad, and I had gone to Italy for the summer, and whatever town or city we were in, we would order a triple scoop of gelato, which the three of us shared.
Mom used to carry a picture in her wallet of the three of us sitting on the Spanish Steps in Rome, sharing a cone. Her purse was stolen along with her bracelet after she was killed, so we never recovered that photo. And I haven’t looked at any others from that trip since she died. They are memories of before times, when my family was complete and I still wanted to eat ice cream.
Sarah’s still standing in front of me, waiting for an answer.
“Sure,” I say.
She slips her hand into mine, and we walk to Eddie’s car together.
We drive along Pico Boulevard until we reach her charter elementary school. Eddie pulls up in the drop-off line, gets out, and walks around to the back to open Sarah’s door. She climbs out of her car seat, and he hugs her goodbye.
“I love you,” he says.
“Love you, Daddy,” she says back.
She waves at me through the window, and I wave back.
Eddie gets back in the car and turns to me. “What’s going on? Why aren’t you at work?”
“Something happened,” I say.
“With a patient?” he asks.
“Not exactly.” I pause. My ankle is still throbbing and everything that happened this morning is starting to catch up with me. “I’d rather talk at your place.”
When we return to his house, I fill him in on everything—the fake patient, how she said Mom might still be alive and in the Bay Area, and the bracelet.
“Whoa,” he says, taking it all in. “Do you know who the woman was?”
“She didn’t give me her real name,” I say. “She said it was too dangerous for me to know because the same people after my mom would go after her if they knew she came to see me. I tried to chase her, but she was too fast. I have to find her, Eddie.”
“Are there cameras in your office building, like in the lobby?” he asks.
“I never noticed before,” I admit.
“Because if we can get an image of her, we could try using a facial recognition app to find out who she is,” he says.
Eddie knows about all things tech. He’s a software engineer who creates, designs, and develops computer software that companies use to run their organizations, like operating systems, business applications, and network control systems. He’s fortunate in that his job allows him to work from home, which has been a godsend since he became a single dad.
“Even if there are cameras, she was wearing a baseball cap that covered her face,” I say.
“You never know,” he says. “There might be an angle where her face is exposed. Let’s find out. I’ll drive.” He picks up his car keys.
“Don’t you have to work?” I ask.
“I’ll make it up later,” he says.
“Thank you.”
I’m grateful for his kindness. He knows how much losing my mom impacted me and about the eating disorder I struggled with in high school after she died. One time I even confessed to him that I felt guilty about Dad dying of lung cancer because of what I’d put him through, and Eddie only showed me compassion.
“Something I’ve learned through my support group is that everyone grieves differently,” he told me.
He still meets with a group of widowers once a month, the same support group he started going to after Sarah’s mom died. He said they were instrumental in helping him make the right choices for Sarah. And his primary focus has always been to do whatever’s best for her. That’s how we met.
A couple of years ago, I was on my way to work and stopped at a local bakery to grab a birthday cake for one of my suitemates. When I stepped inside the bakery, a man in his thirties with brown hair and kind eyes was trying to order a cake, and I could tell he was struggling.
“So, white frosting with pink writing?” a young store clerk with a short, blond ponytail asked him.
“Yes,” he said. “Wait, I’m not sure. Maybe chocolate frosting and purple writing would be better.”
“We can do that,” she told him. “Do you want any decorations on it? Edible flowers? Animals? Sprinkles? Balloons? We do themes too.”
He stood there looking at her like a deer in headlights.
“I’m not sure,” he said.
“Do you want to think about it, and I can help this other customer?” she asked him, pointing to me.
“Okay,” he said.
When he stepped to the side, I noticed tears in his eyes.
“How can I help you?” she asked me.
“Hang on,” I said to her and walked over to the man. “Are you all right?”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to make a scene,” he said. “It’s my daughter’s fifth birthday, her first since my wife died. Her mom was always the one in charge of her birthdays. I don’t know what little girls like.”
“I’m so sorry for your loss. Can I help you?” I offered.
He nodded. “Okay.”
We walked back to the counter and stood side-by-side. “Before I pick up my cake, I’d like to help him finish his order,” I told the store clerk.
“So far, he has a rainbow-shaped cake with chocolate frosting and purple writing on top,” she said.
“My daughter likes rainbows,” the man told me.
“Is there any way to do rainbow-colored frosting on the rainbow cake?” I asked the woman.
“Sure, we can do that. How about toppings?” she asked.
I spotted some cakes inside the refrigerated glass counter below with long rainbow-swirled lollipops.
“I think those lollipops would be great on top of the cake to keep with the rainbow theme,” I told the man. “What do you think?”
“Okay,” he said.
She totaled his bill, and he paid her.
“Thank you,” he said to me.
“I’m sure her mom would be happy you’re celebrating your daughter’s special day,” I said.
He nodded, the tears still in his eyes, and left.
Later that day, I checked my phone for messages between sessions and saw one from a number I didn’t recognize. I figured it was a prospective new patient. But it was the man I’d helped at the bakery. His name was Eddie.
He’d gone back to get my name from the bakery clerk, Googled me, and found my therapy website. He asked if he could take me out for lunch to thank me.
I wouldn’t characterize that first lunch together as a date, since he had asked me out to thank me. So it felt pressure-free, and we got to know each other without all the usual dating stressors.
I remember leaving the lunch thinking I liked him, not romantically, but as a person. He was hurting, in pain, and trying to do right by his daughter, just like Dad had tried to do with me, and I admired him for it.
When he asked me out again, I thought it was the beginning of a friendship. It wasn’t until a couple months later, when he kissed me for the first time in front of my house, that I realized he felt something more.
The truth was that I had wanted him to kiss me for a while but wasn’t going to go there since he was grieving his late wife.
In the middle of the kiss, he pulled away from me.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not sure I can do this. It feels like I’m cheating on Helen.”
“It’s okay,” I told him. “We can take things slowly or just be friends.”
“Thank you for understanding,” he said. And then he pulled me in close again, kissing me for a long while. We’ve been together ever since.
When we arrive at my office in Beverly Hills, I knock on the building manager’s office door.
“Coming,” the manager shouts before opening the door. He only has a few strands of white hair left on his head. I notice a couple of dated security television screens behind him.
“Yes?” he asks.
I take out my driver’s license and show it to him. “Hi, I’m Dr. Beatrice Bennett from suite 301. I saw a new patient today who didn’t give me her last name or contact information, and I need to call her. It’s an emergency. I’m wondering if you have any footage of her,” I say.
He looks confused. “I might,” he says. “But how’s that gonna help?”
Eddie holds up his phone. “We can scan her face using a facial recognition app to figure out who she is.”
“I’m not sure I’m allowed to do that. You’re not the police. What kind of danger are we talkin’ ’bout?” the manager asks.
“A danger to herself,” I say.
He raises his eyebrows. The hairless skin on his scalp bunches up in surprise. “Okay … but do it fast. Don’t want trouble if the owners come by,” he says.
“I’m a software engineer,” Eddie explains. “If you allow me to scroll through the footage, I can do it quickly and leave it exactly as is after we’re finished.”
The manager motions for us to proceed. We walk over to the dated security screens, and Eddie takes control of the panels.
“What time do you think she arrived?” he asks me.
“Sometime between six thirty and six forty-five,” I say.
He scrolls back through the footage of the first screen, which covers the exterior of the building. A couple of people walk by the entrance, someone walking their dog, another holding a Starbucks to-go coffee cup, and then at the 6:44 AM mark, I spot a woman with a black baseball cap.
“That’s her,” I tell Eddie.
He goes slowly through the footage of her approaching the building. We watch her enter, but her hat obscures her face. No luck.
Eddie moves to the second screen that covers the lobby and scrolls back to her entering it. She steps inside the building with the cap still on, presses the elevator button, and disappears inside—still, no luck.
At 7:03 AM, we watch her run out of the stairwell back into the lobby as I chase after her. And then it happens—for a split second, her baseball cap falls off.
Eddie zooms in on the moment the hat drops and grabs a screenshot of her face on his phone. It’s not a great image, but it’s something.
“Got it,” Eddie says.
“Time to get goin’,” the manager tells us.
“Thank you,” I say.
“No need to thank me ’cause this never happened,” he says.