Page 1 of Trick of Light

Chapter One

2006

Savannah’s Mercer School of Medicine offered a single therapist for their student population. Just one therapist to help hundreds of medical students—all of whom suffered from lack of sleep, too much studying, skipping meals and generally destroying their mental and physical health for the sake of their futures in the medical field. It blew Bethany’s mind to think about it.

It was like the first huge hurdle of becoming a doctor. How much pain could you put yourself through in eight long, horrible years? How much pain could you fully withstand before falling apart?

It blew her mind that she’d decided to go to a therapist at all. She was twenty-six and accustomed to telling herself everything was okay. Everything always had to be okay. She was Bethany Sutton, for crying out loud, and accustomed to “grinning and bearing it” since her life had fallen apart more than a decade ago.

The therapist was a trim woman of about forty. She wore glasses from a very different fashionable era—fifties or sixties, Bethany guessed—and seemed between half awake and half bored. When she glanced back down at Bethany’s file, her eyes widened for the first time since Bethany’s entry and said, “Sutton. You aren’t related to Victor Sutton, are you?”

Bethany flared her nostrils. This was exactly what she’d feared. Should she lie? Maybe. But wasn’t lying to your therapist generally inefficient? She wanted to feel better. She wanted to heal, whatever that meant. And that meant telling this woman the truth.

So she said, “Yeah. He’s my dad.”

The therapist’s cheeks were suddenly rosy as though she were a teenager with a crush. “I’ve learned so much from him over the years. I’ve never met him, of course, although that’s a dream of mine. But you should see my copy of his last book. I think I’ve underlined something on every page.”

Bethany blinked. What could she possibly say? She hadn’t spoken to her father in many years and didn’t regret it. He’d abandoned her mother and their family after the death of her little brother, Joel. He’d run away to Providence, Rhode Island, with his secretary, Bree, and was apparently doing very well for himself. He specialized in writing books and appearing on talk shows to discuss human psychology. He advertised himself as the sort of man who understood the innermost workings of the human mind.

It sickened Bethany. She assumed it also disgusted her older sister, Rebecca, and her younger sister, Valerie. Presumably, also her mother, Esme. But she hadn’t spoken to any of them, either. Not since she’d left Nantucket Island. Not since she’d moved to Savannah and never looked back.

The therapist talked about Victor Sutton for nearly five minutes before returning the topic to Bethany and why she’d decided to seek help. Throughout, Bethany’s stomach bubbled with anger. Who did this woman think she was? Couldn’t she see that Bethany was suffering? That she hadn’t slept in many days? That she felt on the verge of a breakdown nearly all the time? She’d sobbed in the bathroom during her last lab test, wondering if she’d ever make it through medical school.

When the therapist finally asked Bethany “what seemed to be the problem,” Bethany hardened her heart against her. “Actually, nothing,” she said.

The therapist tilted her head. She still looked intrigued with her, as though she thought involving herself with Victor Sutton’s daughter meant a leg-up in her career. “What made you come in today?”

Bethany twisted her head around and gazed out the window at a lush Savannah afternoon. This was her third year of medical school, but she’d been in Savannah since she was eighteen. Eight years in Savannah. Eight years in the milkshake-thick humidity, trying to shed her past as though it were snakeskin.

“I have to run,” Bethany said, jumping to her feet and heading for the door.

“Wait! Miss Sutton?”

But Bethany charged down the hallway and broke into a run. She sped out the door and sprinted through campus as her long hair whipped behind her. Other students stared at her openly, surprised to see a woman look so frantic in the middle of the afternoon. Some underclassmen—boys, obviously—catcalled her, asking, “Where are you going, beautiful?”

When Bethany rounded the corner near her apartment, she staggered to a halt and grabbed her thighs. Sweat poured down her back and between her breasts. Her eyes stung. She considered what to do next. She’d planned to spend the rest of the evening studying, cramming as much information about the limbic system into her brain as she could before midnight. But she wasn’t sure if she could focus. Hatred for her father ballooned in her stomach.

“Yo! Sutton,” a male voice hollered.

What now? Bethany wanted to curl into a ball and hide. She twitched and stood upright to find a group of male med students with backpacks walking her way. Jeff lived in her building, and sometimes he and a few friends studied together in his apartment. Running into them always bruised Bethany’s ego. Everyone knew she didn’t have any friends in medical school. She hadn’t had a friend since junior year of undergrad when she and another quiet girl in her science lab had struck up a friendship, likely because neither of them had anyone else. After graduation, she’d moved to Washington, DC, to work for a cereal manufacturer—and Bethany never heard from her again.

Jeff had been the one who’d said hello. He was at the front of the pack, smiling like a male model in a magazine advertisement. Behind him were Austin Shelters, Nick Waterhouse, and Win Snodgrass. They always reminded Bethany of the handsome, popular guys back at Nantucket High School, who’d mostly ruled the school and the majority of the island, hardly gotten into trouble when they did anything wrong, and dated only the prettiest girls. She and her high school boyfriend had called them “the idiot squad.”

But Jeff, Austin, Nick, and Win were not idiots. They were in medical school, earned top grades, and were set to get into whichever residency they pleased. Bethany was pretty sure they all wanted to be surgeons. She wanted to be one, too, but she knew men like these were far more likely to have the careers they planned for.

Sexism in the medical field wasn’t something people knew about, but it was rampant. Most of her peers were men. Some people at the hospital mistook her for a nurse (because nurses were supposed to be women, and doctors were supposed to be men), and many, many people within medical school assumed she wanted to be a children’s doctor or a gynecologist. Nothing was wrong with either of those career tracks, but what if she wanted to be a brain surgeon? The doors wouldn’t open for her like they would for Jeff, Austin, Nick, and Win.

“You studying tonight?” Jeff asked.

“Um. Yeah,” Bethany stuttered, feeling like a fool. Tomorrow, they would watch a surgery and take a test immediately afterward.

“Don’t make us look too bad tomorrow,” Jeff joked, glancing back at his friends and sniggering. “You know, Nick’s old man is performing the surgery.”

Nick blushed and palmed the back of his neck. His father was one of the top medical surgeons in the South and very respected throughout the profession. It was understood that his father put incredible pressure on him to outperform the other students and ultimately follow in his footsteps. Although Nick was quite intelligent, Bethany had never known him to be the genius his father needed him to be. More than that, Bethany had heard that Nick’s father, Dr. Bob Waterhouse, was one of the worst offending sexists in Savannah. He’d never hired a female surgeon or sent any of his patients to a female doctor.

Still, Bethany knew Dr. Bob Waterhouse had come from another generation. And she had a great deal to learn from men like him—especially if she wanted to take his spot one day.

Nick held himself back as Jeff, Win, and Austin paraded around the corner. His cheek twitched with nerves. Bethany wondered if he hated people bringing up his father just as much as she hated the mention of Victor Sutton.

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