Page 6 of The Unraveling

“Just window-shopping, mostly.” Another forced smile. I catch my leg jiggling and press a hand over my knee to still it.

He holds a pen in one hand, a small bound notebook in his lap. I haven’t seen him jot down anything yet, unlike me when I see patients. I take lots of notes.

Is he not writing because he knows I’m lying?

Maybe it’s a bad idea to lie. Maybe, like me, he can almost surely tell when someone is lying. And lying is half of what got me into this mess in the first place, isn’t it? Pressure builds inside me until I find myself asking, “Is what I say here confidential? I mean, obviously I know about doctor-patient confidentiality rules. But do you have to report details of our session to the medical board, since my visits are mandated by them?”

Lord knows I signed a bunch of papers at the hearing without reading them. Maybe I’ve lost my right to privacy—like so many other things I’ve lost because of you. Perhaps that notebook on his lap isn’t so much our session notes but where he’ll write notes on what he has to report back. Maybe—

“What’s said in this room is confidential.” His voice interrupts my ruminating. “I do have to tell the medical board if you don’t come to your sessions, but what you tell me here is covered by patient confidentiality, the same as any other patient we would treat.”

My hands unclench. I take a deep breath and let myself sink back on the couch.

“Okay.” I make the split-second decision that truth is the best policy. At least here, where these words will only echo within the walls of his office. “I did go for a walk, but I didn’t go shopping afterward. I spent my day following someone.”

“Following? Do you mean someone was leading the way? Or you were following someone without their knowledge?”

“Without their knowledge.”

He nods, keeping his face expressionless—something we are both trained to do. Lately it’s been the only face I wear, since expressions display our feelings, and I don’t seem to have any.

“All right. And who was it that you followed today?”

“A dead woman’s husband.”

Dr. Alexander’s mask slips and his eyebrows widen. His pen spins in his fingers, presses to the notepad, and he scribbles before looking up. “Tell me more.”

I look away for a long time, staring out the window at the swaying trees. I don’t make eye contact when I finally speak. “His name is Gabriel Wright. He’s the husband of the woman that was killed, the father of the child killed.”

Dr. Alexander quietly absorbs what I’ve said. I feel his eyes trained on my face, but I can’t look at him. Not yet, anyway.

“Was today the first time you followed Mr. Wright?”

I shake my head. “Second.”

“When was the first time?”

“Yesterday.”

“And why did you follow him?”

I shrug. “I have no idea. I saw him yesterday at a coffee shop. It was a surprise, definitely not something I’d planned. He looked… happy. I followed him. I think maybe I followed him again today to see if it was just a fluke, if I’d caught him during a singular moment where he’d just learned some good news, perhaps. I was curious if after that he’d slip back into a miserable existence.”

“And was he? Miserable, I mean. During the rest of the time you followed him?”

I shake my head again. “He seemed… normal. But that’s not possible.”

“Why not?”

“How could he be? How could he be happy after all that he lost? Some days I wake up in a cold sweat, with the image the newspaper ran the morning after the accident haunting me. A tarp covering a tiny little body. A stuffed Hello Kitty on the ground a foot away. What must he wake up to every day? Losing an innocent child and the love of his life? He proposed to her in the middle of a performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

Dr. Alexander scribbles more notes on his pad. “If we could, I’d like to back things up a bit. I’ve read your case file that the medical board sent over. But it doesn’t go into any detail about the family of the victims. You knew the Wright family before the accident?”

“No. We’d never met.”

“Then how do you know how Mr. Wright proposed?”

I look up and meet the doctor’s eyes for the first time. “Google. Gabriel Wright teaches at Columbia. He’s an English professor specializing in Shakespeare. The way he proposed is noted in his bio. He refers to her as his Juliet. I sat under a tree while he taught his classes earlier today and read everything that came up in a search. That’s how I passed the time while I waited.”

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