Page 15 of Intersect

JC: Can you tell me who these peopleare?

QS: That’s Mommy and Daddy and me. And that’s Cocoa (dog).

JC: You didn’t draw Nick this time. Howcome?

QS: Nick can’t be part of my family. (Patient evidences notable sadness at thisstatement.)

JC: Why can’t Nick be a part of yourfamily?

5-secdelay.

QS: Because Nick is going to make me do a badthing.

JC: What kind of badthing?

Patient hesitates again, isuncomfortable.

QS: I can’t tellyou.

JC: Did Nick ask you not totell?

QS: Nick doesn’t even know it’s going tohappen.

JC: Can you tell me more about this bad thing he’s going to make youdo?

Patient begins tocry.

QS: I can’t. But it’s very, verybad.

Ice slips down my throat, fills my chest. It’s impossible. I must have gotten something wrong. Nick would never, evermakeme do something bad. Maybe I pictured sex and misinterpreted it. Except I told the doctor that Nick didn’t even know it was going tohappen.

Beside me he is still reading avidly. I take in his beautiful, bright face. I must have gotten somethingwrong.

He looks up. “Anything there?” heasks.

I slide the papers back into the folder. “No. Allgarbage.”

* * *

We leave empty-handed.Perhaps in one of the hundred boxes in that storage unit there exists a scrap of paper or an old envelope with Sarah’s number on it, but we’re never going to findit.

I wish hadn’t gone, but Nick feels otherwise. He brings up the psychologist’s report again andagain.

“You even described your wedding ring,” he says, glancing at me with those stunned eyes before they return to theroad.

I hadn’t remembered the ring at all until now, but the moment he mentions it, I can see it clearly. “It was your grandmother’s,” I tell him. “Don’t ask me how I know that because I don’t have a clue. This oval diamond with tiny diamonds all aroundit.”

He frowns. “There’s no ring as far as Iknow.”

I grin at him. “Maybe the ring you gave me sucked so my imagination embellished things alittle.”

He gives me one long glance before his eyes return to the road. “The ring won’t suck, I promise.” My heart quickens and I swallow, uncertain if I’m thrilled or panicked by how serious we’ve gotten already. I suspect it’s a little bit ofboth.

* * *

We arriveat the lake late in the afternoon. Nick’s still insisting we sleep in different rooms, and after what he told me I don’t have the heart to try to change his mind anymore. He shows me to the master bedroom so I can change into my suit—a red bikini, naturally. As I open my bag I notice a picture of Nick and Ryan as babies on a nightstand, and it makes my heart twist painfully. I miss Ryan and I barely remember him. How bad must it have been for Nick and hisparents?

I change and head downstairs to find Nick standing just inside the pantry—and wearing nothing but swim trunks. My God. How much swimming does hedo? Because I could swim twenty-four hours a day and not even approach a stomach like his. The brain tumor isn’t what’s going to get me in the end. It’sthis, trying to behave when Nick isshirtless.

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