Lee woke up the next morning in a clammy sweat, anxiety squeezing his stomach like an evil fist.
Mornings were the worst. With the demands of the day looming, the terror could drain him of will, crippling him and leaving him paralyzed. Sometimes he knew the reason for his anxiety, and sometimes he didn't. It was much worse when he didn't. Then it would grip him hour after hour, pressing like a vise upon his consciousness, until even the simplest action, like brushing his teeth, required an enormous act of will.
Today he knew the reason for his anxiety: it was Kathy Azarian. Meeting her had upset his carefully calibrated world. He feared that whatever control he had managed over his emotions would be thrown to the wind. More than anything, he wanted never to return to the months following his sister's disappearance.
That was when it had started-when the darkness had descended around him, a blackness that he had never known before. Since then, he had come to know the many faces of depression. Most often, it would hit him first thing in the morning, upon waking, a cold, hard hand around his heart and a burning, as though his soul were on fire. Familiar objects become foreign, food lost its ability to comfort, landscapes he once found charming looked utterly blank. There was no seeing beyond the thick fog of pain.
Now, lying in bed, he felt the familiar restlessness coupled with frozen immobility. He lay curled up in his bed for a while, stomach churning, his mind circling around itself like a lion pacing in a cage. He looked over at the digital alarm clock next to his bed. The red numbers read 10:32, the dots between them flashing like warning signal lights.
At one point after Laura's death, he had developed a fear of his answering machine. He dreaded getting up in the morning and seeing the blinking red light indicating he had messages. It was like the glaring red eye of a great, devouring beast waiting to swallow him whole. He was terrified of other people's needs and demands on him, afraid he would fail them-or worse, that he would be engulfed by them.
He was also certain that each message would be the police calling to say they had found his sister's body. In spite of his certainty that she was dead, he dreaded receiving that call.
He pulled himself out of bed, dragged himself to the bathroom, bathed, and shaved in a haze, hardly aware of what he was doing, as though he were sleepwalking. He forced himself to look at the answering machine. To his relief, there were no messages.
Hands trembling, he picked up the phone and called his therapist. After leaving a message, he felt what little will he had draining away with each passing minute. He went to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and tried to imagine desiring food. No coffee, not today-when he was this jittery, caffeine was the last thing he needed. He stared at a bowl of bananas on the table, but they looked uninviting. He sat down at the piano but couldn't focus on the notes in front of him.
Finally, the phone rang. He picked it up on the second ring.
"Hello?"
"Hello, Lee, it's Georgina Williams." Her voice was cool and yet intimate, with just the right amount of professional detachment.
He got right to the point. "Do you have any openings or cancellations today?"
"Actually, I have one in an hour, if you can get here that quickly."
"Great. I'll see you in an hour."
He put the phone down and forced his breath all the way down into his belly, making himself exhale slowly. Then he went to the kitchen, snagged a banana from the bowl, and forced himself to eat it.
An hour later he was seated in the familiar office, with its comforting collection of objects, books, and paintings. A vase of carnations sat on the table next to Dr. Williams, casting off an aroma of nutmeg.
"Okay, you're anxious today," Dr. Williams was saying in her smooth, cultivated voice. "But are you anything else?"
"Sad, maybe."
"Anything else?"
Lee looked at her. "Like what?"
"Like…angry, perhaps?"
His stomach burned-boiled with-yes, rage.
"Okay," he said, "so I'm angry. What do I do about it?"
"Well, allowing yourself to acknowledge it is a start. Then you might tell me all the things you're angry about."
Lee felt his jaw tighten.
"Okay," he said stiffly. "I'm angry at my mother for not recognizing the truth: that Laura is gone, that she's never coming back. She just can't accept that Laura is dead."
"So you're angry at your mother for holding on to hope."
"Yes. There's a time to let it go, to see reality for what it is."
"What if reality is too painful?"
"Reality is often too painful. That's not a good excuse. You still have to face it."
"So you wish your mother had your courage?"
"Yeah, I guess I do. Because then I could-I could grieve with her. It's something we could go through together, instead of living in these parallel realities."
Dr. Williams nodded, sympathy stamped across her high-cheekboned face. "Yes, it's hard when people we care about continue to disappoint us."
"There's something else." How to say it? "I've met someone."
Dr. Williams folded her elegant hands in her lap and leaned back in her chair. "Well, that sounds like a good thing."
"It sounds great-but it feels scary."
"Why don't we talk about why it feels scary?"
"Well, it's a chance to have something I want, but it's also a chance to fail, to lose what I want."
"So as long as you don't want anything you're safe?"
Lee considered the question. "Yeah, pretty much. That's no way to live, though. The thing is, I'm not sure I'm ready for something like this. I mean, the timing-I feel caught off guard."
"Wouldn't it be great if opportunity only knocked when we asked it to?"
"Do I sense a little sarcasm?"
"No, not at all. Just irony. I don't think it's unreasonable for you to feel that way at all, but life often throws you a curve just when-"
"When you were hoping for a fastball."
Dr. Williams laughed, a low, bell-like sound that emanated from deep in her throat. Lee was reminded of a didgeridoo, the Australian musical instrument that produced amazing waves of overtones when played correctly.
"What does she look like?"
"She's, uh…kind of short, with curly dark hair."
"Like your sister."
"Oh, come on-does everything have to be about Laura?"
"No. I'm just pointing it out. It's interesting that you became so immediately defensive about it."
"All right, all right!"
"You know, it isn't unusual for someone to try to construct a surrogate family when their family of origin is inadequate-or, in this case, torn away from you."
"Okay, okay," Lee said impatiently. "And John Nelson is my substitute father figure, who doesn't abandon me, but chooses me from among all the others."
"Why does that make you so angry?"
"That's what I'm here to find out, isn't it?"
"Okay." Dr. Williams rarely took bait, even when it was dangled in front of her. It was one of the things Lee liked about her-she had that kind of confidence as a therapist.
There was a pause, and then Lee said, "You know, my mother doesn't really approve of what I do for a living."
"You think not?"
"It's too messy, too involved with things she'd rather not think about."
"The dark side of human nature?"
"She was all right with my being a psychologist, but this 'profiling thing,' as she calls it, takes me to places she doesn't want to admit even exist."
"So you think she finds it threatening?"
"I'm sure of it."
"And you? Do you find it threatening?"
"Yes. Yes, I do."
"This woman you've met-do you think she finds it threatening?"
"Well, that's the thing: she seems fascinated by it. I don't know how I feel about that. Part of me is glad, and part of me wonders…"
"What's wrong with her?"
He thought about it. "Yeah, maybe."
"So you think you should marry a girl just like dear old Mom?"
"Well, now, which is it, Dr. Williams-my mother or my sister? Make up your mind."
They both laughed, but Lee had a sticky feeling of discomfort. It was one thing to read about these things in a textbook, or even to go through it with a patient, but it was another thing to experience it yourself.
Lee left Dr. Williams's office feeling a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. It was such a relief to be able to say "I'm afraid." In his family, those were forbidden words. No one was ever afraid-not strong, worthy people, at any rate. Fear was for the rest of humanity, those inferior beings who had not the good fortune to be born Campbells. As Lee turned the corner onto University Place, past the University Coffee Shop, the smell of grilled beef assailed his nostrils, and he was suddenly ravenous.
His cell phone beeped inside his jacket, indicating that he had a message. He dug it out of his pocket and looked at the screen. NEW TEXT MESSAGE. He scrolled over to the message and read it. It was a single sentence. What about the red dress?
He stood in the middle of the sidewalk, stunned. No one knew about the red dress, the one his sister was last seen wearing before she disappeared. That detail had never been released to the public-only the police knew about the red dress.
Except that now someone else knew too.