“You must live with the memory,” she told me repeatedly in her heavy German accent. “It is still present, Kay. You cannot run away from it. Don’t try.”
“On a scale of ten, how depressed are you, Kay?” Dr. Wagner’s voice sounded somewhere in the background.
I was still hurt and unable to accept that Lucy had never shown up once during all of this. Benton left me his condo in his will, and Lucy was furious with me for selling it, although she knew as well as I did that neither of us could ever pass through its rooms again. When I tried to give her his much-loved, scarred, scuffed bomber jacket he had worn in college, she said she didn’t want it, that she would give it to someone else. I knew she never did. I knew she hid it somewhere.
“There’s no shame in admitting it. I think it’s hard for you to admit you’re human,” Dr. Wagner’s voice surfaced.
My eyes cleared.
“Have you thought of going on an antidepressant?” Dr. Wagner asked me. “Something mild like Wellbutrin.”
I paused before I said anything.
“In the first place, Sinclair,” I said, “situational depression is normal. I don’t need a pill to magically take away
my grief. I may be stoical. I may find it difficult to show my emotions around others, to show my deepest feelings, and yes, it’s easier .for me to fight and get angry and overachieve than to feel pain. But I’m not wrapped tight in denial. I’ve got sense enough to know that grief has to run its course. And this isn’t easy when those you trust begin to chip away at what little you have left in your life.”
“You just switched from first person to second person,” he pointed out. “I’m just wondering if you’re aware . .
“Don’t dissect me, Sinclair.”
“Kay, let me paint for you the portrait of tragedy, of violence, that those untouched by it never see,” he said. “It has a life of its own. It continues its rampage, although with more stealth and with less visible wounds as time moves on.”
“I see the portrait of tragedy every day,” I said.
“What about when you look in the mirror?” he asked.
“Sinclair, it’s terrible enough to suffer loss, but to compound that with everyone looking askance at you and doubting your abilities to function anymore is to be kicked and degraded while you’re supposedly down.”
He held my gaze. I had just switched to second person again, to that safer place, and I saw it in his eyes.
“Cruelty thrives on what it perceives as weakness,” I went on.
I knew what evil was. I could smell it and recognize its features when it was in my midst.
“Someone seized what happened to me as the longawaited-for opportunity to destroy me,” I concluded.
“And you don’t think this is perhaps a little paranoid?” he finally spoke.
“No.”
“Why would someone do that, besides being petty and jealous?” he inquired.
“Power. To steal my fire.”
“An interesting analogy,” he said. “Tell me what you mean by that.”
“I use my power for good,” I explained. “And whoever is trying to hurt me wants to appropriate my power for his own selfish use, and you don’t want power in the hands of people like that.”
“I agree;” he thoughtfully said.
His phone buzzed. He got up and answered it.
“Not now,” he said over the line. “I know. He’s just going to have to wait”
He returned to his chair and blew out a long breath, took his glasses off and set them on the coffee table.
“I think the best thing to do is send out a press release informing people that someone is impersonating you on the Internet, to do what we can to clear this up as much as possible,” he said. “We’ll put an end to it, even if it requires a court order.”
“That would make me very happy,” I said.
He got up and I did, too.
‘ “Thank you, Sinclair. Thank God I have a shield like you:’
“We’ll just hope the new secretary will be the same,” he remarked as if I knew what he was talking about.