I folded my hands in my lap, lacing my fingers together tight, as though to keep them from escaping my hands. “Richie worries about me,” I said. “It’s understandable. He loves me. He wants me to stay alive.”
“I am wondering howyoufeel about it,” she said. “Not Richie.”
My throat caught. I felt an awful pressure against the backs of my eyes. I wasn’t going to cry—I knew that. But I wanted to very badly, which was, in a way, worse. “I feel…like I’m being forced to choose between the two things I love most.”
Susan nodded slowly.
“And…and I’m mad at Richie for making me choose.”
“Is he making you choose?”
“Well, it’s not like he’s issued an ultimatum. But…”
“But what?”
“I don’t want him to worry about me.”
She nodded again.
“What do you think?” I said.
“Do you care what I think?”
“Of course I do.”
“Why?”
“Because…”
Susan steepled her fingers under her chin and watched me for a long while. “I think,” she said finally, “that you should probably stop caring so much about what other people think. Including me. Including Richie. We might get worried for you. We might disagree with your choices. But trust me, they areyourchoices. You’re the only one who has to live with them. And no matter how worried or upset we may be about what you choose to do with your life, we will survive.”
Susan’s cheeks flushed. In all the time I’d known her, I hadn’t ever heard her say so many words at one time, or show this type of emotion. It made me think about her own relationship, about which I knew very little—though enough to understand that she might have had firsthand experience with fears like Richie’s.
I felt a tingling in my chest.Nerves,I thought. Because I was, in fact, very, very tense.
It wasn’t until the session was nearly over and I felt the same sensation, this time at my side, that I realized it wasn’t nerves, but my purse. More precisely, it was Dylan’s phone, zipped inside and set to vibrate. Someone was calling him.
Fifteen
The incoming call was from Trevor the Chemist. “I have to take this,” I said, looking back up at Susan.
She nodded, her features settling into their usual placidity.
I ducked into the waiting room. There was another patient in there—a Harvard professor type, his face buried in a library edition ofOf Human Bondage.
I figured I should answer Dylan’s phone where no one could overhear me, and so I pushed open the front door, hurried down the short flight of stairs, and stepped outside. A cold wind bit through my sweater. My teeth chattered. I wished I’d thought to grab my coat. “Trevor?”
“Who is this?” The voice was deep and strangely familiar.
“My name is Sunny Randall,” I said. “I’m a private investigator.”
There was a long pause. Then, finally, laughter. “No way.”
I frowned. “Trevor? Do I know you?”
Another pause. I could hear voices in the background. The crackle of a radio. “This is Lee Farrell, Sunny,” he said.
“Oh, God,” I said. “Really?”
