Page 27 of None Of Your Business

Westbrook: Reminder: Group Session—Tuesday, 6:00 p.m.

I should stop going. I know I should, but then I look at the canvas on the easel, and at the three new ones drying against the wall.

Tuesday it is.

Seven

Hudson

The observation room is six feet by eight feet, tucked behind a door marked Private at the end of the ground-floor hallway. A pane of one-way glass covers most of the wall, facing a room with a semicircle of chairs on the other side.

I haven’t sat in on one of Webb’s sessions for weeks.

I don’t need to. That’s the point of hiring competent people.

The study is fourteen months old. The pitch is simple: couples experiencing relational strain get free group therapy in exchange for being observed. Our team anonymizes the session data for a longitudinal study on relational decay and repair. Specifically, we’re tracking whether single attendees—people whose partners won’t or can’t come—process crisis differently than couples sitting in the room together.

Dr. Cara Webb runs the therapeutic side. She’s been a colleague for seven years, a friend for five, and she’s exceptionally good at getting people to talk.

I recognize everyone until I reach the chair on the far left. Copper hair falls forward as a woman leans over something in her lap.

The pencil in her hand moves quickly across a small sketchbook.

I reach for my glasses. There is absolutely no reason putting them on should change the identity of the woman sitting twenty feet away, but I put them on anyway.

Dark red hair, a bouncing leg, and a scowl?

Oh yeah. That’s definitely her.

Littlest Callahan. Fire-hydrant enthusiast. Accidental occupant of my bed.

This is already more information than I ever expected to possess about her.

But what the hell is she doing in my study… coloring?

I run through what I know about Rowan.

Youngest Callahan. Artist. Twenty-six. Single, as far as I know. Drunk enough a few weeks ago to tell me in considerable detail about the flexibility of her hips. Loud when embarrassed. Even louder when trying to pretend she isn’t embarrassed. Apparently incapable of accepting assistance.

No husband was mentioned.

Although, in fairness, neither was an address, so what do I know?

I make a note, then draw a line through it. Rowan is not my patient. I don’t know why she’s here, and until I do, I’m not putting observations about her into research notes.

Webb checks in with everyone before her eyes land on the far left chair.

“Is there anything you’d like to contribute tonight?”

Rowan’s head snaps up. She looks at Webb, glances down at her lap, and slides her sketchbook under the clipboard in one swift motion. The edge of her hand is dark with graphite.

“Sorry,” her voice comes through the feed. “I’m just not ready.”

The second Webb turns her attention elsewhere, Rowan pulls the sketchbook back out. She flips the page and starts a new outline. She stays on that drawing until the hour ends.

Webb comes into the observation room five minutes later with a folder under her arm.

“Hudson.”