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“All right …”
Might as well be direct. “Did you see my mom’s body after she died?”
He shifts his weight from one leg to another. “Why do you ask?”
I don’t respond, but I clock his discomfort.
“Are you wondering if she could have been saved?” he continues. “Because that’s a common response after losing someone we love, holding onto the hope that things might’ve turned out differently.”
I note that he didn’t answer my question and instead responded with one of his own. I decide to keep quiet. In therapy, pregnant silences can often lead to profound patient revelations. “Irene was my friend. I couldn’t stomach seeing her body, so, no,” he finally replies. “An employee dealt with her body.”
He seems a bit hedgy.
“Can I speak with them?” I ask.
“Oh, they’re long gone,” he says.
“Can I have their contact information?” I ask.
He narrows his eyes. “What’s going on?” he asks me.
“Nothing,” I say.
“To be honest, I don’t remember who was working back then,” he adds. “And even if I did, we deal with so many funerals. They wouldn’t remember one from twenty-six years ago.”
I nod, even though I’m not sure I entirely believe him. It took him a while to tell me he never saw Mom’s body, and he was visibly uncomfortable when I first asked him about it.
“I wish I could talk more,” he says. “But we’re getting ready for a memorial service now. I hope everything’s okay with you.”
I nod.
“Remember, just because people are gone—” he says.
“Doesn’t mean they leave us,” I say.
CHAPTER4
I’M IN SESSIONwith my patient, Tom, putting on an Academy Award-worthy performance, acting as though a woman didn’t barge into this office a few hours ago to tell me my dead mother is still alive.
“I told her I got the promotion,” Tom says about his mother. He’s thirty years old and has spent the last year in therapy coming to terms with having a narcissistic mother.
“How did it go?” I ask.
“She made it all about herself, like usual. Barely acknowledged it and then asked if I knew she was leaving for Sedona next week.”
As he’s speaking about his mother, I can’t help but think about my own. If Mom is still alive, deserting Dad and me twenty-six years ago is whatever comes after narcissistic.
Could shereallybe alive?
“The good news is I didn’t expect her to react any other way,” Tom continues. “Something clicked in our last session when you told me to think of her narcissism as unchangeable, just like her eye color. It helped me not take her response personally—”
My cell phone buzzes on my desk, interrupting him. I usually silence it before seeing patients, but with everything that happened this morning, I forgot.
It buzzes again and again and again—it won’t stop.
“Excuse me,” I say. “I forgot to turn my phone off. My apologies.”
As I lift my phone, another text blooms, adding to the stream that’s already there:
