Chapter One Jenn
Chapter One
Jenn
Wednesday afternoon
The girl is watching me through a thick curtain of blue hair.
I sit across from her, relaxed, welcoming, waiting.
But not expecting. She’ll talk when she’s ready to talk.
We’ve spent the entire session like this, without so much as a single word passing between us.
Anyone watching would think I’m a crap psychiatrist, but this isn’t my first rodeo.
Very few of the clients I see are ready to share anything of themselves in the beginning—that requires trust. And to these kids, I’m a stranger—just another adult who expects something from them.
Just another person to potentially screw them over or break their heart.
These teenagers don’t give away their trust. Not anymore.
They make you earn it. And that takes as long as it takes.
This is the first time in three weeks that she’s agreed to come inside my office.
That, in and of itself, is huge progress.
The fact that she’s sizing me up is just icing on the therapeutic cake.
Or would that be the cherry on the therapeutic sundae?
An unexpected bonus either way, and it gives me hope that maybe next time she’ll actually say something.
Or she won’t. It’s up to her. I’ll wait for as long as she needs me to. And today that’s forty-five minutes.
“So, Renata, thank you for coming again,” I say in the kind of calm, soothing tone one might reserve for coaxing a skittish animal.
“You have my number if you want to speak to me anytime. If I don’t pick up, just leave a message with the answering service, and they’ll get in touch with me so I can call you right back. Okay?”
The teenager gives me an almost imperceptible nod—another first for us.
Yes, definitely progress.
Once she’s gone, I go back to my desk and jot down a few notes for her file.
Then I pull out my cell to call Gabriel.
When he picks up on the second ring, I can tell he’s in the car with the windows down, classic rock on in the background.
Ever since he splurged on the convertible for his fortieth, he finds any and every excuse to take it out on the road.
“Well, hello there, Dr. Flores. All done for the day?” he asks over the wind noise in the background.
“Almost. Sounds like you’re out and about.”
“Have you set foot outside your office at all this afternoon? It’s gorgeous!” he announces a little too loudly.
I glance out the window wistfully. It does look beautiful. “Nope. I had a full schedule today—had to scarf down a sandwich at my desk while I was taking notes between patients.”
“Well, tell you what, I just happen to be in the vicinity of Nunzio’s. How about I get us a deep-dish—extra cow, extra pig, hold anything that might constitute plant life. We can eat it out on the back porch.”
I drop into my desk chair with a weary sigh, allowing my head to fall back against the rest. “Throw in a glass of chilled white, and you’re on.”
“Already in the fridge, baby.”
I smile. “I knew there was a reason I married you.”
“Oh, well, just wait until later. I’ll remind you of a few more reasons why,” he murmurs in that low, sexy voice that makes me feel all kinds of tingly.
“Mmm. Promise?”
“Most definitely. The first thing I plan to do to you is [BEEP]—”
The sound of an incoming call lands at the exact moment he reveals his lascivious intention.
“Then I’m going to make my way over to your [BEEP]—”
And that one too.
“Gabriel . . .”
“Oh, but I’m not done yet. Just when you can’t take it anymore, I’ll [BEEP] your—”
“Gabe! Whoa! Hold up there, cowboy!” I break in. “Someone’s calling through, and I’m losing all the good stuff. It might be the answering service; let me ring you right back. Better yet, hold that thought, and when I get home, you can show me. But after the pizza, okay? I’m starving.”
He chuckles. “All right, but don’t be late—dinner will be on the table in forty-five minutes.”
“Right, love you. Bye!” I switch over before the caller can be exiled to voicemail, shifting my tone from playful to professional. “Hello. This is Dr. Flores.”
“Jennifer? Is that you? It’s been much too long since I heard that lovely voice of yours!”
Ten years, thirteen hundred miles, and about a million hours of therapy evaporate as tiny ice crystals form in my bloodstream.
My pulse spikes; the air goes metallic. For an instant I’m twenty-eight again—sitting in a windowless room that smells of burnt coffee and disinfectant, waiting for him to walk in and defend me.
He never did.
The old nausea rises so fast, it steals my breath. My fingers go numb around the phone. I make my voice work anyway.
“I’m sorry, who is this?”
The question comes out only marginally louder than a whisper.
“This is Julian, Julian Braithwaite! How are you, my dear?”
And just like that I go from freezing to boiling.
His dear?
“Dr. Braithwaite,” I reply flatly. “This is unexpected.”
My chilly demeanor doesn’t appear to faze him in the least as he plunges headlong into pleasantries. “I understand you’re in private practice now?”
“I am.”
“And is it true that you got married?”
“I did.”
“How wonderful! Any little ones?”
“Dr. Braithwaite, why are you calling me?” I grit out.
There’s a sigh of resignation from the man who was my attending once upon a time. The man who was supposed to mentor me, guide me, and support me. The man who tried to end my career before it ever began.
I hate him.
I know it.
He knows it.
It is what it is.
“Jennifer, I know the way we left things—it wasn’t exactly . . . ideal—”
“Pfft.” My scoff feels both childish and satisfying—though definitely more the latter than the former. “I won’t ask you again, Dr. Braithwaite. So, if you don’t want me to hang up this phone right now, you’d better tell me why it is, exactly, that you are calling me.”
There’s a long pause, and for just a second, I think maybe he’s regained his sanity and disconnected. But then he clears his throat and tries again.
“Jennifer, an interesting case has come to me at the hospital. One that made me think of you.”
I shift in my seat, crossing an arm over my chest and allowing myself to drop back against the rear of the chair. “Uh-huh.”
When I refuse to give him any more than the two syllables, he continues tentatively. “Well, I-I was rather hoping I might persuade you to come down here. As a consultant. You’d be well compensated, of course.”
I don’t know where the chuckle comes from, but it’s someplace dark and deep, and even I find it mildly disturbing. Maybe it’s time to revisit therapy.
“There are upwards of fifty thousand psychiatrists practicing in this country. What on earth would ever make you think to contact me before any one of them?”
“Because this could, potentially, become a criminal matter, and not one of those fifty thousand other doctors has the life experience necessary to truly understand this patient and give her a fair clinical assessment.”
Well, damn it! Now he’s got me curious.
“Who?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“No, you never did beg my pardon. That’s part of the problem between you and me, Dr. Braithwaite,” I hiss. “, Who is this person and what’s so special about my life experience? Did someone she trusted and adored throw her under the bus to save his own ass too?”
If I thought this would get a rise out of him, I was wrong. And his next question stops me in my tracks.
“Jennifer, are you familiar with a woman called Mary Langston?”
The name releases a torrent of unbidden images in my mind—newspaper articles, People magazine covers, Dateline NBC, 60 Minutes.
She was the quintessential “girl next door”—if you happened to live in a neighborhood where the girl next door was a golden-haired beauty with cornflower blue eyes and a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose.
Five years ago, Mary went off to college as a freshman, where she came face-to-face with the twin she hadn’t known she had—another student by the name of Samantha Kinski.
Almost overnight, the world was entranced by the story of the twins who had obviously been separated at birth, unbeknownst to either of their families, only to stumble upon each other in a small private college in Central Florida eighteen years later.
Of course I followed this story—everyone did.
I ignore his question and ask one of my own. “What is she charged with?”
“Nothing yet . . .”
“Okay, what might they charge her with, then?” I rephrase.
“Murder.”
And there it is: the reason this man would contact me ten years after our relationship—and, very nearly, my career—imploded. My rage recedes into something colder, sharper. I realize he is absolutely right: I can relate to this woman better than the majority of practitioners out there.
Because I, too, know what it is to have a twin. And what it is to lose one and have the whole world watch the fallout.