Chapter 27
That night, after cleaning the dinner dishes, running a load of laundry, and picking up Lucy’s and Sam The Dog’s toys, I sat down with my laptop in hopes Tim had sent me contact info for one of his PIs ahead of schedule.
No such luck. However, Rebecca’s threatening email still languished at the top of my inbox.
It had been two days since Rebecca and William lobbed their grenade.
With my people-pleaser mindset, the fact I hadn’t yet acknowledged receipt of their communication rubbed me wrong, like an itchy T-shirt tag.
But then, what was there to say? Thank you for the fucked-up note.
I appreciate you? Or, I have my own lawyer now.
Love you, too? Nope, neither draft quite hit the mark.
With a deep sigh, I sank back into our cozy fake-velvet couch and made space for the doubts I’d been suppressing all day.
The meeting with Tim had rattled me to my core.
Not only because of his hair-raising reactions to my side of the story, but also because I knew now that even if a PI could miraculously locate Max, no matter what his excuses turned out to be, my trust in him had almost certainly been misplaced.
Which was a hard pill to swallow. Because if my gut instincts could be that wrong, where did that leave me?
Maybe I was more broken than I realized.
My highest responsibility was always to Lucy.
I was her mom, and her protector, and my love for her stretched way beyond Mars.
If the only way to satisfy the Packers, or my lawyer, or—worst case—a judge, that I was adequately equipped to carry out my motherly duties was to make a therapy appointment, then what was stopping me?
Yes, it was terrifying to think about sitting in an office opposite a professional whose job it was to slice me open.
But how could I let ego, or childish defensiveness, or heartbreak stand in the way of guaranteeing Lucy could grow up, and thrive, under my care?
I could stop merely pretending to look for a therapist and actually look for one.
I could attend an appointment and still maintain some boundaries.
I could agree to talk about my life, but there was no law that said I needed to tell the person everything.
Besides, no one would ever know what I said or did not say inside a confidential session with a psychologist.
Frannie had given me a list of grief counselors once upon a time, back when I was pregnant with Lucy and Sam’s death was still a fresh gaping wound.
After a few searches of my hard drive, I had her list of seven therapists up on my desktop.
All of them in West LA and recommended by a colleague of Frannie’s whose husband was a psychologist. Before I could change my mind, I started at the top.
Twenty minutes later, I’d reached the bottom of the list. Drs.
Oliver and Shelley were no longer practicing.
Drs. Lopez, Savage, Preston, and Westing were not accepting new patients.
And Dr. Dennis had been convicted of insurance fraud and was serving a twelve-year term in federal prison.
Yikes. I felt sad for all the lost souls in crisis who had no hope of finding a qualified therapist anytime soon.
As for me, what was I supposed to do now?
A random Google search? Although it seemed like a rather haphazard way to seek the person with whom I’d be expected to share my most private thoughts, it didn’t feel like I had a choice.
So I typed into the search bar, West LA grief—but then I pulled up short when a name suddenly materialized in my conscious mind.
Dr. Field. As in, the name I’d bestowed on the fictional marriage therapist who helped my protagonist and her husband reconcile in Love You to Mars and Back.
With a “here goes nothing” mental shrug, I backspaced and then typed Dr. Field therapist LA. I held my breath and pressed Return.
And there, at the top of the search results, was the person apparently destined to be my new therapist: Dr. Leticia Field, clinical psychologist; Santa Monica, California.
One click confirmed Dr. Field was currently taking new patients.
Another click led me to the appointment request form, which I filled out and submitted.
Two minutes later, my computer pinged with an email from Dr. Field.
Hi Thea, Might you be available next Wednesday at 3pm? Normally I’m booked out several weeks for new patients, but I just had a rare cancellation not ten minutes ago. It must be your lucky day! Kind regards, Dr. Leticia Field.
Stunned, giddy, and trepidatious all at once, I confirmed the appointment and then shot off a text to the Packers with my long-postponed acknowledgment of their email: Thank you for your concern.
I’ve made an appointment with a therapist next Wednesday afternoon.
There was no way in hell I’d be sharing the name of the therapist, just in case Rebecca experienced a sudden pang of guilt and decided to read my book.
The last thing I needed was her making that connection.
Rebecca immediately responded with a heart emoji.
William wrote: Thank you for the note.
Was this what progress felt like?
I decided to enjoy this suspended state of animation between having secured the dreaded appointment and needing to decide whether to show up.
I tried not to think about what my anxiety level would be when next Wednesday rolled around.
I assured myself I could always cancel. Or I could go, but avoid any tough questions, and then send a screenshot of my invoice (with Dr. Field’s name redacted) to the Packers as proof of sanity.
Meanwhile, I was still clinging to hope that Tim’s PI would find Max, and I might learn why he ghosted me and who he really was.
Perhaps then I could put the internet and the Packers in their places, and rescue my professional integrity from the naysayers.
In the privacy of my own dark thoughts, I could also acknowledge that discovering concrete evidence of Max would help disprove my deepest, most irrational fear.
The fear that needled me every time I searched for the missing necklace and did not find it.
The fear that Max had been nothing more than a figment of my imagination, invented to keep Sam’s fading memory alive, all along.