Frankie #2
genuinely believes what he’s saying. “It’s a fact. I’m sorry. I know you’re a scientist who doesn’t believe in the supernatural.
But I’m telling you, it’s real. I’d love to stand here and convince you, but I have to—”
“Hold on.” He’s right. I am a scientist. That’s how I know I have to keep him talking until I can get him the help he so desperately
needs. “Guy is your grandmother, as well as Derrick Winters’s mother, and your boss, the head of Olympus—cute name, by the
way—and . . . Mother Nature?”
“Look, I know how it sounds—”
“You told my mother that you’re Catholic.”
It’s funny the things we focus on when our world is suddenly tumbling down around us. My mother’s heart is going to be broken because the Catholic boy I brought home to Sunday Gravy is . . . well, I’m not sure what he is.
“I am,” Ash insists. “My mother raised me in the church. But—”
“Is she a goddess, too?”
“Who, my mother? No. I mean, Guy’s her mother, so she definitely wasn’t like all the other moms, but mainly only because she
has a special gift, too, just like me, only hers is gardening. My mother can make anything grow anywhere—”
He looks back at me, his words tumbling over one another in his eagerness to get them out. He’s been holding all of this in
for a very long time.
“Look, this shouldn’t come as a surprise to you. Obviously the public’s shift to monotheism and the emergence of science made
it more difficult for the ancient gods to live—let alone do good works—under their original names. They had to go into hiding.
But that’s a hard thing for people who are used to helping others while also being worshiped. I’m not saying everyone in my
family is a narcissist, but . . . let’s just say there are a lot of big egos, and they all want their chance to shine.”
“Okay.” I often deal with patients in crisis. True, their crises are usually of the financial variety, but the patient care
is no different. I just need to keep Ash talking long enough for help to arrive and save him from the complete psychotic break
I suspect he might be having. “Go on.”
“So Gaia pivoted to this charitable trust, which not only enables her to hide her true identity, it also gives her and the rest of the family more opportunity to make a difference in the lives of the people who need help the most. And it gives all my relatives who haven’t gone into politics or the entertainment business a way to use their gifts. ”
“Like finding lost things.”
“Right. But I really do manage our family assets.”
“Which I imagine there’s a lot of. You guys have been around for a very long time.” My heart is aching, but I have to ask,
since his response could determine a course of treatment, “So would you call yourself a demigod? Because—”
“No!” There it is again—the same desperation I’d seen in his hair raking, only this time, it’s in his voice. “I told you,
some of us have special powers, but only Gaia and the first few generations of her descendants are truly immortal—”
“Some of us? How many of you are there?”
He looks even more uncomfortable. “Gaia is the mother of creation. So, uh, she likes giving birth. It’s embarrassing because
she’s my grandmother, you know—”
I can’t say that in all my years in practice, I’ve ever heard of anyone else with this particular delusion. But that’s the
thing about delusions: like an autumn leaf, no two are alike.
“So it feels like every time I turn around, she’s got some new guy, and is getting knocked up by him,” Ash goes on. “So I
have a lot of half-siblings and aunts and uncles . . . like Derrick.”
My God. He’s even managed to rope poor Derrick into his pathology. “So does Derrick work for Olympus, too?”
“Yes, but remotely, and not in my department. He’s in human resources.”
“Okay. But not all of the ancient gods and their descendants work for Olympus?”
“No!” He’s starting to look angry. “Think about it, Francesca. Use your common sense. You pay attention. You read books and follow the news. You must have wondered before about how all these not really very intelligent-seeming, but highly attractive people got so rich without ever seeming to do any real work. I’m sure you’ve seen that one guy who’s been in all those movies—you know the ones—but never seems to age? ”
Hesitantly, I nod. “Yes. Are you saying—”
“That’s my uncle Hermes! All that bullshit he says in interviews about eating right and exercising—I mean, yeah, he really
does all that. But he’s also messenger of the gods!”
I nod like this makes sense. Like Mark nodded that afternoon when Mrs. Baumgarten told him about the ghosts who stole her
groceries. Because that’s how you deal with people who are suffering from such false beliefs . . . at least until you can
get them the professional help they need: you embrace their reality.
“Okay,” I say to Ash. “This is all very informative. Thank you for telling me. Why don’t we go inside so we can discuss it
over a nice warm cup of—”
He stares down at me, his gaze wounded. “You don’t believe me.”
I know better than to deny it. “Like you said, it doesn’t matter what anyone else believes—”
“But I’m telling the truth. There’s the proof!
” He thrusts a finger toward the burning island in the middle of the lake.
“Do you understand that people are going to die if I don’t stop this?
I don’t know what Haley’s planning to do with that bone.
It’s definitely not Gaia’s. Gaia doesn’t need tools or gimmicks.
It’s true that Hecate has never managed to adjust to life here on earth like the rest of the family, even under a different name.
She’s always preferred to live in the Underworld.
But that doesn’t mean her magic is any stronger than my grandmother’s.
It’s just different. And that’s why I have to stop Haley.
She’s messing with forces she doesn’t understand. Someone is going to get hurt.”
Someone is going to get hurt, all right. But I have a very bad feeling that someone is Ash. And maybe me.
All I can hear is my own breathing . . . and his. The same breathing I’d felt against my cheek last night—and again this morning—as
he’d plunged himself into me. Multiple times.
While believing what has to be one of the most elaborate delusions I’ve ever heard.
“I understand why you might feel that way,” I say to him finally, as gently as I can. “But whatever is going on over there
is not your responsibility. There’s nothing you can—”
“It’s my job, Francesca,” he says in a tone I recognize. It’s the tone of a man who is finished talking—at least to me. “This is my responsibility. That’s why I’m asking you—no, begging you—to go inside so I can do my job.”
“Okay,” I say. He’s grown so agitated, I know he’s not going to be receptive to anything I say. So instead, I let him think
he’s won. “Okay. I’ll go inside now like you asked. Why don’t you come talk to me when you’re finished, okay?”
It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do, but I do it: I turn around and head toward my own house.
“Frankie—”
The note of despair in his voice—not to mention the fact that he finally called me by the name I prefer—is almost enough to
cause me to turn around.
But I’m dealing with my own despair. I know what I have to do now, and I really, really don’t want to do it.
A part of me knew this was going to happen. A part of me knew the minute I let myself start falling for this guy, something like this was going to come along and mess it all up. Well, not this, because who could foresee this? But something. That’s just the way my luck has been lately.
Finally get the cat I’ve been wanting? She has kittens all over my new dress.
Finally find a man I think I could be with, at least for the foreseeable future? He turns out to believe he’s descended from
the gods.
I should have known.
“Frankie.”
He sounds heartbroken. And why not?
Because it’s over. It has to be. Of course, if I were one of my own patients, I would advise myself that this isn’t necessarily
a deal-breaker. Two people with very different belief systems can make a relationship work. They simply need to establish
a few boundaries. . . .
But witchcraft? Sacrifices? Mother Nature? The Queen of the Dead?
This is way above my level of expertise. I’m going to have to call my own therapist and see if I can get her to squeeze Ash
into her already packed schedule.
He must have seen it in my face before I turned away. He had to. My eyes are filled with tears, and it isn’t only because
of all the smoke.
Weirdly, he doesn’t beg me to stay. He says only, in a tone of resignation, “I’ll call you later.”
And then he’s gone.
Oh, it’s nothing as dramatic as him disappearing into a puff of smoke, or even a fiery column of sparks. That would be welcome, because it would be indisputable proof that what he’s talking about—magic—is real.
Instead, there’s only smoke—getting thicker, though it still smells pleasantly of burning autumn leaves—through which I can
see him striding toward his house, undoubtedly so he can hurry down the stairs to his dock, hop onto his vintage boat, and
shoot across the lake to save Emma Bridle from being a human sacrifice.
And why should this be a surprise? He’s right: he never lied to me. He always insisted he has superpowers. Why didn’t I recognize
right away that was a red flag? The first of many, all of which I ignored. It had been excusable with Richard—I wasn’t a licensed
therapist when Richard and I first got together. But now?
Now I am, and I still let it happen.
“God,” I mutter with a sob, spinning around again to stomp toward my porch. “How could I have been so stupid?”
It’s only when I’m pulling the keys from my bag that I see it: There’s someone sitting in the dark on my porch swing.
My heart freezes in terror as the hulking masculine figure lifts a cigarette to his lips—the tip glowing fiery red as he inhales—then
says in a deep, thoughtful voice, “I’ve never thought of you as stupid.”