Ten Months Ago
Tori awoke the day after the bathtub scene to ten missed calls and a dozen text messages from Van, apologizing, groveling really, and begging her to respond.
She knew what it meant.
If it weren’t happening to her, if it were happening to a patient, she would describe it as textbook controlling behavior.
The kind that seemed to come out of nowhere, like a light switching on.
How many times had she sat across from women in her office who were dismayed that the sweet guy they had been dating had seemingly changed overnight, had hit them, or stalked them, or raged at them?
How sure she had felt, counseling these women, that she, Tori, would have noticed the red flags.
Would have seen the jarring shift coming a mile away.
Well, she hadn’t. And now she had a potentially explosive situation on her hands. She needed to tread gingerly.
Her ex was dropping Leo off right after noon, so she wanted to get to the grocery store to pick up his favorites.
She liked to have the fruit washed and sliced, the cheese cubed, and little cracker sandwiches of peanut butter and jelly waiting on the counter when he returned.
It was her ritual, her way of telling Leo that even when he was gone, she had been thinking about him.
After some deliberation she decided to answer Van’s many texts with: I’m with my son today. I’ll call you tomorrow.
Monday came and she didn’t call.
When she awoke, she saw that Gil, the hiring partner at the mental-health group she worked for, had put a last-minute meeting on her calendar.
This was not a good thing. She knew she hadn’t been the most attentive therapist this past month.
A few of her patients had complained, and one had caught her checking her phone.
Van was waiting for her outside her office building. As soon as she turned the corner of Bethesda Avenue, she caught sight of him and almost stopped short. Instead, she kept walking, fixing a smile on her face.
“What are you doing here?”
“I went up to see you but they said you hadn’t come in yet, so I waited outside.” He had his hands shoved deep into his shorts, flip-flops on his feet. What must her colleagues have thought?
“You went inside? Who did you talk to?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Who cares? I’ve been trying to reach you. Did you get my texts?”
“Morning, Tori.” She looked up to see another therapist in the practice opening the glass door to the building.
“Oh, hi!” She gave a chipper smile and a wave. Once the woman was inside the foyer, Tori turned back to Van. “You can’t be here.”
“I need to talk to you.”
“Later.” She forced herself to smile and soften her tone. “We can talk later, ’kay?”
By the time she got to the fourth floor, where the administrative offices and group therapy rooms were, she had sweat through her blouse.
She pushed open the glass door of the room the practice used for intake with patients to find Gil sitting at one end of the long conference table, squinting at his phone, his glasses pushed up on his forehead.
He looked like a professor in his rumpled sports jacket, his curly hair springing from the sides of his head to compensate for his receding hairline.
But she knew he was a capitalist at heart.
A psychiatrist, he had stopped practicing years ago, and ran this lucrative mental-health group with the marketing and business savvy that rivaled a hotel chain.
“Sit down, Tori, this won’t take long.” He proceeded to inform her that he had received a complaint about her. “The patient said you’ve been distracted in sessions, looking at your phone, staring off into space. They’ve reached out because they want to change therapists.”
“Who is it?” Tori ran through her clients, but none stood out as noticeably upset with her.
“We are going to accommodate their request, of course,” he said, lifting his chin and peering down at her.
His distaste could not have been more apparent had he held his nose.
“Once we do so, which should be by the end of the day, you’ll know their identity.
But, Tori, I urge you not to focus on them, but on your own behavior.
This is not the first time we’ve received complaints about your lack of professionalism.
It’s just the first time someone has asked to see another therapist.”
“I had no idea.” Her body felt instantly hot. He thought she was a screwup and had for a while. All those friendly hellos and chitchat in the break room, it was all fake. She felt herself shrink in her swivel chair.
“If further association with this group is your desired outcome,” Gil said, “it will necessitate engaging in a structured mentorship program. I’ll send the details by the end of the day. Oh, and Tori, try to limit personal visits from friends to the office.”
He dismissed her with a little wave. Out in the hall, she parsed the corporate language. She was being put on some kind of probation, although she didn’t know exactly what that looked like. Her skin was boiling hot and she felt like she couldn’t breathe.
She was at risk of losing everything. This had to end.
That night, after dinner and reading Leo to sleep, she wrapped herself up in her pink kimono, lay in bed, and told Cyrus she needed some advice.
“All right, I’m listening. What’s going on now? And don’t you dare tell me ‘nothing’ because I can already see it written all over your face.” The disembodied voice could not have any idea what was written on her face, but Tori didn’t care.
“It’s bad.”
“Tell me. You know I don’t have time for games, so spill it.”
“It’s the guy I’ve been seeing. I am ready to end it and he’s not taking it well. He’s younger and won’t stop texting.”
“Oh honey, NO. Just … NO. First of all—and I say this with love—what did I TELL you about these young boys? They don’t know when to back off because their little brains are still developing! Listen to me very carefully: Block. His. Number. Right now. I’m not playing.”
“I don’t know if I should do that.”
“Don’t you dare give me that ‘but he’s sweet’ nonsense. Sweet doesn’t pay your rent. Sweet doesn’t keep food on the table. You worked too hard to get where you are to let some twentysomething mess it up because he can’t take a hint.”
She didn’t have the guts to tell Cyrus that Van was not twentysomething but nineteen. “He lives on my street. I can’t just block his texts.”
“Okay, okay … so blocking won’t work because he’ll just show up at your door like some lovesick puppy. Great. Just GREAT,” Cyrus said. “Here’s what we’re gonna do.”
Her heart skipped a beat at the “we’re”—they were in this together, she and Cyrus.
“The next time he comes by, or calls—you’re gonna lay down the LAW. Not some wishy-washy ‘let’s cool it’ garbage. You tell him straight up: ‘This is DONE.’”
It was a great plan, in theory.
On Tuesday night, Tori was just finishing bathing Leo and was helping him into his Spider-Man pajamas when Autumn stuck her head in the door, her pretty round face tight with concern.
“I’m really, really sorry to bug you,” she said, her eyes wide and her face pink.
“But there’s some guy here and he insists on seeing you.
I think he lives in the house behind us?
He seems kind of upset.” Autumn’s fingers nervously twisted the hem of her T-shirt.
“I told him you were busy but…” She shrugged.
“Did you let him in the house?” Tori’s stomach dropped.
Autumn shook her head no.
“Good. It’s okay. He’s the landlord’s kid.
He’s just helping me with a house thing.
Tell him to wait for me on the porch.” She thought of him outside, skulking around, visible to anyone who walked by.
That wouldn’t work. “No, on second thought, tell him to go around to the back and wait for me, okay? I’ll meet him there. ”
Autumn frowned. “You sure?”
After Autumn left the room, Tori rushed through reading Leo’s favorite book, There’s a Nightmare in My Closet, which lay open on his lap.
After she’d tucked Leo in and shut off the lights, she went downstairs and stepped out on the back patio, where Van was waiting in the shadows.
The night air was humid. In the distance she heard laughter and squeals, kids enjoying the summer nights.
She could picture happy, normal parents in their lawn chairs, drinking beer.
She didn’t know how she ended up here, in the dark.
“You can’t do this,” she told Van in a low voice, wrapping her pink kimono around her tightly despite the warm summer air. “You can’t just keep showing up. At my house. At my work.”
“I wouldn’t have to if you’d talk to me.” His tone was sulky, a mix of belligerence and hurt. “I’m not gonna let you ghost me.”
A light went on in the Allards’ yard and they both turned at once. Tori sucked in a breath, terrified that Jo or Daniel might come out and confront them. Could they see Van and her here in the darkness? She doubted it but she couldn’t be sure.
“Probably just a fox or raccoon triggering the lights,” Van said once it was clear no one was coming out of his house.
“Go home. This is too risky.”
She started to turn back to her house but he grabbed her shoulder, his grip tight.
“This isn’t fair. I didn’t do anything.” He was close, and she could smell alcohol on his breath.
A primitive part of her brain buzzed to life, a survival instinct kicking in.
She had witnessed how alcohol plus rejection equaled violence.
She would need to tread carefully. Van was young, but he was strong, impulsive. Who knew what he was capable of?
“I just meant,” she started in a sweet voice, “that we should be careful. We should meet somewhere less visible.” So much for taking Cyrus’s advice. She gently pried his fingers from her. Somehow, in doing that, her fingers became entangled with his.
“Okay. Fine. But I need to see you. To be alone with you.” He leaned in so close now, she thought he was going to kiss her. The idea nauseated her. She pulled her head back.
“Not here. In case a neighbor is watching. Let’s wait.”
“Until when? You don’t have Leo this weekend, right? You had him last weekend.”
She shuddered despite the warm air. He knew her schedule. She had allowed him into the most personal crevices of her life. “Right.”
“Okay, then we’ll do something this weekend. I’m dying without you,” he whispered in her ear. “I’m fucking dying. I can’t go on like this.”
Her whole body rigid, Tori took her chance and pulled back from him, disentangling her fingers. “Good night. I’ll see you this weekend.”
On the balls of her bare feet, she ran back to her house, her kimono fluttering behind her. Inside, she locked the door and chained it. She had not been able to get rid of him, but at least she had bought herself a little time.