As she leans in now to pick up her glass, her thin cotton shirt clings to her hip, outlining the geometry of her own gun. The sun is bleaching out all her fine lines but hunting down every single thread of gray. She looks at least sixty. Ten years ago, in a cover story about the most eligible women in Dallas, a magazine pegged her at thirty-five.
She crosses her legs. Even all this time later, I remember her tell. It means she’s surprising me. She’s going to speak first after all.
“It’s not like I’ve forgotten you, Odette. Or haven’t felt regret that I couldn’t help you more. You made an interesting choice, becoming a cop. Returning to the town that almost ate you alive. I would not have predicted that. I’d love to discuss your choices.”
“I’m not here for me,” I say bluntly. “I’m here to ask …”
The voice in my head is saying stop.
Adjust your chair so you aren’t squinting.
Scoot it closer.
Ease in.
Don’t start with your father.
Angel’s face flashes in my brain and a picture of someone else, a little boy I haven’t thought of in years.
“There used to be a child in your waiting room who was mute,” I say slowly. “A boy. We talked. Or rather, we both didn’t talk. We played Hangman. And Tic-Tac-Toe. He liked … to see my leg. I want to ask about him.”
“Is he involved in one of your cases?” She holds up a hand. “Don’t answer that. I can’t talk about one of my patients, current or not. I’d think you’d know that.”
“This isn’t about him specifically,” I persist. “I want to understand what makes a child mute.”
She lets out a hoarse laugh. “Get in line. Like everything else, it’s often a mystery, specific to each child. Why come to me, Odette? There are books. Thousands of other psychologists, not retired. Something called ‘the Internet.’ I took on the occasional case, but I don’t pretend to be an expert in this field.”
I shrug. “You’re an expert in screwed-up children. I need a young girl to talk to me, and she won’t.”
“You’ll have to give me a little more than that.”
“OK, this is about a case,” I say cautiously. “An unidentified girl who has been almost perfectly silent since she was found. She’s been … physically traumatized. I need her to talk.”
“You need her to talk? Or you want her to?”
“I can’t protect her from what I can’t see coming.”
“You know the reality of that better than anyone. What’s coming is always unimaginable, and by that, I mean just that. It cannot be imagined. What’s coming never acts or behaves the way we think it will.” There is a bitter tinge to the last sentence. I don’t remember her this way.
“I’m not here for me,” I repeat.
“I don’t believe that. But, all right, Odette, I’ll play along. Is this girl expressionless? Nonreactive? Antisocial?”
“No. Very smart. Very aware. Things show in her face. I feel like she’s assessing everything around her all the time. She’s sweet … with little children.”
“You’ve known her how long?”
“Two days.”
“You said she was ‘almost perfectly silent.’ How much has she said?”
“One word.”
“Are you pressing her?”
“Yes.”
“Well, stop. In my experience, mute kids don’t choose to stop speaking. They desperately want to but can’t. Most people know what they know about mute kids through movies. Hannibal Lecter sees his sister killed and eaten when he’s a kid, so he stops speaking for a while as a way to control his world. The Fifty Shades guy, Christian Grey, gets stuck with his mother’s dead body at a young age. Poor little assholes, right? How could they have possibly turned out any different? This concept of mutism, of elective mutism, not speaking as an act of rebellion against life, is pretty much bullshit. With her, I’d say it’s too soon to tell. I’m curious, what word did she say?”
“Dandelion.”
“How did she look after she said it?”
“She looked scared. A little angry. A little like her voice hurt her ears.”
“Do you know why that word might be important to her?”
“No idea.”
“I suggest giving her a diary. Observe her body language and determine what topics, objects, words, and sounds make her emotional. Find out if there are certain people or things she is speaking to. You said she liked children, so maybe a child. A dog. That Amazon thingamajig, Alexa. There is no typical case. A kid might be able to talk to strangers or to a computer freely but not be able to say a word to the person she loves most.”
The sun is striking the whiskey bottle like a sword. She pours another gold stream into my glass even though it is still a quarter full.
“I remember one devastating case.” The liquor has stretched out her drawl. “It was a colleague’s, not mine. A child was told by her mother that she’d drown her in the bathtub if she ever revealed a family secret. So every time this little girl heard her own voice, it terrified her. She was afraid the secret was going to jump out like a frog from a pond. Every time she tried to speak, she began to choke. Couldn’t breathe. She felt like she was already underwater in that bathtub her mother promised to drown her in. So she shut up for good.”
I’m swimming a little underwater myself. The sun and alcohol have set off a reeling, nauseating light show.
“What happened to her?” I ask.
“She stabbed her parents in the throat. Killed them while they slept. It didn’t help her speak. She’s never told the secret. Never spoken at all. Got a bad jury and a bad judge. She’s serving life.”
Dr. Greco is jiggling the ice in her glass, a nervous rattle.
“What really brought you here, Odette?” This steel in her voice that slices out of nowhere—this is what I remember.
“I want to know why my father had your private phone number in a locked drawer,” I fire back impulsively. “I want to know what you talked about, and if it had anything to do with Trumanell.”
“Then this will be a very short conversation,” she replies. “Because your father never called.”
I’m wiping bits of my vomit off the checkers of the doctor’s black-and-white bathroom tile. How many times did the doctor’s hand wrap around the Johnnie Walker bottle and pour? Three times? Four?
She told me to call her Andy, not Andrea, not Dr. Greco, but that seems wrong, too familiar. At some point, the conversation had turned. I can’t remember how I let that happen. Broken pieces of it are floating by in my head.
I told her things.
Wyatt Branson seeing the ghost of his sister, able to say whether she is wearing gold loops or pearl studs, purple flip-flops or prom heels, red lipstick or clear Vaseline.
Daddy, shoving boots to the back of a closet.
My absurdist dreams. Jesus walking out of The Last Supper and onto the kitchen table with bloody feet, telling me not to forget that Judas betrayed him with a kiss. Trumanell waking up in her glass coffin, lifting her head to press bright red lips to the glass.
Back on the balcony, the sun is at full glare, drilling shiny silver nails into my skull. The doctor, missing. My glass and the whiskey bottle are gone; in their place, an ice-cold bottle of Coke. Dr. Greco’s voice is a barely audible mumble behind the door of a book-lined study I glimpsed earlier on the way in. One voice. Healthy pauses. On the phone. Did it ring?