Supposedly, to heal.
“Your hand is expressing grief.” She often did this, repeating what he’d said, confirming. It was probably some psychologist’s trick. Most of the time, it worked, cracking him open just enough to see what was inside. Hiding from her was never his goal. Mike wouldn’t be here if he didn’t want to be, and his earlier statement that he was only there because of Dylan wasn’t really true.
Dr. Harr was right. It wasn’t important, what he’d said when he walked in. Because it wasn’t true.
His fingertips were going cold from the iron vise grip he had on the pillow.
He blinked, his face a mask, but the emotion infused his voice. “Anger. Anger, too.”
More like rage. He couldn’t bring himself to say that word, though. That word was a betrayal.
Dr. Harr nodded, the skin under her eyes tucking up a bit, compassion radiating back at him. “We’ve talked about the anger before, Mike. You know it’s perfectly normal. When you lose a life partner, all of the feelings are yours.”
“Dylan’s not angry.”
“Are you still comparing yourself to Dylan?” Three entire sessions last year had been devoted to Mike’s reactions to Dylan’s reactions, most involving jealousy that Dylan seemed to function like a normal, grief-stricken human being should.
Neither of them had been open with anyone in their lives except their families about the threesome. Mike’s family had rejected him—quite violently—while Dylan’s family had chosen a path that involved pretending Dylan hadn’t said what he said. Mike was treated like a roommate, Jill like Dylan’s girlfriend, and their triad—poof!—just didn’t exist.
Like Jill now.
How convenient.
Lately, Dylan had begun looking at women again. Dated one or two. Whether he had sex with them or not was none of Mike’s business, and Dylan hadn’t brought anyone home to their apartment. Thank God.
Mike wasn’t sure his anger would handle that.
“You’re angry Jill died.”
“Yes.”
“When the word money came up earlier—”
His hand squashed the pillow. Dr. Harr’s eyes were on it, then looked at Mike.
“Money. What is it about money and your fist?” she asked, a faint look of puzzlement clouding her eyes.
Damn it. Should he tell her? Neither he nor Dylan had said a word to anyone, had only talked about the money with Jill’s family lawyer. The topic was more taboo than anything he’d ever experienced, more radioactive, even, than...
Being in a permanent threesome.
Two billion dollars.
The words stuck in his throat, a mixture of excitement, horror, pressure, anger, and—rage. All wrapped up in twenty million one-hundred-dollar bills.
“I—”
“Are you having financial problems?” Dr. Harr asked, jumping to the obvious conclusion. “Many partners do after losing a loved one. We create dynamics in our financial lives where we intertwine—”
He snorted, tossing the pillow onto the small chair across from him. “Intertwined? Jill kept everything separate. A little too separate,” he said with a near growl.
A lot too separate.
Two deep lines formed in the space between the doctor’s eyes as she frowned, clearly struggling to understand.
Join the club, lady, he thought. Join the fucking club.
“When you say ‘separate,’ what do you mean?”
Mike looked around the room, eyes pausing on ten or twelve items, taking them in, as if in a meditative state. A small, brass elephant. A spider plant that carried across a fifteen-foot archway in the middle of the room. A stained glass panel at the top of the large picture window, hues of purple and adobe giving the room’s light an ethereal appearance. As he stopped and observed, paused and noted, he found the whirling dervish inside himself calming just enough to say:
“She turns out to be something we didn’t know.”
“What was that?”
He shook his head quickly, like making a fly move away. The words caught in his throat, stuck there forever, a seed that could never crack open enough for a small tendril to make its way to the light.
His long, runner’s legs bent before him, knees high, legs splayed out, hands now planted on his knees as if he were about to stand and walk out the door, run run run and stop thinking about Jill Jill Jill.
Damn it.
She would follow him, wouldn’t she? Can’t run away from Jill, even when she's dead. Can never run away from the fact that she lied.
Lied.
“She lied,” he hissed, the words like air from an over-inflated balloon.
Dr. Harr just nodded, as if she understood. Did she? Did she know how it felt to waken with a gaping, sucking chest wound where your heart was supposed to be? How many holes he’d poked in the wall by slamming his fist against his headboard so many times that the thick wood itself sported a hairline crack, right down the middle? How Dylan slept in his own bedroom now because Mike’s dreams were always of combat, of fighting an evil that tried to kill Jill, and that Dylan had woken more than once to find Mike staring at him with a look of murderous rage?
Dr. Harr knew all of those facts.
But she couldn’t feel Mike’s pain.
And now, the dreams had changed, visions of a new woman implanted in his subconscious, the sense of Jill’s betrayal overwhelmed by soft curves, a sweet, hesitant voice, and moans of pleasure that whispered his name.
“Damn it,” he whispered through tears he fought so hard to keep back. Anger was easier than pain.
Pain was easier than heartbreak.
“What did she lie about, Mike?” Dr. Harr leaned forward, her head tilted to the side slightly, her face encouraging, chin bobbing slightly as if to say yes.
Yes. You’re safe here. You can say it.
“She lied about who she was.”
“And you learned the truth after her death?”
“Yes.”
“And this is the source of your anger.” The doctor said it as a statement. Not a question.
“Yes.” He knew he should say more than just one word, but he couldn’t. He didn’t have any more words now. The words were sweating out of him, sticking to the surface of his skin, coming out in the clench of his muscles, the twitches in his calves, the pull of tendons and sinew against bone as his body sat in this chair.
Dr. Harr paused, deep in thought, considering Mike like one would study a painting at the Museum of Fine Arts. Then she peered at him with eyes that pierced his soul and said:
“Does knowing what you know change Jill herself? Is she a fundamentally different person?”
In $2.2 billion ways, he thought.
Mike closed his eyes and envisioned Jill. Opening a Christmas gift the first year the three of them lived together, Mike and Dylan so broke they went in on the set of audio CDs of the Harry Potter series she’d desperately wanted. Another memory: tent camping in West Virginia on parts of the Appalachian Trail, down to their last few dollars and supplementing with wild edibles just to have enough money for beer when they found a bar.
How the ultra-chic apartment they’d moved into years ago had seemed so cheap. Jill collected the rent and told them she’d just handle the bills.
Lies. All of it, lies.
“She was an heiress,” he said softly, the memories turning around in his head, as if viewed through a kaleidoscope. His words marched out of his mouth in a neat, orderly line, as if reporting for duty. “She left me and Dylan a trust fund worth a combined $2.2 billion.”