There were two groups: the summer kids, who owned shiny eighteen-speed bikes and Sunfish sailboats and wore polo shirts with upturned collars, and the locals, who knew the best spots to pick blackberries and which clerk at the convenience store would sell them Coors and Seagram’s wine coolers. The class divide didn’t seem as sharp during the warm nights—everyone had on bathing suits and ate hot dogs around a bonfire and mingled and developed crushes—but they all knew it existed. How could they imagine otherwise when the boy scooping up a girl and playfully pretending to toss her off a dock had a mother who worked as a housecleaner for the girl’s family and had likely made her bed that morning?
Or when the summer guy with streaky blond hair—and, yes, a gorgeous six-pack—licked the icing off a cupcake Marissa had frosted just that afternoon before turning to her and saying, “Want to try out my Jet Ski?”
The photograph in Avery’s hands was taken a few days after Marissa and Matthew shared their first kiss, toward the end of a summer that had been unlike any other.
Marissa can still remember every detail: the chirp of a nearby cricket, the distant sound of Guns N’ Roses over someone’s boom box, and the feel of his hands cupping her face. And the way he put his arm around her after they broke apart and walked toward the group on the sandy shore, as if he was claiming her.
She hadn’t realized how much she’d needed that strong, solid arm around her. It steadied her at a time when the world seemed filled with dangerous, steeply pitched terrain. Earlier that summer, Marissa’s beloved best friend from childhood, Tina, had died. It was as if Matthew stepped into the gaping void Tina had left, counteracting the deep sorrow and grief that gripped Marissa.
“Have you two been together since you were teens?” Avery asks now.
“No,” Marissa replies, just as Matthew replies, “Yes.”
“Well, this should be interesting,” Avery says as she puts back the photo and finally claims her seat.
CHAPTER SEVEN
AVERY
“THE ANSWER IS ACTUALLY YES and no,” Marissa rushes to explain as I pull my yellow legal pad out of my tote bag. “We dated as teenagers, but we didn’t really grow serious until after college.”
“Maybe we have different definitions of together.” Matthew stares hard at his wife.
She flinches. “Matthew, come on! We both saw other people before we got engaged. Just a few nights ago you mentioned sleeping with some random TA from law school. Plus, you were with Natalie for almost a year. It’s obvious she still has a crush on you—”
“But I never cheated.” Matthew needs an outlet for his anger, but these types of potshots are not constructive.
“Who’s Natalie?” I ask mildly.
Matthew exhales. “An ex-girlfriend. I went out with her for a while when I was in college and we’ve stayed in touch. It wasn’t a big deal. I even set her up with one of our good friends when he moved to D.C. last year, but they didn’t hit it off.”
A shadow crosses Marissa’s face and she leans back on the sofa.
I write Natalie on my notepad, drawing a circle around the name, wondering how hard she’ll be to find. Not very, if she lives as public of a life as the Bishops. The location of Marissa’s boutique, the name of Matthew’s company, their son’s private school—Marissa served up all that information in the questionnaire I required them to fill out.
Other details have been equally easy to ascertain: their favorite neighborhood restaurant (La Ferme), their most recent vacation destination (Palm Beach), the last book Marissa adored (Ann Patchett’s The Dutch House), and how Bennett looked after he caught his first pop fly in baseball (more shocked than elated).
My crack about Marissa serving up glossy Instagram posts was spot-on. I confirmed it by checking out her social media accounts after the Bishops’ first session.
I redirect our conversation: “Matthew, at our last meeting I asked you to think of a question.”
“Yeah, I’ve got one.” He leans forward. “Did you know you were going to lose your license?”
He’s twisting the rules; the query was supposed to be for his wife, not me. But men such as Matthew are accustomed to controlling a room; he was blindsided during our first meeting, so now he’s trying to keep me off-balance as a way of evening the score.
It’s obvious Matthew has done some investigating of his own, I think as I take an unhurried sip of my water.
“I read the Washington Post profile,” Matthew adds when I don’t immediately reply.
I look at Marissa. “Did you?”
Marissa clears her throat. “Yes.… A friend forwarded it to me a little while back. Actually, it’s the reason I sought you out.”
She’s providing these details, even though I didn’t ask for them, because she’s essentially truthful. Or because she wants to appear that way.
Matthew is even more difficult to decipher. His trust and pride have been badly wounded, and that is coloring our experience together.
“No, I didn’t know I was going to lose my license.” I put down my glass. “But as I told The Post, I’ve never regretted it.”
The Washington Post reporter sought me out when he learned by reading the police blotter about the criminal charges Skylar filed. I agreed to the interview because I knew I could control the narrative better than anyone else. The reporter and I sat in my living room on two consecutive afternoons, and I shared the evolution of my ten-sessions system. He asked questions and jotted my answers in his notebook, like a kind of reverse therapy.
I recounted some of my story, but not everything. When the reporter asked how I came up with my protocal, I told him I’d had a burst of inspiration during a long run, and that even though my unorthodox methods meant I could no longer be a licensed therapist, my results spoke for themselves.
In his provocative, mostly flattering profile the reporter dubbed me “D.C.’s Maverick Therapist.”
I answered all of his questions without lying; I just omitted pieces of the truth. I need to do the same thing now to earn Matthew’s confidence.
“I’m glad you brought up the article, Matthew. It’s important for us to be direct with each other. You can ask me anything. I’m not promising I will answer, but you can ask.”
He nods. “Okay. How is talking for ten sessions—actually, eight and a half more sessions—going to fix me and Marissa?”
I smile. The second session is Disruption, and I’ve been waiting for this opening to introduce it. “You’re right. Talking alone won’t help. We could sit here for dozens of hours and not solve anything. So, I’m going to have free rein in your lives—to a reasonable degree. I’m not going to read your diaries or plant a camera in your house or spy on Bennett. But in order to help you, I need to really know you. Not just what you tell me.”
“Free rein?” Marissa echoes. “What does that mean, exactly?”
“I just came from the outdoor patio at La Ferme.”
Marissa’s brow creases. She doesn’t get it yet. “We go there all the time!”
“I’ve never been there before, but I thought I should check it out. The truffle popcorn really is delicious.”