I frowned a little. “What did I say earlier?”
“You said that you always imagined—and I believe you used the word dreamed—that one day someone would love you forever and would never leave.”
I watched him warily, with laser-like focus. “Yes?”
“I think perhaps you may have some abandonment issues that we should explore, but before we discuss that, I’d like you to consider something else, if you will.”
“Okay.”
“Isn’t it possible that your mother wanted the same thing you want today? And when she got ‘all gussied up,’ as you put it, that she was going out in search of a partner. A mate. Someone who would love her forever and be a good father to you? Maybe that’s what she wanted more than anything, to give you that.”
Something welled up inside of me and lodged thickly in my throat. “But she never stayed with any of those men. Nothing ever lasted. She always fought with them and eventually kicked them out.”
He sat back again. “Why do you think that was?”
“Because they were losers.”
“What else? Think about what would happen before she asked them to leave.”
“The fights would get really bad,” I replied, “and she would tell me to stay in my bedroom. I think she was afraid that they might yell at me, too, or do something worse.”
He inclined his head, in that way he had of encouraging me to think more broadly about something.
“That’s when she kicked them out,” I said, blinking slowly a few times as a new realization dawned. Then I looked toward the window. “Oh . . .”
Dr. Robinson said nothing for a while. We simply sat there together in the quiet of the afternoon, watching the leaves on the oak tree blow gently outside the window.
Eventually, I returned my attention to him. “I think what you’re suggesting is that my mother was trying to do her best. She wanted to give me a normal family life. That’s why she went out on the prowl. She was looking for a husband and father.”
“I do think all of that is true,” he replied, “and I like where we’re going with this, but I also want you to be realistic. I’m not trying to paint your mother as a saint, and I don’t think you should either. Just try to think of her as a normal human being, a young woman who you might be able to relate to and understand. She was only seventeen when she had you, so when she went out, she was probably looking for something—not just for you but for herself as well. But there’s nothing wrong with that. It doesn’t make her an irresponsible person. It’s part of the human condition to want love and to be loved in return. Most of us want a true, deep connection with others.”
“A soul mate,” I said.
He stared at me for a moment, then held up a hand. “Let’s not overly romanticize what I’m suggesting here.”
“You don’t believe in soul mates?” I asked.
He hesitated and blinked a few times, appearing unsettled. Then he glanced at his wristwatch. “I’m afraid we’ve gone over our time.”
I looked up at the grandfather clock. “I hope you don’t have another patient waiting.”
“It’s fine. You’re the last one today. But we really should stop here.”
Disappointed, because I wanted desperately to hear him answer my question, I bent forward and pulled on my shoes, reached for my tote bag on the floor, and stood up. “This was a really good session,” I said. “Sometimes I can’t believe the things we talk about. You keep making light bulbs come on in my head.”
He smiled warmly. “I’ll see you next week?”
“Of course,” I replied.
Nothing could keep me away.
He followed me to the door and said goodbye before he closed it softly behind me.
As I made my way down the creaky staircase to the empty reception area and outside to the sunny afternoon, I felt a thrill in my heart and found myself thinking of my mother and how she was always so happy in the early days of a new relationship. That’s when the baseball games and camping trips happened, and she was the best mother in the world, smiling and laughing and baking cookies that made the house smell good when I came home from school.
That was also when I dared to believe that my world could be different. All I’d ever wanted was for us to be happy and secure, but my mother’s happiness seemed to hinge on the success or failure of whatever current relationship she was in. It was all so volatile and unpredictable. Everything depended on the man and how good he was to us and how hopeful my mother was about the future.
This was why I had never wanted to rely on someone else to make my dreams come true. I wanted to be self-reliant.
But did that mean I had to be alone? Wasn’t it possible to love someone who wouldn’t turn out to be a disaster? To find a good, decent man like my grandfather? A man I could rely upon and trust?
I didn’t know the answer to that question, but it was something I wanted to discuss next week with Dr. Robinson. I couldn’t wait to pick up exactly where we had left off. Maybe next time I wouldn’t lose my nerve, and I would tell him exactly how I felt.
CHAPTER 8
OLIVIA
Miami, 1990
Six months into my pregnancy, I slammed the phone onto the cradle after another frustrating conversation with someone at the National Transportation Safety Board. They still hadn’t concluded the report about Dean’s so-called crash, and the woman on the phone was pithy with me, making it clear that she was tired of answering my calls.
I was disappointed because she’d been compassionate at first. Understanding of my loss. She’d handled me with the utmost care and kindness. But her tone had changed recently, which was why I thought maybe I needed to consider what my doctor had suggested eons ago and arrange to see a therapist. Because maybe the clerk at the NTSB wasn’t the problem. Maybe I was.
I stared at the stack of crash reports I had been reading for the past six months, copies I had attained from the Federal Aviation Administration Library on a research trip to Washington. I was mostly interested in flights that had vanished over the Bermuda Triangle, and I learned some incredible things, which weren’t that far off from some of the wild tales that Brice Roberts had talked about.
There were a number of investigations that cited unexplained radio interference and blackouts, disappearances without any distress signals, flights that vanished in perfect weather with no engine trouble, no fires or explosions reported. In addition, no wreckage, debris, or bodies were ever found.
One report offered a disturbing conclusion that the aircraft must have met with a “sudden and violent force that rendered the aircraft no longer airworthy and was thereby beyond the scope of human endeavor to control.” The force that rendered the aircraft uncontrollable was unknown.
Another report from a similar disappearance said that “no more baffling problem has ever been presented for investigation.”
It was obvious to me that my research into the subject of missing planes had become an obsession, which had everyone concerned, because the media frenzy was over. The public’s fascination with the Bermuda Triangle had passed. I was the only one still fixated on it. One friend suggested it was pregnancy hormones, but Sarah thought I had lost touch with reality. A week ago, she’d begged me, yet again, to see a therapist.