He nodded and lowered his gaze. “I can discuss things with Caroline. And other therapists in the office.”
I sensed he was not sharing everything, so I rubbed his thigh again. “That doesn’t always help?”
“No.”
“I’m sorry.”
We sat for a while in silence, and all I wanted to do was pull him out of his obvious gloom.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. “Please tell me.”
At long last, his eyes lifted, and I sensed a deep fear in him. It bordered on panic.
“If you really want to know,” he said, “I don’t always enjoy my work.”
“How so?”
He sat back and touched the handle of his fork. He slid it sideways, to the left, then moved it back again. “It’s not easy to sit for eight hours a day, listening to people’s problems and regrets, trying to steer them out of their own private version of hell. There’s a tremendous pressure in that. It’s exhausting, actually.”
I understood. “I don’t doubt it. And I don’t think I could do what you do, which is why I admire you so much.”
Our waiter arrived with our next course and set both plates down in front of us. He carried a pepper mill under his arm, which he offered to us.
A moment later, Dean and I were alone again. I tried to pick up where we had left off. “On the day we went walking in the park with Ziggy—”
“That was a great day,” he said, interrupting me.
“Yes, it was,” I replied with a smile, then continued. “When we were sitting at the lake, you told me you majored in psychology because it was your best subject and that you knew you could get scholarships if you chose that path.”
“Yes.”
“But you’ve also told me that it was your boyhood dream to be a pilot. Do you ever think that maybe you might be happier doing that?”
He sliced at the tender duck on his plate and considered what I was suggesting. “I think about it all the time.”
Something inside of me felt an immense satisfaction. I wasn’t sure what caused it. Maybe I was pleased with myself because I had opened a lid for him. I had presented the possibility that he could escape his stresses and soar to a place that would make him happier than he was now. A place where he wouldn’t miss any more dolphins leaping out of the water right in front of him.
“Anything’s possible, you know,” I said, tasting the tender roast duck.
“I’m not sure about that,” he replied.
“Why not? If you wanted to be a pilot, you’re certainly smart enough. You can be anything you want to be.”
He looked at me with affection and something that resembled awe. “You’re such a dreamer.”
“I suppose I am. If there are obstacles in front of me, I just see them as hurdles that require a bit of a jump. Easily done, most of the time.”
“You think it’s easy because you’ve never encountered a hurdle that rises up and slams you onto your back and knocks the wind out of you.”
I considered that for a moment, reflected upon my privileged life, and felt embarrassed. “You’re right. I’ve lived a pretty cushy life. Maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’m just a spoiled rich girl who thinks every dream is just a wish away. Ripe for the picking.”
He placed his hand on mine. “No, that’s not what I meant. I don’t think you’re a spoiled rich girl. I think you’re a beautiful person, and you just want others to be happy.”
I sipped my water and finished my duck. “Thank you for saying that. I appreciate it.”
“And I appreciate what you see in me,” he replied. “You have no idea how much it means to me—to be seen as someone who deserves to be happy. I’m not always so sure about that.”
I regarded him with disbelief. “Of course you deserve to be happy. You can’t let events of the past dictate where you go from here. And I’m referring to where you come from—your difficult childhood and the things your father and brother did. None of that was your fault. You’re a good person, and you should follow your dreams.”
“Sometimes it’s easier said than done,” he replied. “I have a mountain of student debt to pay off. And Caroline dangled a carrot in front of me this week. She said she might make me a full partner if she expands her practice. It would be completely irresponsible of me to walk away from an opportunity like that after everything I’ve invested in this career.”
I sipped my water. “It’s obvious that she thinks highly of you.”
He shrugged a shoulder, as if to suggest that he didn’t know why Caroline would feel that way.
He was very modest, I was discovering, which was one of the things I loved about him. He wasn’t arrogant like so many of the young men in my social circle. It only made me want to help him more. I wanted to lift Dean up as high as possible so that the sun could shine on him. If there was an empty hole inside of him—which I believed there was because of his work pressures and the emotional wounds from his childhood—I wanted to fill it up with happiness in every possible way.
Wasn’t that the true meaning of love? Wanting a sense of well-being for the person you cared about? And if a bomb was dropped into that person’s life, wasn’t it necessary to do everything in your power to defuse that bomb? Or throw yourself on top of it if you had to?
That was my version of love. And what I felt for Dean was pure and deep and everlasting. I believed it with every inch of my soul, and I decided, that night in the restaurant, that I would do everything in my power to ensure his happiness and to keep him in my life forever.
CHAPTER 22
OLIVIA
New York, 1986
A month after my weekend in Miami with Dean, my mother called and asked that I come over right away. “Your father wants to speak to you,” she said.
I recognized an urgency in her voice and worried that something terrible had happened. “It’s not Ziggy, is it?”
“No. Ziggy’s fine. It’s something else.”
“Okay,” I said warily. “I’ll be there in half an hour.”
As I rode the elevator up seventeen floors to their Fifth Avenue penthouse, I couldn’t shake the sickening sensation of dread in my belly. I wasn’t sure why, but I felt like I was going to the gallows. Perhaps it was the fact that my father was involved, and he usually left most parenting or personal issues to my mother. This had to be serious.
The elevator doors opened, and I began to wonder if this “talk” involved Dean. Frankly, I was surprised it had taken them this long to sit me down for a heart-to-heart conversation about him, because it was obvious to me that after the boat cruise, they had decided he wasn’t good enough for me. They never said so, exactly, but they were reluctant to invite us to dinner, and Mom continued to ask me about Gabriel. Lately, I had to beg for every invitation they extended to Dean.
I paused a few seconds to steady my nerves before I walked in the door. When I finally stepped across the threshold, my mother was already waiting in the entrance hall.
“I thought you’d never get here,” she said impatiently. “Your father is in a state.”
“What do you mean?” I asked as I handed over my purse and sweater to Maria, our housekeeper.