The Conservatory is nearly silent; there isn’t even the rattle of leaves blowing in the wind, or the chatter of squirrels.
“Let’s walk,” Thomas suggests.
I start to head in the direction that will lead us out of the park, but he reaches for my arm and pulls it. I feel the hard pinch through the fabric of my coat: “This way.”
I slip my arm out of his grasp before I follow him deeper into the gardens, toward a stone fountain with frozen water in its base.
A few yards past it, he stops and looks at the ground.
I’m so cold now that the tip of my nose is numb. I wrap my arms around myself, trying to contain a shiver.
“There was another girl,” Thomas says. His voice is so low I have to strain to hear it. “She was young and lonely and Lydia took to her. They spent time together. Lydia gave her gifts and even had her over to the town house. It was like she became a little sister or something . . .”
Like a younger sister, I think. My heart begins to pound in my chest.
A sharp cracking noise sounds somewhere to my left. I whip my head around but I don’t see anyone.
Just a branch falling, I tell myself.
“The girl . . . she had some issues. Thomas slides off his glasses and rubs the bridge of his nose. I can’t see the expression in his eyes.
I struggle against the sudden, almost overpowering urge to turn and run. I know I need to hear what Thomas is saying.
“One night she came by to see Lydia. They talked for a while. I don’t know what Lydia said to her; I wasn’t home.”
The sun has set and the temperature feels like it has plummeted ten degrees. I shiver again.
“What does this have to do with me?” I ask. My throat is so dry it’s difficult to force out the words. And somewhere, deep inside, I don’t even need an answer.
I already know how this story ends.
Thomas finally turns and looks me in the eye.
“This is where she killed herself,” he says. “She was Subject 5.”
CHAPTER
FORTY-FOUR
Tuesday, December 18
How dare you deceive me, Jessica?
At 8:07 P.M. tonight, you call to report that Thomas has just telephoned you.
“Did you make plans for a date?” you are asked.
“No, no, no,” you immediately say.
Those extraneous “no’s” are your undoing: Liars, like the chronically insecure, often overcompensate.
“He told me he couldn’t meet this week after all, but that he’d be in touch,” you continue.
Your voice sounds assured, and also hurried. You are trying to send a signal implying that you are too busy for a sustained conversation.
How naive you are, Jessica, to think that you could ever dictate the terms of our conversation. Or anything else, for that matter.
A lengthy pause is needed to remind you of this, even though this is not a lesson you should require.
“Did he imply that it was simply a function of his busy schedule?” you are asked. “Did you get the impression he would follow up again?”
Under this questioning, you make your second error.
“He really didn’t give a reason,” you reply. “That’s all his text said.”
It it possible you simply misspoke when you described the method of communication first as a phone call and then as a text?
Or was this a deliberate deception?
If you were within the confines of the therapy office, perched on the love seat, your nonverbal clues might emerge: a twirl of your hair, the fiddling of your stacked silver rings, or the scraping of one fingernail along another.
Over the telephone, however, your subtle tells are not apparent.
Your inconsistencies could be called out.
But if you are being duplicitous, such scrutiny might have the effect of causing you to more carefully cover your tracks.
And so you are allowed to exit the conversation.
What do you do when you hang up the phone?
Perhaps you continue your usual nightly routine, smug in the knowledge that you’ve evaded a potentially treacherous conversation. You walk your dog, then take a long shower and comb conditioner through your unruly curls. While you restock your beauty case, you dutifully call your parents. After you hang up, you hear the familiar noises through the thin walls of your apartment: footsteps overhead, the muted sound of a television sitcom, the honking of taxis on the street outside.
Or has the tenor of your evening shifted?
Perhaps the noises are not comforting tonight. The long, anemic wail of a police car. A heated argument in the apartment next door. The scrabble of mice in the baseboards. You may be thinking of the unreliable lock on your building’s front door. It’s so easy for a stranger, or even an acquaintance, to slip in.
You are intimately known to me, Jessica. You have consistently proved your devotion: You wore the burgundy nail polish. You quashed your instinctual hesitations and followed instructions. You didn’t surreptitiously glimpse the sculpture before you delivered it. You surrendered your secrets.
But in the past forty-eight hours, you have begun to slip away: You did not prioritize our most recent meeting, instead leaving early to attend to a client. You evaded my calls and texts. You clearly lied to me. You are acting as though this relationship is merely transactional, as though you regard it as a well-stocked ATM that dispenses cash without consequences.
What has changed, Jessica?
Have you felt the heat of Thomas’s flame?
That possibility causes a fierce rigidity in the body.
It takes several minutes of slow, sustained breathing to recover.
Focus is returned to the issue at hand: What will it cost to buy your loyalty back?
Your file is brought from the study upstairs into the library and set down on the coffee table. Across from it, Thomas’s paper-white narcissi rest atop the piano, near the photograph of us on our wedding day. A subtle fragrance perfumes the air.
The file is opened. The first page contains the photocopied driver’s license you provided on the day you joined the study, as well as other biographical data.
The second page consists of printed photographs Ben was asked to gather from Instagram.
You and your sister look like siblings, but whereas your features are finely drawn and your eyes sharp, Becky’s still hold on to the softness of childhood, as if a smear of Vaseline has coated the portion of the camera’s lens that focused on her.
Caring for Becky can’t be easy.
Your mother wears a cheap-looking blouse and she squints into the sunlight; your father rests his hands in his pockets as though they can help support him to remain upright.
Your parents look tired, Jessica.
Perhaps a vacation is in order.
CHAPTER
FORTY-FIVE
Wednesday, December 19
Thomas told me to behave normally; to proceed as I have been all along so Dr. Shields won’t suspect anything.
“We’ll figure out a way to get you out of this safely,” he said as we left the park. When we exited the gardens, he climbed onto a motorcycle, strapped on his helmet, and roared off.
But in the twenty-four hours since we parted, the uneasy feeling that crept over me in the Conservatory has ebbed.
When I got home last night, I couldn’t stop wondering about Subject 5. I took a long, hot shower and shared some leftover spaghetti and meatballs with Leo. But the more I thought about it, the less sense it made. Was I really supposed to believe an esteemed psychiatrist and NYU professor pushed someone to suicide, and that she could do the same to me?