Lydia Corriger clenched the paper coffee cup in her teeth, tucked her files under her left arm, fumbled with the keys, and bumped the door open. Stumbling three steps, she shrugged her briefcase off her shoulder and tossed the files onto her waiting room couch, pleased she hadn’t spilled a drop of her four dollar latte. She took a long sip before setting the cup on a side table. Gathering envelopes from beneath a bronze slot, she scanned them as she crossed into her office, settled down behind her secondhand oak desk and divided the mail into piles. Reaching for her coffee somewhere around the fourth credit card solicitation, she cursed her absent mindedness and returned to the waiting room to retrieve it.
Lydia had a light day. One patient in the morning. Three more scattered throughout the afternoon. With any luck home before five. She ran a letter opener across the first envelope on a stack of remittances. If she hurried she could make her deposit before Jeffe Moldanado arrived for his ten o’clock appointment. She took another sip of coffee and promised herself a bagel on the way back from the bank.
“Jeffe?”
The tall Hispanic man stood on two aluminum crutches, moving slower than usual.
“Back bothering you?” She motioned toward the recliner opposite her desk. “Want the La-Z-Boy today?”
“I am good, thank you, Dr. Corriger.” Jeffe had arrived in Washington two years earlier. Up from a dusty backwater seventy miles south of Juarez. The only English he brought was “Yes, Boss.” He was eager to make his fortune following the crops. Apples, soybeans, lettuce, onions. Yakima, Moses Lake, Ellensburg, Walla Walla. He’d been in Yelm, unloading a flatbed of pumpkins at the end of a twenty-hour day when an exhausted tractor driver backed up and left him with six cracked vertebrae and one broken hip. Excellent surgeries were followed by medieval rehab in a filthy hellhole that warehoused him as long as the charity dollars held up.
“My therapist is working me hard. I tell her to go fight the terrorists, she is so strong.” Jeffe smiled through his pain. “But I am walking now. So it’s good.”
Lydia settled onto the sofa. “Eastview is working well for you, then?”
“Ah, Madre de Dio, Dr. Corriger. You did not see the other. I was there for a year. It was no good. Bad food. Dirty sheets. No help. Now I am in Eastview less than one month and I am walking. I tell my wife not to worry. She can expect checks from me soon.”
Lydia reached for her notebook. “Last week we talked about how you wanted to kill the farmer who hired you. What are your thoughts today?”
Jeffe’s face hardened. “Bastardo!” He raised one crutch. “For three dollars an hour I sacrifice my legs. I cannot work. I cannot send money to my home.”
“I hear your anger, Jeffe. But if you go after that man, you’ll end up in jail. How will you help your family then?”
Jeffe leaned forward, his words cold and hard. “I will give them a greater gift.” He winced in pain. “Justicia!”
Lydia opened the door to her waiting room at two o’clock sharp to greet a new patient. Savannah Samuels had called last week saying she was familiar with Lydia’s success with tough cases. Lydia had asked routine insurance information, but Savannah told her not to worry. She’d pay in cash at each appointment. Savannah stood at the window, gnawing a cuticle. Shoulder length hair, expertly cut with sharp angles, so shiny-black it gleamed blue in the afternoon light. Creamy skin, smooth as Dresden china. Three hundred dollar jeans and a soft silk shirt. Coach shoulder bag matching knee high leather boots. Burberry trench draped over her arm.
Savannah looked up. Delicate cheekbones and chin gave her face an air of elegant fragility. Blue eyes, framed by thick dark lashes, telegraphed a silent sadness. Lydia put on a gentle smile and ushered her into her office.
“You look just how I knew you would,” Savannah said.
Lydia raised an eyebrow. “You’ve imagined what I look like?” She watched her newest patient settle onto the sofa and tried to interpret the wistful expression on her face. “Do I pass inspection?”
“You look fine.” Savannah shifted into a mask of business cordiality. “It’s good to see you.”
Lydia sat in an opposite chair and began her routine orientation to the confidential nature of therapy.
“I’m not worried about confidences, Dr. Corriger. Is that what I should call you?” Savannah’s voice hummed with a slight accent Lydia found familiar, but couldn’t quite place.
“Would you be more comfortable calling me something else?”
“A question answered with a question. How very expected. Will I always be able to anticipate what you’ll say next?”
Lydia had long ago grown weary of power dances. “Were you expecting me to ask what has you so frightened that you’re being immediately confrontational?”
Savannah sat still. A slight smile crossed her pillowed lips. “Now there you go, Dr. Corriger, I wasn’t expecting that at all. Well played.”
“Is that what we’re doing, Savannah? Playing?” Lydia didn’t wait for an answer. “Tell me why you’re not worried about keeping our work confidential.”
Savannah drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly as she glanced around the room. She crossed her long legs and leaned back in the chair, her voice a world-weary monotone. “It won’t matter one way or the other what you tell to whom. Everything I say will be lies.”
Lydia was intrigued with this new step. “How do you expect that to help?”
Savannah fixed her sapphire eyes on her therapist. “Everything I tell you will be lies, but all of it will be true. You’ll be able to figure it out, Doctor. I’ve read every article you’ve written. I know about the award you got. You’ve always been able to figure out a way to help people and you’ll do it again for me.”
Lydia’s impatience was rising. “Why would I enter into such an arrangement, Savannah? Therapy is predicated on trust.”
“Trust is earned, Dr. Corriger.” Savannah’s voice took on a hostile edge. “And you already have mine.” Her tone softened. “I need you. There’s something fundamentally broken in me. I need you to fix it.”
Lydia stared at her while diagnostic impressions clicked through her mind. Savannah was intriguing, certainly. Lydia wondered if she was a good enough psychologist to break through her defenses.
“Why don’t we finish this session before deciding if this is a good match?” Lydia offered. “How does that sound to you?”
Something like hope brightened Savannah’s countenance. She nodded.
Lydia reached for her notepad and pen. “Why don’t we start with what you think is broken?”
Savannah brushed her hair behind a perfect shell of an ear. “No notes, please, Dr. Corriger. No chart, either. There’s to be no record of my being here.”
“Savannah, to make this work we’re going to have to respect one another’s needs.” Lydia’s irritation returned. “I’m required to keep a chart on every patient I see.”
“But I’m paying you in cash. Can’t we keep this just between us?”
“No. I’ll call you any name you’d like and perhaps I’ll even listen to your lies as we try to reach the truth, but I’ll not jeopardize my license for you.”
Lydia watched Savannah weigh her options.
“Can you tell me the bare minimum you have to keep in those charts of yours?”
“Of course. Your name. The date. Your diagnosis. Length of session. Brief description of what we worked on.” Lydia sensed Savannah’s anxiety. “I can keep it vague.”
Savannah pulled her bottom lip under her teeth. Lydia knew she was slipping away.
“Tell you what, I can dispense with notes in session. But I must have a chart. Fair?”
Savannah pushed herself taller in the seat and nodded. A scared child recognizing her impotence.
“Maybe this is our first opportunity to learn we can trust each other,” Lydia said.
Savannah nodded. “Like I said. You already have my trust.”
“Good.” Lydia tossed her notepad and pen to the floor. “Now, tell me what you think is so fundamentally broken.”
Lydia saw Savannah’s subtle flinch and assumed she didn’t know what string in the chaotic tapestry of her life to tug on first. She watched her take a deep breath, swallow hard, and fold her hands in her lap. “I’ve grown into a bad person, Dr. Corriger. Quite possibly the worst you’ll ever meet.”
