'You mean ... could he have fooled me?'
'Could he?'
Rudge nodded. 'Psychology isn't an exact science. And by comparison, psychiatry is even less exact. Yes, he could have fooled me, especially since I only saw him once a month and didn't have a chance to observe the mood swings and personality changes that would have been more evident if we'd had weekly contact.'
'In light of what Joshua told you a while ago,' Hilary said, do you feel you were fooled?'
Rudge smiled ruefully. 'It looks as if I was, doesn't it?'
He picked up a second cassette that had been wound to a pre-selected point in another conversation between him and Frye, and he slipped it into the recorder.
'You've never mentioned your mother.'
'What about her?'
'That's what I'm asking you.'
'You're full of questions, aren't you?'
'With some patients, I hardly ever have to ask anything. They just open up and start talking.'
'Yeah? What do they talk about?'
'Quite often they talk about their mothers.'
'Must get boring for you.'
'Very seldom. Tell me about your mother.'
'Her name was Katherine.'
'And?'
'I don't have anything to say about her.'
'Everyone has something to say about his mother--and his father.'
For almost a minute, there was silence. The tape wound from spool to spool, producing only a hissing sound.
'I'm just waiting him out,' Rudge said, interpreting the silence for them. 'He'll speak in a moment.'
'Doctor Rudge?'
'Yes?'
'Do you think...?'
'What is it?'
'Do you think the dead stay dead?'
'Are you asking if I'm religious?'
'No. I mean ... do you think that a person can die ... and then come back from the grave?'
'Like a ghost?'
'Yes. Do you believe in ghosts?'
'Do you?'
'I asked you first.'
'No. I don't believe in them, Bruno. Do you?'
'I haven't made up my mind.'
'Have you ever seen a ghost?'
'I'm not sure.'
'What does this have to do with your mother?'
'She told me that she would ... come back from the grave.'
'When did she tell you this?'
'Oh, thousands of times. She was always saying it. She said she knew how it was done. She said that she would watch over me after she died. She said that if she saw I was misbehaving and not living like she wanted me to, then she's come back and make me sorry.'
'Did you believe her?'
'...'
'Did you believe her?'
'...'
'Bruno?'
'Let's talk about something else.'
'Jesus!' Tony said. 'That's where he got the notion that Katherine had come back. The woman planted the idea in him before she died!'
To Rudge, Joshua said, 'What in the name of God was the woman trying to do? What sort of relationship did those two have?'
