Dr. Hilliard nodded again. We were quiet. The fish drifted in their tank.
“You’ve not asked me about Susan,” Dr. Hilliard said. “Most people would have.”
“What happens in here is hers,” I said.
“And when you find her. Then what?”
“Then she will be free again to come here and work with you until she can make the choices she wishes to make.”
“And if you are not that choice?”
“I think I will be. But I can’t control that. What I can do is see that she’s free to choose.”
“Control has been an issue,” Dr. Hilliard said. It was neither a question nor a statement, simply a neutral utterance.
“I think it has been,” I said. “I think I probably tried too much to control her. I’m trying to cut back on that.”
“Have you been in therapy, Mr. Spenser?”
“No, but I think a lot.”
“Yes,” Dr. Hilliard said..
The fish drifted. Dr. Hilliard was motionless. I didn’t want to leave. Susan had come here every week, maybe more than once a week. She had sat in this chair, or the couch? No. She would have sat in the chair, not lain on the couch. Before me was a woman who knew her. Knew her perhaps in ways that I didn’t. Perhaps in ways that no one did. Knew about her relationship with me. With Russell. I was sitting with my hands clasped behind my head. Unbidden the biceps tightened in my upper arms. I saw Dr. Hilliard notice that.
“I was thinking of Susan with Russell Costigan,” I said.
Dr. Hilliard nodded.
“Susan,” she said, “grew up in a family of people, who, out of their own phobic needs, treated her as an item, a thing useful for making them feel good, or important, or adult. She never learned to value herself as a person, only as someone else’s person. As she matured and learned, she became more aware of this. It was the basis of her first marriage. She was, after all, training to be a psychologist, and her work had been in that line for years. At the time that this insight began to take shape, your need for her became more intense, and it manifested itself to her as control. She had to get away.”
“And Russell rescued her,” I said.
“He rescued her from you. Now you will rescue her from him,” Dr. Hilliard said. “I share your view that it must be done. Her situation is hopeless if she is not free. But it would be better were she able to rescue herself from him.”
Dr. Hilliard paused and looked straight at me. The pause lengthened. Finally she said, “I am torn. The confidentiality of Susan’s therapy is imperatively important. But in order to save her spirit, we must first save her physical self.”
I didn’t say anything. I knew what I said wouldn’t be what decided Dr. Hilliard.
“It is important for you to remember that she fears dependency, despite, in fact because of, its attractiveness to her. Being rescued will do nothing to dispel those fears. It will present you as more complete, more dangerous to her because she’s still incomplete.”
“Jesus Christ,” I said.
“Exactly,” Dr. Hilliard said.
The sunlight filtered in through the venetian blinds on the window above Dr. Hilliard’s desk. It splashed across Dr. Hilliard’s muted beige carpet.
“She’ll want to be rescued,” I said. “But she won’t like me for it.”
I sat still for a time rubbing the knuckles of my left hand along my chin. “But if I don’t rescue her…”
“Don’t misunderstand. She must be rescued. Duress is never positive. And everything I know of you suggests you are the best one to do it. I say all this only so that you will understand what may come afterward. If you succeed.”
“If I don’t succeed, I’ll be dead,” I said. “And the matter will be less pressing to me. Best plan for success.”
“I think so,” Dr. Hilliard said.
“I’ll rescue her from Costigan and she can then rescue herself from me.”
“As long as you understand that,” Dr. Hilliard said.
“I do.”
“And when she has rescued herself. If she chooses to be with you, do you want that?”
“Yes.”
“And Costigan doesn’t matter?”
“He matters,” I said. “But not as much as she does. She’s been doing the best she could, right from the start. He was something she had to do.”
“And you’ll forgive her?”
I shook my head. “Forgiveness has nothing to do with it.”
