She studied me in silence. Waves boomed. Rain ticked against the windows.
“You’re really sure about this?”
I nodded. “I’m so . . . ashamed that I might have let this happen.”
She edged forward on her seat and clasped her hands together. “Ellie, some people can be deviously clever that way. Con artistry says more about ourselves and how we see the world than it says about the con artist. The genius of a trickster lies in figuring out precisely what it is we want or need most to hear, and then that’s how they present themselves to us—as a vehicle for delivering our deepest desire. They show up in the guise they’re needed when they’re most needed.”
I considered how Martin had just shown up in my life on that chill January night. In my path on the way to the bathroom. How he seemed to say all the right things about life and children and art and parents that made me believe he was the answer to everything that I’d been looking for right at that moment. I’d lived in the public eye, thanks to my father. Stuff had been written about me, especially after Chloe drowned, especially after I went off the rails. It was all still probably accessible in online archives. I’d even been arguing loudly with my father in the Mallard Lounge that night, everyone listening. With a simple Google search anyone could have learned some very personal things about me. I felt sick.
“We want to believe what a con artist tells us, Ellie,” she said softly. “They manipulate our reality. And if this is truly what you think it is, a long con, the kind that takes weeks, months, or even years to unfold, it requires manipulation of reality at a far higher level, and it plays with our most basic core beliefs about ourselves.”
I fiddled with a thread on my capri pants. “You seem to know an awful lot about this.”
“I had a patient once. A smart—very smart—woman, a widow who’d been sucked in by someone on an online dating site. It’s sadly not uncommon. People use sites like that to troll for victims. They can learn a lot about them; then they use that information to lure their prey and suck them dry.”
I glanced up. Her words made me think of that funnel-web spider with its trip lines and silk lair.
“I could be wrong, still.”
“Yes. I hope you are, Ellie.”
“My friend Dana warned me. My dad warned me. Yet I was convinced they were all just bitter because I’d finally found something good, something I believed I deserved. A decent man. A second chance.”
“Is he physically abusive—is he a bully? Does he have a mean streak?”
I looked out the window. I couldn’t voice it.
Quietly she rephrased her question: “Did he hurt you, Ellie?”
I touched the silk scarf around my neck that hid my terrible bruises, and I realized too late that my involuntary movement had given me away.
“Maybe I deserved it,” I said very quietly. “I abused him verbally, too. I cut him with a knife. And . . . and I wanted to cut him, Willow. I wanted to hurt him, kill him, even.”
She absorbed this for a moment. “Ellie,” she said quietly, “no one ever deserves to be struck. Abuse is not your fault, no matter your internal thoughts. Violence is not acceptable.”
I sat silent.
“How badly did he hurt you?”
“It won’t happen again.”
“Why?”
Because I won’t fuck up again. I won’t get drunk again. I won’t take pills again. “I won’t let it.”
“You need to go to the police.”
“I . . . I will. If he does it again, I will.”
The intensity in her eyes turned hot, and I sensed the shift in her energy. She looked like a tightly coiled spring ready to explode. It made me uneasy. I hated confrontation. She was going to insist on bringing in the law, and I wanted to be careful and make sure I was ready and in a place where he couldn’t get to me if and when I did.
“I will,” I said again. “But not here, not now. I want to go to the police back home. I want to file for divorce from home. Where he can’t hurt me. And I need to be off the meds. I need your help, Willow. Will you help me get off the lorazepam? I need to taper. I flushed most of the meds down the toilet, but I kept just enough for a week or two. I want you to keep the pills for me and give me only enough for each day, should I need them.”
She stared at me. I could see her brain racing.
“And this is why you think he won’t hurt you again—because you’ll be clean?”
“He’ll see that I’m trying. I’ll tell him. I’ll show him.”
“Ellie, if you think he’s drugging you—how’s that going to help?”
I leaned forward. “Because if I’m not drinking, and not taking meds, and then if I do have another episode, I’ll go straight to a doctor and have my blood tested.” I paused. “I will have evidence of what is in my system. It could be the proof I need that Martin is drugging me.”
“So you think your abuse of substances is making it easier for him to mess with you.”
“He could be using it to veil whatever he’s doing to me.”
“Once a guy hits you, it’s—”
“No.” I raised my hand. “I need a clear head in order to
