“I need your honest, professional opinion about something.”
“Of course. What is it?”
I stop pacing, close my eyes, and take a deep breath to calm my thundering heart. “Am I insane?”
Dr. Singer’s silence is almost as loud as one of Theo’s. It makes me nervous.
“Like, on a scale of one to ten, with one being a fully healthy, functional person and ten being the writer who tries to murder his family in The Shining, where do I fall?”
“In my professional opinion, I’d say you’re at two and a quarter. Perhaps two point five.”
Clammy with relief, I sag against the sink. “Really? I’m not even a three? That’s good, right?”
“There’s no such scale in clinical psychiatry, but I answered that way because you’re an accountant. I knew you’d appreciate my being exact.”
“Was an accountant. In my former life. Which no longer exists. Like most of the reasoning capacity of my brain.”
I laugh. It sounds crazy. I know it does, because in his most gentle I’m-dealing-with-a-cuckoo voice, Dr. Singer says, “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”
I start to pace again because it feels productive. Like I might be in control of at least this one little thing. I can’t control my thought processes, my fantasies, or the psychotic little voice in my head whispering impossible things in my ear about Theo Valentine, but I can march back and forth over this terrifically ugly brown tile.
“Um. God. Where to start?” This time, my laugh is nervous.
“Start at the beginning.”
“Okay.” I blow out a hard breath. “There’s this man.”
“Ah.”
I stop pacing. “What do you mean, ‘Ah?’ That sounds important.”
“May I ask you a few questions about this man?”
“Yes. Ask away.”
“Are you attracted to him?”
Oh fuck. “I’m…I’m…”
After it becomes clear I won’t add anything more, Dr. Singer says, “It’s all right to admit it, Megan. You’re not betraying Cass’s memory if you find another man attractive.”
I start pacing with renewed vigor. Back and forth I go, my heels clacking on the tile, my hands shaking, my armpits damp. “Let’s just say he affects me.”
“Go on.”
“He…we…I keep running into him everywhere. Everywhere. And, uh, there are a lot of things about him…many, many things…that sort of…remind me…” I suck in a breath and blurt it out. “Of Cass.”
“That’s normal.”
Dr. Singer sounds completely blasé. Meanwhile, I’m about to collapse onto the hideous brown tile and never get up. “Normal?” I shout. “It’s normal that a stranger reminds me of my dead husband?”
“Do you recall our talks about what might happen when you started dating?”
“I recall I told you I’d rather be fed limb by limb to a pack of wolves than start dating.”
Dr. Singer is unfazed by my snappy tone. “Indeed. And for five years, during the prime of your life, you refused to even look at another man. I counseled you that not allowing yourself the possibility of happiness again was unhealthy. I believe your response was ‘There is no happiness for me without Cass.’ So without knowing anything other than this new man ‘affects’ you, I can surmise from what I know of you, Megan, that you’re now paralyzed by guilt.”
Cold blasts over me, as if I’ve been doused with a bucket of ice water.
I whisper, “Guilt?”
“We’ve already established that you suffer from survivor’s guilt. Guilt for living when someone you loved so deeply is gone. Now it seems we can add guilt for feeling a normal, natural attraction to a man who isn’t Cass. Honestly, I’m surprised this didn’t come up sooner.”
No. No, this is too easy. Too simple. Guilt can’t be the explanation for everything I’m thinking and feeling, all this madness running rampant through my veins.
“But…there are all these things that can’t be explained…like the bear claw, and the sweet peas planted along the porch, and he knows how I like my coffee! And there was this painting of lightning that had his initials, and he put out a fire at my house—and the Denver omelets! The note that was Cass’s tattoo! May seventeenth!”
I’m not making sense. I’m also starting to worry Dr. Singer, because his tone changes to the stern one he used to use when he was insisting, for the nth time, that I get on antidepressants.
“Let’s talk about your panic attacks. Have you had any since you moved to Seaside?”