Chapter 1
Seattle, June 12, 2008
I step down onto the old dock and it creaks beneath my feet, as if letting out a deep sigh. It’s dark out, but the string lights that dangle overhead illuminate my path.
What did the woman from the rental office say on the phone? Seventh houseboat on the left? Yes. I think. I grasp my suitcase tighter and walk ahead slowly. A sailboat sways gently in the water where it’s tethered to an adjoining houseboat, a two-story, with a rooftop deck and cedar shingle siding weathered to a gray-brown. A lantern flickers on a table on the front deck, but seconds later its flame is extinguished, maybe by the breeze, maybe by someone lingering in the shadows. I imagine the residents of the dock peering through their darkened windows, watching me, whispering. “There she is,” one says to another. “The new neighbor.” Someone smirks. “I hear she’s from New York.”
I hate the hushed exchanges, the looks. The crush of curiosity drove me from New York. “The poor thing,” I overheard someone utter as she stepped out of the office elevator a month ago. “I don’t know how she even manages to get out of bed every morning after what happened. If it were me, I don’t know how I’d go on.” I remember how I hovered in the hallway until the woman rounded the corner. I couldn’t bear to see the look on her face, or any of their faces. The headshaking. The pity. The horror. In Seattle, the shadow of my past would be under cloud cover.
I take a deep breath and look up when I hear the distant creak of a door hinge. I pause, bracing for confrontation. But the only movement I detect is a kayak gliding slowly across the lake. Its lone passenger nods at me, before disappearing into the moonlight. The dock rocks a little, and I wobble, steadying myself. New York is a long way from Seattle, and I’m still groggy from the transcontinental flight. I stop and wonder, for a moment, what I’m doing here.
I pass two more houseboats. One is gray, with French doors that face north and a weather vane perched on the roof. The next is tan, with window boxes brimming with red geraniums. Various urns and planters line the deck in front of the home, and I stop to admire the blue hydrangeas growing in a terra-cotta pot. Whoever lives here must be a meticulous gardener. I think of the garden I left behind on my balcony in New York, the little garden box planted with chard and basil and the sugar pumpkin for . . . I bite my lip. My heart swells, but the porch light on houseboat number seven anchors me to the moment. I stop to take in the sight of what will be my new home: Situated on the farthest slip on the dock, it floats solemnly, unafraid. Weathered cedar shingles cover its sides, and I smile when I notice an open porthole on the upper floor. It’s just as the advertisement depicted. I sigh.
Here I am.
I feel a lump in my throat as I insert the key into the lock. My legs are suddenly weak, and as soon as I open the door, I fall to my knees, bury my head in my hands, and weep.
Three weeks earlier
It’s nine in the morning, and the New York sun streams through the eighth-floor windows of Dr. Evinson’s office with such intensity, I drape my hand over my eyes.
“Sorry,” he says, gesturing toward the blinds. “Is the light bothering you?”
“Yes,” I say. “Well, no, it’s . . .” The truth is, it isn’t the light that’s burning, but my news.
I sigh and sit up straighter in the overstuffed chair with its brash white and green stripes. A signed, framed photo of Mick Jagger hangs on the wall. I smile inwardly, recalling how I walked into Dr. Evinson’s office a year ago, expecting a black leather couch and a clean-shaven man in a suit holding a notebook and nodding reassuringly as I dabbed a tissue to my eyes.
According to my sister-in-law, Joanie, he was Manhattan’s most sought-after grief therapist. Past patients included Mick Jagger—hence the wall art—and other big names. After Heath Ledger’s death, his ex, Michelle Williams, came to see Dr. Evinson on a weekly basis. I know because I saw her in the lobby once flipping through an issue of Us Weekly. But his celebrity client list didn’t impress me. Frankly, I’d always been scared of therapists, scared of what they might cause me to say, cause me to feel. But Joan encouraged me to go. Actually, encourage is the wrong word. One morning, she met me for breakfast in the restaurant on the ground floor of Dr. Evinson’s office building, then put me on an elevator destined for the ninth floor. When I reached his foyer, I thought about turning around, but the receptionist said, “You must be Dr. Evinson’s nine o’clock.”
I walked into the room reluctantly, noticing the green-and-white-striped chair, the one I’d sit in every Friday at nine for a year. “You expected a couch, didn’t you?” Dr. Evinson asked with a disarming smile.