Renee wasn’t sure whether Jacob was addressing her or Rheinsfeldt, because his eyes kept swiveling in their sockets. She figured the words were meant for her. She’d heard them plenty enough.
Rheinsfeldt didn’t flinch, just sat in her chair with professional poise. “How did you feel on the inside?” she repeated.
“Like my guts were on fire. All the time. I had stomach trouble, diarrhea, pain so intense that Tylenol couldn’t touch it.”
“Guilt, perhaps?” Rheinsfeldt’s tone was that of a game show host whose contestant was coming up short in the final round.
“No, the guilt was all mine,” Renee said. The tears were hot in her eyes. She didn’t try to hold them back. Damn, she was getting good at this. “I’m the one who put Christine down for the nap, I’m the one who arranged the blankets. I’m the one who brought her into this awful world.”
“Do you really believe it’s awful? If so, you wouldn’t have had any children in the first place.”
“Mattie was an accident,” Renee said, and Jacob stopped pacing by the window.
“An accident?” Rheinsfeldt sniffed blood in the psychological pool. “So perhaps that contributed to Jacob’s desire to spoil her. Maybe he didn’t think—”
“He didn’t think. That’s the point. We had it all planned, get the business going and get settled, accumulate some wealth, and then talk about having a family.”
“How old were you then?”
“Twenty-two,” Jacob said.
“Twenty-one,” Renee said. “We know which night we got pregnant.” She looked at Jacob and the pain in his face was worth millions. “Tell her, Jakie.”
He turned to the window again. The sky was dull and blue, limitless, like her love.
“We always used condoms, even after we were married,” she told Rheinsfeldt, though she was really talking to Jacob, delivering the words as if they were nails in flesh. “The pill gave me migraines, and the diaphragm and foam were so messy. One night in August, Jacob had gone out for drinks with one of his old college classmates—yes, he’d started drinking again around that time. I think it was the fear of success, but that’s a whole other story. Anyway, I don’t even know who these classmates were, but it must have been some party, because Jake came in at about four in the morning. It was dark and I was half asleep, but he crawled on me like an animal. I tried to push him away. I’m no prude but I like a little foreplay, plus he didn’t put on a condom. He forced himself in.”
“Jacob?” Rheinsfeldt interrupted, as if fearing that Renee was gaining control of the session.
“She liked it,” Jacob said to the window. “It was probably the best night of her life.”
Renee squirmed. Jacob had been more passionate that night than any other, almost as if he knew he was planting a baby inside her. Almost as if he wanted a child. And some small part of her had accepted it, had pulled him more deeply into her.
The sex hadn’t been as intense even when they were deliberately trying for the one that would be Christine. Stinking of whiskey and sweat, tongue like an attacking viper, and body like a weapon, his excitement had swept her up and over the edge of the universe. And she hated his causing her loss of control.
And here he was, about to do it again: make her lose control. She forced herself to think of Christine, small and blue-skinned against the blanket. And Mattie, lost amid the big fire that had burned away the last bridge that connected her to their happy past.
“Three times,” Renee said. “You wanted to make sure, didn’t you, Jake?”
“You didn’t fight it,” he said.
“I’m not supposed to fight it,” she said. “You married me, remember?”
“Everybody makes mistakes.”
“We made them together.”
“A Wells never fails.”
Renee swallowed hard, trying to push the anger down her throat. It lodged there, making each breath an effort. The sudden silence in the room was thick and oppressive. Rheinsfeldt edged forward with serpentine ease.
“Obviously, you loved each other enough to carry the baby to term,” the doctor said. “And Jacob is a successful businessman. It sounds like you two were getting everything you wanted. What part of your common dream didn’t work out?”
“After that encounter, Jacob wouldn’t touch me for weeks,” Renee said. “Like I was the dirty one, or maybe he was embarrassed by his passion. He was gone when I woke up and didn’t come home until the afternoon. We fought a few times, threw things, nothing too physical, mostly yelling, then him storming out.”
The doctor nodded as if such behavior were perfectly normal. “Why did you behave that way, Jacob?”
“I was afraid she was pregnant.”
“Why was that so frightening? Was it the responsibility?”
“No. The bloodline. I was afraid I would be a lousy father, just like I was taught.”
“Taught?”
“By my own lousy father.”
“Jacob, this sounds like an issue we’ll need to work on privately. But for today, let’s see if we can understand this one little piece of the puzzle.”
“He sobered up when I missed my period and we got the test results,” Renee said. “He was the perfect husband, worked hard all day, phoned me before and after lunch, showered me with attention when he got home. It was like being newlyweds again.”
“And the honeymoon ended?”
“Mattie was a quick delivery. She looked so much like Jacob. Not in the features, maybe, since she got my eyes, but in the way she smiled and laughed. The way her eyebrows scrunched when she was upset.”
“She was beautiful,” Jacob said, heading toward the door. “Better than we deserved. I’m done.”
“I hate you,” Renee said.
Jacob kept walking.
“We need something for you guys to work on,” Rheinsfeldt said to Jacob’s back. “Something to build on for the next session.”
Jacob went around the corner and was gone.
“See?” Renee said. “It’s impossible.”
Rheinsfeldt pulled a tissue from the box on the table and held it out to her. Renee took it but didn’t wipe the tears away, didn’t stanch the thin streams of mucus running down her nostrils. She knew she looked a wreck, cheeks blotched, eyelids swollen.
Rheinsfeldt put a reassuring hand on her knee. “Considering Jacob’s history, you might be forced to commit him involuntarily.”
“History?”
Rheinsfeldt’s compassionate expression melded into an impenetrable mask. “You didn’t know.”
CHAPTER NINE
Jacob left the building and hurried past the playground, afraid he would see the vision of Mattie again. If the hallucinations started, the carefully constructed wall inside his head might crumble, brick by brick. Already, darkness broke through the chinks. And the things inside the darkness might slither out if the gap widened.
The session was a mistake. Nothing had changed since his teens. You couldn’t trust them. You couldn’t trust her.
He turned the corner and headed down Buffalo Trace Lane. The county historical society said the street had once been a path where buffalo traveled to the high grazing lands in the summer. The Cherokee and Catawba hunted there, put up temporary meat camps, and moved into the valleys when the frost came. Now all the buffalo were gone, slaughtered in order to build the roads that bore their name.
Jacob’s throat was raw from the bout of vomiting. The air of the town tasted like old coins. A bank’s neon clock said 4:37. Back in his old life, Jacob would probably have an appointment somewhere, with a developer or tenant or maybe a loan officer. In his old life, he would be running late.
Back in Rheinsfeldt’s office, Renee was probably crying. Rheinsfeldt would swallow it all in her eagerness to help, and Jacob would be “the problem child” again. Now that he was gone, they could conspire against him. Just like always.
Renee loved that story about the night Mattie was conceived. He’d been drunk. He wouldn’t have remembered it at all without her help. But once she’d reminded him, it had been burned into his mind forever. And Mattie was the result, and she was also burned.