“It’s that obvious.”
“No, actually it isn’t. You’re great at keeping things buttoned up, I’m sure that’s good for your patients. And I’m also sure a casual observer wouldn’t notice but casual ain’t us.”
She rubbed the back of my neck. “I have developed Alex ESP. No big whoop, you’d do the same for me. That said, if you don’t want to talk about it.”
I did.
—
She said, “Poor, poor kid. Destroying yourself over a grade.”
“Likely more than a grade.” I told her what I’d said to Milo about depression.
“Even worse,” she said. “There he was dealing with that and no one noticed because it was all about achievement.”
I said, “Teens are great at hiding stuff. Serious depression can be mistaken for adolescent moodiness.”
“We had something like that when I was in high school. Brilliant girl, long-distance runner and student council vice president on top of straight A’s. Allison something. One day they found her in the girls’ locker room, laid out on the floor with an empty bottle of her mother’s antidepressants next to her. They rushed her to the hospital but couldn’t revive her. That was a message, no? Using Mom’s pills? And Mom also being depressed. Is it genetic?”
“It can be.”
She smiled. “Spoken like a guy who testifies in court. Let me ask you this: Are bright kids more susceptible?”
“Actually, their suicide rate is lower,” I said. “It’s the struggling kids who are at higher risk because having fewer resources leads to a tougher life. But there’s plenty of room for exceptions. Especially when high expectations fall short.”
“One B minus,” she said. “I’ll remind myself of that next time I’m sweating over a millimeter of veneer. So how’dyousurvive, being all precocious?”
“No problem, I was anything but a golden boy.”
“Oh sure.”
“Really, babe. No one expected anything from me. Includingme.”
“Even though you were always straight A’s. Right?”
“In my family, it didn’t matter.”
“What did?”
“Nothing.”
“Well,” she said, “you sure got past that.”
“Gradual process.”
“College at sixteen is gradual?”
“I didn’t think about it, was just happy to get away. And I had bills to pay.”
“Guess we share that,” she said. “Low expectations. I was no star student, no one thought I’d amount to anything except Dad. And then he upped and died and Mom didn’t exactly build me up.”
Her voice faltered. She drew herself up. Grinned. “Pain followed by gain. Guess we’re the lucky ones.”
We drank in silence, her head on my shoulder.
A few minutes later, she said, “In a way isn’t this case kind of like the other one you told me about? The hip-hop producer with the smart fragile kid? Both murders could be about family rage, no? Parents avenging their kids, only the producer didn’t wait for it to get tragic.”
My gut tightened.
