“You’re right,” I admit. “It’s been a while. How have you been doing?”
She gives me a wry smile. Lines deepen around her mouth and her eyes in a way that captures her warmth. She is a woman who smiles a lot.
“Come on, now, Natalie. I think we both know we’re not here to talk about me. What brings you back in to see me?”
My eyes fix themselves on the garden view over her left shoulder, trees gently rustling in the wind.
“I’m not really sure where to start,” I admit, fingertips digging into the velvety peach armrests beneath my hands.
Her head dips to one side, thick dark hair swinging down a shoulder. I know she’s about to go for the jugular. “So how about we start with why you stopped coming to see me?”
“Oh” is all I say. A small shuffle in my seat.
“Oh,” she repeats, eyes crinkling in amusement.
I know how this game goes. She pokes somewhere I don’t want prodded, and I waste time and money dodging away from the jabs until she finally gets what she wants. The truth. She will sit there for as long as it takes for her to get it; I might as well cut to the chase.
“To be honest, I felt better. My violent impulses have been down for so long, and I was happy with James.”
“I notice that we’re speaking a lot in the past tense.”
She’s good.
“Yes, well…”
And I explain the whole saga to her. Me finding the money gone. James finding my letters, telling me about them, telling Will about them. The blackmail, the panic, the fear.
“That’s a lot for one person to go through,” Dimple says.
“Yes.” I nod, feeling affirmed. “Yes, it is.”
“I’m interested to know more about how your conversation with James went. How exactly did you discuss the letters you’ve written?”
“He wanted to know more about my exes, about what happened.”
“And you told him?”
I scrape a shoulder blade against the backrest of my chair. “Sort of.”
Dimple smiles. “Let me reframe the question: What did you tell him?”
“I told him that Marc’s fall and Luca’s heart attack were accidents.” Her smile has turned knowing, and it’s as irritating as the fabric of the chair against my back.
“Did the two of you discuss George in any detail?” Dimple asks.
“A bit. He knows I hurt him. He doesn’t know he’s dead. And I know what you’re going to say about honesty in relationships, but this is what works for me for now, okay? I mean, haven’t you ever lied to a partner?”
Dimple’s eyebrows bob up and back down. “You know I don’t discuss my private life in this room.”
It seems an unfair trade. I like to think she’s glad I sometimes ask her questions about herself, too. She should know that I see her as a human being.
Dimple taps two fingers against the side of her glasses and changes tack. “Tell me, broadly, how have these new conversations with James made you feel?”
“Unsettled. Off-kilter, I guess. I felt like I had everything in control and now it’s all spiraling away from me.”
“This feeling of impotence, of not being in control, how is that presenting itself?”
I look at her and look away. I can’t bring myself to hold eye contact. “The impulses. I suppose I’ve been feeling them again. Nothing I haven’t been able to control, exactly. But when I first found out about what James had done, about the money he stole, what that meant for my ability to have kids…I could have really hurt him, Dimple. Iwanted to.” I pause for a moment. “Just to be clear, I’m not going to, though. You don’t have to…” My words lose themselves on the way out of my mouth.
