“When you say ‘separate,’ what do you mean?”
Mike looked around the room, eyes pausing on ten or twelve items, taking them in, as if in a meditative state. A small, brass elephant. A spider plant that carried across a fifteen-foot archway in the middle of the room. A stained glass panel at the top of the large picture window, hues of purple and adobe giving the room’s light an ethereal appearance. As he stopped and observed, paused and noted, he found the whirling dervish inside himself calming just enough to say:
“She turns out to be something we didn’t know.”
“What was that?”
He shook his head quickly, like making a fly move away. The words caught in his throat, stuck there forever, a seed that could never crack open enough for a small tendril to make its way to the light.
His long, runner’s legs bent before him, knees high, legs splayed out, hands now planted on his knees as if he were about to stand and walk out the door, run run run and stop thinking about Jill Jill Jill.
Damn it.
She would follow him, wouldn’t she? Can’t run away from her. Can never run away from the fact that she lied.
Lied.
“She lied,” he hissed, the words like air from an over-inflated balloon.
Dr. Harr just nodded, as if she understood. Did she? Did she know how it felt to waken with a gaping, sucking chest wound where your heart was supposed to be? How many holes he’d poked in the wall by slamming his fist against his headboard so many times that the thick wood itself sported a hairline crack, right down the middle? How Dylan slept in his own bedroom now because Mike’s dreams were always of combat, of fighting an evil that tried to kill Jill, and that Dylan had woken more than once to find Mike staring at him with a look of murderous rage?
Dr. Harr knew all of those facts.
But she couldn’t feel Mike’s pain.
And now, the dreams had changed, visions of a new woman implanted in his subconscious, the sense of Jill’s betrayal overwhelmed by soft curves, a sweet, hesitant voice, and moans of pleasure that whispered his name.
“Damn it,” he whispered through tears he fought so hard to keep back. Anger was easier than pain.
Pain was easier than heartbreak.
“What did she lie about, Mike?” Dr. Harr leaned forward, her head tilted to the side slightly, her face encouraging, chin bobbing slightly as if to say yes. Yes. You’re safe here. You can say it.
“She lied about who she was.”
“And you learned the truth after her death?”
“Yes.”
“And this is the source of your anger.” The doctor said it as a statement. Not a question.
“Yes.” He knew he should say more than just one word, but he couldn’t. He didn’t have any more words now. The words were sweating out of him, sticking to the surface of his skin, coming out in the clench of his muscles, the twitches in his calves, the pull of tendons and sinew against bone as his body sat in this chair.
Dr. Harr paused, deep in thought, considering Mike like one would study a painting at the Museum of Fine Arts. Then she peered at him with eyes that pierced his soul and said:
“Does knowing what you know change Jill herself? Is she a fundamentally different person?”
In $2.2 billion ways, he thought. Mike closed his eyes and envisioned Jill. Opening a Christmas gift the first year the three of them lived together, Mike and Dylan so broke they went in on the set of audio CDs of the Harry Potter series she’d desperately wanted. Another memory: tent camping in West Virginia on parts of the Appalachian Trail, down to their last few dollars and supplementing with wild edibles just to have enough money for beer when they found a bar.
How the ultra-chic apartment they’d moved into years ago had seemed so cheap. Jill collected the rent and told them she’d just handle the bills.
Lies. All of it, lies.
“She was an heiress,” he said softly, the memories turning around in his head, as if viewed through a kaleidoscope. His words marched out of his mouth in a neat, orderly line, as if reporting for duty. “She left me and Dylan a trust fund worth a combined $2.2 billion.”
Dr. Harr’s eyes widened slightly but went back to normal so fast Mike almost didn’t catch the reaction.
