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  Her friends didn’t understand what was happening until Heather and her attacker were almost out of sight.

  With the bad guy in the driver’s seat and the victim attached to his strong hand and moving car, they weaved together down the interstate as he continued his efforts to pull her inside. She’d been forced to run so as not to be pulled in but her legs had become tired and weak. Eventually, her legs just stopped moving and because of their immobility, Heather’s body was dragged over painful cement at too many miles an hour while the maniac still clutched her arm tightly.

  Heather thought she had been screaming the prayers within her mind but Joe later told her that he heard her 95

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  screams. She would never understand how a teenage boy found the strength and speed that her friend did that night but like a superhero at the exact moment of crisis, Joe chased both victim and attacker down the interstate until he caught up. Upon seeing he had company, the strange man let go and Heather’s body slammed onto the unforgiving ground. In the last moment, she made direct eye contact with her attacker and as she sat before her doctor, Heather tried to freeze frame the memory.

  She pulled herself back to her current reality and opened her eyes to see Dr. Angel’s gentle eyes staring back at her. She was afraid to speak for fear of losing the memory in her words. She could almost hear the ding of the invisible timer and she knew the moment had come.

  Without a word to her waiting doctor, Heather closed her eyes again and transported herself back into the memory. It hadn’t yet faded completely so she used its recent activity to draw the memory back into existence.

  She was seventeen again and her attacker’s tight clutch had just released her into a rough fall. She could almost feel the fresh scrapes on her legs and the gravel pressed to her cheek. The Volkswagen braked to an abrupt stop that almost ran over her arm. Heather could hear Joe’s heavy footfalls getting closer and she heard him screaming swears and threats to the man who took her.

  She looked up into her attacker’s eyes and he looked down at her from his spot behind the wheel. His demeanor was calm and quiet and he smiled a small smile at her.

  His dark eyes were terrifying and the thirty-fi ve-year-old 96

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  Heather who sat before her psychiatrist bypassed the fear of the terrifi ed teen she had been on that night. Heather saw what she knew she would see and having found the answer she was looking for, she pulled herself out of the violent reverie.

  When she opened her eyes, she saw that Dr. Angel had leaned forward and was watching her carefully. A scream was stuck in the back of her throat and when she gulped it back she almost choked on her own saliva. It was one of the rare moments where she couldn’t share with her doctor such an important piece of information. If she told him the truth, it could be the end of their safety and sharing and the beginning of commitment papers and morning rounds.

  He was scribbling on his pad so she assumed he’d been paying attention. Heather raised her eyebrows and offered a weak smile. She nodded toward the active pen.

  “What are you writing?”

  “Why is that important to you right now?” he asked.

  “Forget it,” she answered, defl ated.

  Thoughts of Billy pierced fi rst her consciousness, then her conscience. It was guilt’s normal pattern and it traveled merrily toward self-destruction. Trying to control its travails was like trying to holding off a million sperm in search of the coveted egg. She envisioned them together with bodies intertwined, fl oating in and out one another as they watched themselves in a mirror.

  “What is it?” asked Dr. Angel.

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  Heather jumped at the sound of his voice. She’d almost forgotten she was on his couch and it took a moment for the question to register.

  “Nothing,” she answered quickly but a small shameful smile gradually pulled at the left side of her face.

  “Did I look guilty?” she asked.

  She knew it was an impossible question to answer but thought there was a chance he just might try.

  “Did you feel guilty?” he asked.

  “Ah, touché,” she joked. “Actually no, I didn’t at the time. But now that you bring it up, yes, yes, I do.”

  Heather had slipped into a jocular mood without warning. Billy stirred up a lot of feelings inside of her and her automatic response was to minimize them to herself.

  The process caused an overload to the brain and left her exhausted. She yawned.

  When Dr. Angel didn’t initiate further conversation, Heather strangled the silence with the truth.

  “I was thinking about Billy,” she admitted.

  “And what were you feeling during the thought?” he asked.

  She thought about it for a moment.

  “Excitement, I guess?” she asked, more than told him.

  “That’s a physical response,” he challenged. “What emotion were you feeling?”

  Heather searched different levels of herself for an answer to the question. She searched her brain and 98

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  found no answers. She checked her palms to see if a physical reaction could work as a lifeline to the million dollar question. They weren’t sweating from any kind of physical excitement. She knocked on the door to her heart but nobody answered.

  “I feel nothing. I’m not allowed to feel anything,” she fi nally said.

  “Who says so?” he asked.

  “I say so. Billy says so. I’m pretty sure his wife would say so too,” she fi nished.

  “I don’t think any of them have an actual say so over your feelings, Heather. They can have some control over your actions maybe but not what you feel.”

  Heather felt a knock on her heart’s door but instinct forced her to resist. Dr. Angel had often told her to visualize the doors in her mind. He had walked her through exercises where she had to imagine a long hallway and envision the doors that she’d kept so heavily barricaded.

  His goal had been to allow Heather the control she needed to unlock the parts of her that she had hidden from herself but it never worked out the way they had planned. The feelings behind the doors overwhelmed her and she was afraid. Like Pandora’s box, Heather never knew what she would fi nd if she opened a door.

  “Are you trying to open a door?” he asked gently.

  He knew her so well. If anyone else had tried to become as intimate, she would have already found a way to destroy the relationship. Dr. Angel was the only person she had ever allowed to knock on the door with her. There 99

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  were times when Heather had pictured herself as a child walking through the door with her small hand held fi rmly in her doctor’s strong one.

  “Yes,” she answered softly.

  “Are your feelings for Billy behind a door?” he asked.

  “Yes, I’m pretty sure,” she answered.

  “What do you get out of your relationship with him?”

  he asked.

  “He knows me. I mean, even though it’s mostly physical, it’s not like he doesn’t know me. I’ve always shared my secrets with him. I tell him about my job, I discuss my thoughts with him; we laugh about things,”

  She paused when she heard the words come out of her mouth.

  “It’s not what you’re thinking,” she said quickly

  “What am I thinking?” he asked.

  “You’re thinking that I love him because those are the things people do when they love each other, but you’re wrong. I don’t love him. I couldn’t. We don’t even really know each other. We’ve never had to fi ght over money or the kids. We’ve never been through tragedy together. He doesn’t know my fears or my dreams or my middle name for that matter. It can’t be love,” she persevered.

  “Yet he’s the most stable relationship you’ve ever had,” he guided.

  Heather was quiet. Something registered inside and she couldn’t resist the s
mile that had started pasting itself 100

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  on her face. Revelations were sometimes very comical to her.

  “So are you!’ she laughed. “Oh my God, that’s funny.

  My two most stable relationships are my psychiatrist and my lover!” She laughed more. “That’s priceless,” she chuckled. “That’s awesome.”

  He didn’t respond and Heather wondered what he was thinking.

  “I’m not jealous of his wife,” she interjected quickly.

  “Explain what you mean by that,” he tried.

  “I can’t love him or else I’d be jealous and I’m not. I want his marriage to work. I want him to have a happy family. I want for him to be in love with her and all that crap,” she insisted.

  “Because that’s safe for you,” he responded. She wasn’t sure if it were a question or a statement.

  “No, it’s because he’s a liar and a cheater. Why would I want him?” she asked.

  He shifted again and his shoes caught Heather’s attention. The tan color was enhanced by a deep shine and she often wondered if he sat at his bedside polishing shoes every night.”

  “Does your wife polish your shoes?” she asked.

  When he didn’t answer, she decided she may have traveled too far out of therapeutic bounds so she just shook her head instead.

  “Forget it,” she added before he had a chance to ask why shoe polish was important to her.

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  Heather wondered often why she didn’t feel any envy for Billy’s wife. She reminded herself that most women continued affairs for the sake of love and she knew from past relationships, love would never allow her to share a man. She lacked what she thought was a normal amount of jealousy and realized the lack of issue had become a problem in itself.

  “Why are people jealous?” she asked.

  “Other people have something they want,” he answered.

  “Then why don’t they just go get what they want?”

  she asked.

  “Sometimes someone already has it,” he said.

  “That makes no sense,” she said and didn’t try to pull back the snarl that invaded her lip.

  “No?”

  “No,” she answered quickly. “I’m happy for people when good things happen to them. I think it’s great when a co-worker gets promoted or when my sister belts out a song well or when one of my friends falls in love. I mean, what the Hell?”

  Her stomach clenched as a recent memory cut into her thoughts. Though Heather shared almost everything with her doctor, the recollection was too private. She wasn’t sure why she was so reluctant to talk about it when she had told him some of the most intimate and embarrassing moments of her life but her unwillingness to let him in was fi erce.

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  In her mind’s eye, Billy was at the foot of her bed putting his shirt on after a mid-day quickie that she had rushed out of work early for. She remembered wishing he would just crawl back into bed and put his arm around her before falling asleep. Heather tried to shake the thought out just as she had when it really happened.

  She was about to address her doctor with a subject change when the memory reared its head again. It became more vivid and seemed to widen as though she were just made privy to the director’s cut. She remembered the words he said that day and remembered the feelings she had forced away when he said them. Heather had no choice but to let the memory play out and she watched as Billy put his shirt back on.

  “Are you going straight home?” she had asked him.

  He’d laughed and nodded before throwing back his trademark sarcasm.

  “Why, dear?” he joked. “Do you need me to run some errands for you?”

  “Yes, actually,” she’d answered.

  Heather had gone along with the phony game where they pretended to have a real relationship. She remembered that Jack’s half fi nished tree house sprang to mind.

  “I need you to run to Home Depot and grab me some wood,” she played.

  “But, I just gave you wood,” Billy had grinned.

  “Funny,” she’d said fl atly.

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  The game was over. The fi ve seconds she had allowed herself to envision them in different roles was completely stomped out by Billy’s need to remind her who and what she really was to him. That she went along with it made Heather disrespect herself even more. She wondered why the memory chose to reveal itself during a discussion about envy.

  She had experienced the discomfort that came with longing secretly for another woman’s man. Part of her really wished she could send Billy to run errands for her but she’d supressed that part and stuffed it behind a door that she never re-opened – until that moment on the therapeutic couch. A realization came to her as she looked up and met Dr. Angel’s eyes.

  “What is it?” asked Dr. Angel.

  “What? Nothing,” she replied.

  Heather knew that even if the memories were locked behind her invisible doors, they still existed. She knew that with all the energy she used to hide them, she may as well face and destroy them but it wasn’t within her power.

  “Are you sure?” he asked with mild concern.

  His glasses sat perched on his nose in their usual spot and Heather just stared blankly at him. She realized she must have had quite an expression on her face to incite the one he had on his but she continued to portray the same phony calmness to him that she showed the rest of the world. When it occurred to her that she had spent her 104

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  entire session coming to conclusions and keeping them to herself, she wondered what it meant.

  “I’m positive,” she answered. “It’s nothing.”

  They talked more about the extremes that she suffered and the importance of her fi nding life in the gray areas but Heather still couldn’t get her attacker’s face out of her mind. Although it had been almost twenty years since her attack on the interstate, the man looked exactly the same in the garage earlier that day as he did on that night.

  She knew it was time to start looking for answers in places she hadn’t previously allowed herself to consider.

  All she wanted right then was to be close to her sister.

  Heather said goodbye and prepared her mind and body for her retreat from the only safe haven she knew.

  Dr. Angel reminded her that their next appointment was in exactly one week, though they both knew she was well aware. Their appointment times never changed. It was the same time and same day every week for the past several years. His words weren’t meant as a reminder of her appointment. They were a reminder of his constant presence in her life and an affi rmation that he wasn’t going anywhere before they were to meet again. He knew she needed it somehow.

  Heather walked out of his offi ce and through the lobby without paying attention to anyone or anything around her. She felt rushed and annoyed and was uninterested in the patients who waited for her sloppy seconds with the doctor. Had she paid attention, she might have noticed 105

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  that there was only one other patient waiting his turn. She might also have noticed that he was watching her intently from behind the magazine he held in front of him.

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  Chapter 7

  True Colors

  Heather had mixed feelings about accepting a dinner invitation from her mom. She loved the home cooking and the comfortable memories it brought with it but wondered if the evening would be worth it. Dinner with the family was always hit or miss, either going very smoothly or ending in complete disaster. The inability to predict which dinner would turn into a war of tensions and which would fi nd its way into her happy memory bank always made her mom’s invitations frightening.

  Heather thought about walking into Jack and Tommy’s bedrooms to nag for them to get ready. Lost sneaker
s and hidden keys often stalled them an extra ten minutes and she was trying to get a headstart on the chaos. Her teenager walked into the kitchen barefoot, arms in the air defensively.

  “I can’t fi nd my socks, Mom,” Tommy insisted.

  She couldn’t prevent the eyeroll. She hated to make them think she was annoyed by them but sometimes she just wanted to shake her sons back to reality. She rolled her 107

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  eyes and talked herself out of an outburst. She loved her sons and wanted them to grow into decent, responsible and honest men. She knew the honesty part would be a challenge since she had her own lifetime battle with the truth and was pretty certain the boys had caught her penchant for dishonesty.

  There were many worries she didn’t have in regard to her oldest son and Heather was grateful for each one of them. She hadn’t caught him sneaking out or drinking or using drugs and she hadn’t found used condoms in his room. She’d never had to listen to a stammering and hesitant speech about a pregnant girlfriend and didn’t get phone calls from the police station telling her that her teenager had been arrested or, God forbid, in a drunk driving accident.

  Heather appreciated the things Tommy did but even more, she adored him for the person he was on the inside.

  He had been a beautiful child who caught the attention of everyone who passed by. His uniqueness called out from the richest and snottiest to the most desolate and poor and it said the same thing to all of them – I am your friend.

  He had a soul she believed had been nurtured over many lifetimes in order to become what he was today.

  Tommy would give a stranger the shirt off his back and would defend the honor of those who deserved it as well as those who didn’t. He was kind and compassionate and more secure about himself at age sixteen than she was at thirty-fi ve. Heather felt a gushing pride at the good person he had grown into.

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  Since the moment she fi rst looked into his eyes, she had been proud to introduce Tommy as her son. As he grew older and began to fi nd his talents, Heather looked for every opportunity to introduce him as her own.