Confidential Read online

  ALSO BY ELLIE MONAGO

  NEIGHBORLY

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2019 by Holly Brown

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503904224 (paperback)

  ISBN-10: 1503904229 (paperback)

  ISBN-13: 9781542040082 (hardcover)

  ISBN-10: 1542040086 (hardcover)

  Cover design by Rex Bonomelli

  First edition

  CONTENTS

  CONSENT TO TREATMENT AND CONFIDENTIALITY

  PRESENT DAY

  BEFORE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  PRESENT DAY

  CHAPTER 4

  BEFORE

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  PRESENT DAY

  CHAPTER 11

  BEFORE

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  PRESENT DAY

  CHAPTER 18

  BEFORE

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  PRESENT DAY

  CHAPTER 24

  BEFORE

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  PRESENT DAY

  CHAPTER 34

  BEFORE

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  PRESENT DAY

  CHAPTER 41

  BEFORE

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  PRESENT DAY

  CHAPTER 48

  BEFORE

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  PRESENT DAY

  CHAPTER 58

  BEFORE

  CHAPTER 59

  CHAPTER 60

  CHAPTER 61

  CHAPTER 62

  CHAPTER 63

  CHAPTER 64

  CHAPTER 65

  CHAPTER 66

  CHAPTER 67

  PRESENT DAY

  CHAPTER 68

  BEFORE

  CHAPTER 69

  CHAPTER 70

  CHAPTER 71

  CHAPTER 72

  CHAPTER 73

  CHAPTER 74

  PRESENT DAY

  CHAPTER 75

  BEFORE

  CHAPTER 76

  PRESENT DAY

  CHAPTER 77

  CHAPTER 78

  THREE MONTHS LATER

  CHAPTER 79

  CHAPTER 80

  CHAPTER 81

  CHAPTER 82

  CHAPTER 83

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CONSENT TO TREATMENT

  I’m Michael Baylor, licensed clinical psychologist. Welcome to my practice.

  The therapist/client relationship is a unique one. My approach is unique, too. You won’t find any cookie-cutter techniques here, and there are no easy answers. This is a revelatory process, and you may be surprised by what you learn. Please remember that it’s not like a medical procedure where your main job is to show up and the doctor does the rest. This is a collaboration, and in our sessions, you gain only by participating fully.

  Therapy can be of enormous benefit, but it’s not without discomfort. Excavating old wounds often hurts; changing long-held beliefs and long-standing habits can hurt, too. But I will never abandon you. All I ask is for the chance to earn your trust.

  CONFIDENTIALITY

  In general, the privacy of all communications between a patient and a psychologist is protected by law, and I can release information about our work to others only with your written permission. But there are a few exceptions.

  If I believe that you may do harm to yourself or to others, I am required to take protective actions . . .

  PRESENT DAY

  PSYCHOTHERAPIST FOUND DEAD IN HIS OFFICE

  The body of Michael Baylor, a licensed clinical psychotherapist practicing in the affluent Rockridge section of Oakland, has been discovered. The police are not yet releasing any details . . .

  BEFORE

  ONE YEAR AGO

  CHAPTER 1

  FLORA

  “Happy anniversary, baby!” I said it breathily, like Marilyn Monroe to JFK, and I was wearing a negligee and holding a cheesecake. That’s Michael and me: the perfect intersection between sexy and ironic, between sleaze and cheese.

  No, there’s nothing sleazy about us, despite what anyone might think if they knew how we met, all the jokes they could make about therapist-client privilege. My love for Michael was boundless; I had opened up to him in ways that I never thought possible before. I hadn’t even known to want them.

  And now he was all mine. That’s what we were celebrating.

  Hard to imagine that when I first met him, more than two and a half years ago, I hadn’t even been attracted to him. Now I was borderline obsessed.

  But in a healthy way.

  He would know, right?

  “I love you, Dr. Michael,” I whispered, lowering myself so that he could take in my cleavage, pillowed in red silk, as I placed the cheesecake with its two burning candles on the table in front of him.

  He rewarded me with a grin. I called him Dr. Michael only on special occasions, and it always turned him on.

  “Blow them out,” I urged, and he complied. Then I dredged my fingers through the cheesecake and put them in his mouth.

  He licked them clean, slowly. “You think of everything.” He was looking at me in the way only he could, so full of love, lust, and admiration, like I was a marvel. A force of nature, he liked to say.

  Then he pulled me down to the floor, and the cake after us, which made me giggle. We smeared it on each other’s bodies, like finger painting all grown up. No, it was like our wedding, but without any observers; there was no need for smashing confections into faces. Where did that tradition come from anyway? So much passive aggression. How could that bode well for any union?

  But when Michael and I came together on my dining room floor, it was certainly portentous. After, we curled around each other, serpentine and spent. I put my head on his chest and listened to his heartbeat. It was even faster than my own. Good. A pulse can’t lie.

  Not that I thought Michael lied to me, but we had been a secret for two years. Sometimes I just needed some sensory confirmation of his feelings. After what happened with Young, that was to be
expected. Michael would say that himself.

  He kissed the top of my head, and my stomach lurched just a little. I knew what that meant.

  He gently extricated himself to pad across the floor, naked. He’d gotten in better shape these past two years, doing Pilates. I hadn’t known men did that, but it’d almost entirely eradicated the belly he had when we first met. He’d told me that he needed to get fit to keep up with me. I used to only like blonds, but Michael broke me of that. Now I was all about his thick brown-black hair and the tight whorls on his chest. Darkness seemed manly. And Young just seemed, well, young. He was part of my misspent youth.

  If it hadn’t been for Michael, I might have just kept banging my head against that wall, thinking that because Young and I were married, we had to grow old together like my parents had. We’d met when we were twenty and said our vows a few years later in a Miami ballroom. How could anyone be held to decisions they made at that age? I was now ten years wiser, and Michael had ten years on top of that, so I knew I was doing the right thing.

  But he was walking away from me, and I suddenly felt cold on the hardwood floor. I heard him start the shower, and I pulled the negligee back over my head. Time to scrape up the cheesecake. In the throes of passion, I didn’t mind a mess, but the rest of the time, I kept a spotless house. Well, apartment. A lovely apartment, from the early 1920s, with light oak floors, lots of sunlight, and built-in bookshelves, though it initially chafed that we had to sell the house in the divorce. My monthly rent for this one-bedroom in Rockridge was nothing short of ridiculous, but it was walking distance to scores of restaurants and boutiques, plus the BART station where I took the train to San Francisco for work. It was also fairly close to Michael’s office, not that I’d been there for the past two years. I’d been tempted, but I always managed to stop myself. That would have been too risky, and he would have been so angry. I hated seeing Michael angry.

  Once my apartment was scrubbed, I yanked the negligee off and dropped it on the floor of the bathroom, parted the curtain, and stepped inside the claw-foot tub. I noted with disappointment that Michael was standing in the spray, already done with the soaping. I positioned myself near him, hoping he’d take the bait and lather me, but even though he was right there, he felt remote.

  I’d never liked that he always showered right after, like he was getting rid of all evidence as quickly as possible.

  He pecked me on the cheek. “I’ll give you some privacy,” he said, beginning his exit.

  For someone who reads people for a living, he could sometimes be a little dense. If I wanted privacy, wouldn’t I just have waited until he was done?

  I put a hand on his arm, the lightest restraint. More beseeching, really, which wasn’t the most comfortable position for me. “Stay.” I smiled. “We need to make plans.”

  “Oh?”

  “For the big reveal.” His face was disconcertingly blank. “What’s the best way to go public?”

  The American Psychological Association says that former clients and their therapists must wait two years after the termination of therapy before they can become romantically involved. Today marked two years from when Young and I had our last session with Dr. Baylor, when we “processed” my decision to end the marriage.

  In my mind, Michael and I had taken the moral path. Our first sexual contact had taken place after Young and I split up. I hadn’t cheated. It was a shame that the APA was so rigid, that it failed to recognize different circumstances. Sure, the rule existed to protect vulnerable clients, and I understood that. But I hadn’t been vulnerable; I’d been fully capable of making a clearheaded decision and protecting myself. Ironically, the APA and its well-meaning bureaucrats had been the only real threat to my mental health. It was rough, keeping a love this big underground.

  “We can’t go public the second the time elapses,” he said. “It would look suspicious.”

  “To whom? Who’s looking?”

  “Young, maybe. He could report me.”

  I scoffed. “Young lives in Pacific Heights. We haven’t spoken since we finalized the divorce. You know that.”

  “Don’t underestimate a man scorned. It’s hard to lose a woman like you.”

  I felt a flush of pleasure that Michael thought so, though I highly doubted Young would agree. He was likely relieved when I ended it. He could tell his parents that we’d done counseling and, more important, that he’d done all he could but that I wasn’t willing to continue. I was sure he had told them that. Then he began to date immediately, according to the one friend we still had in common. I’d bet he never had any problems getting it up for all those girls from Tinder.

  The flush of pleasure vacated my body instantly, and I felt a wave of self-consciousness. I shouldn’t have started this conversation with Michael in the shower. Far better would have been with full makeup on, with my lips accentuated and my nose deemphasized.

  It wasn’t like I’d ever had trouble being noticed by men or being regarded as fuckable. Not until late-period Young. And Michael had just fucked me, vigorously.

  But he didn’t want to be seen in public with me. That’s what he was saying. He wanted to keep me his dirty secret.

  I’d waited two years! Two years!

  Michael could see that I was getting worked up, so he started soaping me. At his caresses, the adrenaline started to abate. I felt soothed, like a cat being pet in a sunlit corner.

  “I’ve risked everything for you,” he said. “That’s why I just need for us to take it slowly. You know how I feel about my career.”

  His hand moved between my legs, and my head lolled back almost involuntarily. What that man could do to me.

  CHAPTER 2

  LUCINDA

  I was hurrying down College Avenue, my fluffy dishwater-blonde hair flying behind me, dodging the myriad pedestrians who were darting into their chosen eateries, from the lowbrow crepe place to the small-plate French bistro with sixteen-dollar cocktails. Every third storefront was a restaurant; therapists populated every fifth building. Discreetly, a bit set back from the main street, sometimes around a courtyard, with bronze plaques full of names followed by initials: MSW, MFT, PhD, PsyD.

  Michael Baylor was a PsyD, meaning he had his doctorate in clinical psychology. And he was mine. Only until 6:50, though, and it was already 6:04.

  Stupid, stupid. Every missed minute cost money I barely had, money that could never be replaced because the San Francisco Bay Area was a leaky sieve and I worked as a proofreader for a small press in Berkeley. I was twenty-six, an introvert with four roommates. You could say things were not going particularly well.

  Truthfully, though, it wasn’t really the money I was upset about. It was that I didn’t want to miss a minute with Dr. Baylor.

  Christine had caught me on my way out the door, and I’d always been the worst at telling people no, I really have to go. I hated interrupting. I just stood there, trapped in the conversation like a fly in amber, waiting and listening for a substantial-enough pause. The right-size opening never seemed to come. I never wanted to hurt anyone by giving the impression that what he or she was saying wasn’t crucial or fascinating.

  Dr. Baylor had pointed out that this was a toxic pattern for me: I was always aggrandizing others, thinking their time was more valuable, their desires and preferences worthier of satisfaction and their feelings more important. I knew he was right, and I didn’t want to admit that my lateness was because I’d done it again with Christine, who was a terrible boss and an even worse person.

  I punched in the code that opened the outer door to his building and raced up to the second floor. Bursting into the small waiting room with no receptionist, two chairs, and a side table with a fan of Psychology Today magazines, I felt ungainly. I had that feeling a lot, since I’m more than six feet tall, which makes it hard to be as inconspicuous as I’d like to be. Dr. Baylor says I should embrace my height, that when you also factored in my “almost incidental beauty” (another way of saying I should brush my ha
ir more?), I could own any room I went in. It was hard to believe that, though he looked so sincere, but it’s even harder to believe he’d lie.

  There he was, in the doorway to his inner sanctum. “Lucy!” he said, his face creased with pleasure at my arrival. “Come on in.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “You know I totally value your time—”

  “I do know that.” His smile was sympathetic, and beautiful, really. I imagined he owned any room he was in. He was like the therapist version of George Clooney. He’s so much better looking than the head shot on his website that if the photo had been more accurate, I never would have called him. I thought that what I wanted was someone smart and compassionate, with an average and nondistracting appearance. How wrong I’d been.

  Distraction wasn’t as much of a problem as I would have expected, though. Dr. Baylor had a knack for keeping me focused. He was such a good therapist that I was grateful for the lousy photography that brought us together.

  His office was all blond wood and white furniture, with a brightly colored braided rug and some tapestries on the wall from his travels to I wasn’t sure where (I wasn’t well traveled myself). The bookshelves weren’t full of only clinical tomes but also novels and nonfiction on a host of different subjects, as well as stacks of the Economist and the New Yorker. It made it seem like I was seeing him in his natural habitat, where he felt at home. I couldn’t help noticing that when it came to reading, his tastes mirrored my own. That helped me feel at home, like for once I could relax.

  Since I’d started seeing him, I had made lots of progress on my critical self-talk. When I heard the negative voice in my head, I could just turn down the volume. He’d taught me that I didn’t have to buy every thought I had, that some were just conditioning from a less-than-optimal childhood.

  I settled on the white couch, trying to slow my breathing.

  “Put your feet on the floor and get centered,” he said serenely. “You’re here now.”

  I did as I was told.

  “Are you feeling centered?” he asked. I nodded. “Good. There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

  Oh shit. He was firing me. It was only the third time I’d been late, but he’d had enough. He had a busy practice, with a wait list. There were plenty of other clients who’d covet my evening slot.