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  Or he was leaving his practice, retiring early. He was moving to Bora Bora. He had a brain tumor.

  “Are you okay?” He must have seen my panic, that I couldn’t handle losing him.

  “I’ll be fine. What did you want to talk about?”

  He studied me an extra second, then said, “Starting today, there’ll be no charge for our sessions.”

  I stared at him. “You mean, we’d keep meeting every week, and I wouldn’t pay you?”

  “Yes. I do a certain amount of pro bono work—”

  “You mean like charity?” He pitied me. I knew it.

  “I’m aware of how stressful it is for you to pay for the sessions, and I’d like to remove that stress.”

  “But I’m in a six p.m. slot. That’s prime time.”

  “I can afford it.” He smiled. “Let me do this for you. Please.”

  I stared down at my jean-encased legs, struggling to compute what he was saying. My old friend shame rose like bile. “There are people out there who have it way worse than me. You really should give them the pro bono slot.”

  “No one deserves it more.” His tone was so kind that the shame got even stronger. I’d never been able to take a compliment, and I certainly couldn’t take this. “You’d be doing me a favor. You’re one of my favorite clients, and at some point, you might have to make a choice between therapy and other essentials, and then you’d need to stop. You have so much potential that I don’t want that to happen. Really, it’s selfishness on my part.”

  He was saying I was special. One of his favorites. I’d be doing him a favor to rob him of $150 an hour, four times a month—$600 of missed income?

  Special. My cheeks were in flames.

  “I love our conversations. I love our work. It feels almost”—he looked like he was feeling around for the word—“wrong to take money for them.”

  I felt something happening in my body that definitely wasn’t shame, but when I registered what it was, I managed to be even more embarrassed. I told Dr. Baylor everything (well, within reason), but I wouldn’t tell him this. It was just too clichéd, a girl in love with her therapist.

  No, I wasn’t in love. They were just feelings, that’s all, and not even precisely romantic. I’d been in love with only one man, and that was a disaster of, like, illegal proportions.

  Dr. Baylor was watching me, waiting.

  “Everything else will stay the same?” I said. “Everything else from the Consent to Treatment still applies?” As in, we would still be purely professional. The only difference was, I’d get to keep my $600 a month. It was almost too good to be true. If I hadn’t known Dr. Baylor’s reputation, if I hadn’t been well aware of his good heart and his commitment to his work, I might have had some reservations.

  But I did know those things. What I hadn’t known before was that I was special to him. Precious.

  “Everything will stay the same,” he said.

  Even though I’d been the one asking the question, I was disappointed by the answer. Because normally I could tamp down the thoughts; I could tell myself how ridiculous they were because obviously someone like Dr. Baylor had a significant other, someone beautiful and poised and established, his equal, but just then, I had to face the fact. I wanted so much more.

  CHAPTER 3

  GREER

  “I picked you because I really liked what you said on your website, about how adaptable you are, that you’re not the same therapist with every client,” I said. “It’s not easy for me to ask for help, but I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to adapt.”

  “Adapt to . . . ?” Michael prompted.

  “Some people might say I’m a control freak, and that’s been okay, for the most part. It’s made me successful.” I stared right at him, refusing to soften the remark or to make any apologies for my ambition. “Lately, I’ve been thinking that I want a baby, which is highly inconvenient.” I was thirty-nine years old, but I didn’t have to tell him that; he should have read my age on the intake. “Babies make your life unpredictable, and I’ve certainly never wanted that, but I . . .” To my mortification, I felt myself on the verge of tears.

  He nodded with a simple, “Go on.”

  At work, I didn’t waste a word. But in this office with its IKEA aesthetic overlaid with nomad chic, I found myself rambling. It was as if I’d been in captivity and had finally been released. “I’d be doing it alone. I don’t have a partner, but I wouldn’t especially want one, either. I can’t imagine all the compromises and accommodations with a child involved. Then I think maybe I could hire someone, but I’m not having a baby so someone else would raise him or her. If I do it myself, though, it’ll be chaos, and that terrifies me. But it terrifies me more to never do this thing that I suddenly want so desperately, yet it may obliterate me. I’d have to become someone else entirely.”

  He nodded again encouragingly. He was better looking in his photo. Maybe it was an old picture, as he had more gray now and a few more laugh lines. He looked kinder, though. Less professorial.

  “This isn’t how I normally sound,” I said. “If you met me in another situation, you wouldn’t even recognize me.”

  He gave a slight smile. “If you met me in another situation, you might not recognize me, either.”

  “I need help. I’m not used to that. I really hate it.”

  “You hate being here?”

  I looked at him with surprise as I realized, “No, I don’t.”

  “It’s okay to have some ambivalence about this process.”

  “I’m not an ambivalent person. I’m used to deciding on a goal and pursuing it wholeheartedly. But the things I want are in direct opposition to each other.”

  “Career and family are in opposition?”

  “For me, yes. I’m single. I’m in charge of my company, and I work a lot of hours. But it’s more than that. I have to be a certain kind of person to run my business, and that is not the maternal type. I feel like motherhood might make me a schizophrenic.”

  “That’s a common worry.”

  “Really? Schizophrenia is a common worry?”

  He laughed. “The fear of losing yourself to motherhood is common. If you joined a moms group, you’d hear that a lot.” He must have seen the horror on my face. “Support is critical with such a big life change.”

  “Sitting around with a bunch of women leaking milk? It just doesn’t sound like me.”

  “You’ll have to expand your concept of who you are and what you’re capable of. You’re right, it’ll be scary, but it’s likely to be worthwhile.”

  “Only likely?”

  “There are no guarantees.”

  I had foolishly hoped he’d reassure me, that he’d tell me having a baby doesn’t necessitate a radical lifestyle change, just a few tweaks.

  He wrote in his Consent to Treatment that there are no easy answers. Yet I’d managed to hope that in this case, there would be, like what I really wanted was a charlatan psychic and not a mental health professional.

  “You seem disappointed,” he said. He didn’t wait for my response; he was that sure he had me pegged. “I know it’s your first time in therapy. Did you have an idea of what our conversation would be, and this is somehow falling short? It’s good to talk about expectations.”

  “I’m not used to sharing my feelings, especially not with men.”

  “What are your relationships with men usually like?”

  “They’re brief. I want a successful man, but successful men don’t seem to want their equals. They find me ‘intimidating,’ apparently. I’m not bitter about that. I haven’t put much energy into the search, and I’ve never tried to be a truly good partner to anyone. We have a few dates, and then a part of me is relieved when I don’t hear from them. Or if I do hear, I find fault with them. Maybe I’m looking for someone who’ll work harder at the relationship than I will, which isn’t fair. I want a beta to my alpha, yet I wouldn’t be attracted to anyone but the top dog. It’s a catch-22.”

&n
bsp; Had Dr. Baylor put some truth serum in the water he gave me? I shifted uncomfortably on the couch, wishing I could stop, knowing I probably needed to go on. That’s what Dr. Baylor was saying with his nods.

  Here came another one. Maybe they weren’t even intended as communication; it could have been the therapist version of hiccups or gas, a bodily function gone awry.

  But I wasn’t paying him for a staring contest. “I haven’t had a real relationship in years,” I said. “I’m almost forty, and there’s no time to find one. If I want a baby, I need to start the process soon, on my own, and I need you to help me figure out what that’ll mean for me, since so much of how I see myself is work. I go and go and go, and I’m afraid of what I’ll find when I slow down. And I know motherhood will slow me down. So why do I want it?”

  “That is the million-dollar question.”

  “I’ll write you a check, you tell me the answer, and we’ll be done with it, then.”

  He met my eyes. “Now where’s the fun in that?”

  PRESENT DAY

  CHAPTER 4

  DETECTIVE GREGORY PLATH

  I’ve been at this a long time, but I’ve never seen a case quite like this one.

  The victim’s a doctor but not the real kind of doctor. He’s a head shrinker. I’m not supposed to think that, here in Progressive Land, but after that accidental shooting fifteen—no, more like twenty—years ago, I had to “see someone,” and it pretty much confirmed what a bunch of bullshit all that is. Not just bullshit but self-indulgence. We are what we do. You want to have higher self-esteem? Go do something to be proud of. You had a rough life? Go make something of yourself. I did it. You can, too.

  I guess you could say I’m biased. But I’m fifty-seven years old. If you’re not biased by then, if you haven’t developed some opinions, there’s your problem.

  I don’t prejudge, though. Like these three women. I’m not going to assume I know who they are until I bring them in. Then I’ll sit across from them and I’ll see what they’re made of.

  Now, if I could get my hands on Dr. Baylor’s records, it would be a hell of a lot easier, but lucky for them: my request had to go before the judge, and he’s taking his sweet time in making a ruling. There’s no love lost between us from the Nicholson case. That guy holds a grudge.

  Now those guys—they ought to be called “prejudges.” It used to make me crazy but not anymore. What would a head shrinker say? I’ve learned coping skills.

  Based on his reputation in the therapy community, Dr. Baylor was a stand-up guy. Lots of people said they’d recommend him “without reservation.” Well, they used to. I doubt he’s getting any referrals wherever he’s found himself.

  I asked about the couple of complaints against him to the professional board, the ones that never went anywhere, and I was told that’s par for the course. “It’s an occupational risk,” one female therapist told me. “We work with emotionally unstable people, Dr. Baylor most of all. He never shied away from a challenge. I sent him some of the hardest clients—people with histrionic personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, complex trauma—and he didn’t hesitate. He changed their lives.”

  You could say that they had a reason to want to rose-color this guy. For one, he was dead, and it’s true, people generally don’t like to speak ill of the dead. But for another, this wasn’t exactly good PR for the profession. The first news reports didn’t say the cause of death, but now the word is out: we’re looking for a murderer.

  What I’ve got so far are three people of interest. I can’t say they’re suspects yet, because it’s all circumstantial. But it’s a hell of a circumstance: three of Dr. Baylor’s clients and former clients meet up at a dim sum restaurant, and hours later, someone beans him in the head with the alabaster bust of some classical composer or philosopher or who-the-hell-ever from his bookshelf without leaving a trace of evidence, almost like they had their own forensic cleaning service on speed dial.

  Not that the office was spotless, though. Far from it. There were plenty of hairs and fibers everywhere else—a whole lot of clients passed through that office in a week, and people shed their personal detritus at an alarming rate—but none on or immediately around the body. Nothing I can use.

  Three very different women with only Dr. Michael Baylor in common meet in a dim sum restaurant. Sounds like one of those old jokes: a priest, a rabbi, and a Buddhist monk walk into a bar . . .

  I wish I had those records—that would make this whole thing a lot easier—but I’ve gotta sit tight. That’s in the works. Until then, I just need one of these women to talk. Get one of them to crack. Apply enough pressure and most people do. It’s like they can’t help themselves. A little bit of genuine curiosity and people are dying to spill their secrets. That’s something Michael Baylor probably figured out, too. He and I, we’ve got something in common.

  Unless they’re professional liars or professional killers, everyone cracks.

  BEFORE

  CHAPTER 5

  FLORA

  “He whipped it out under the table, right there in the restaurant?” Nat’s mouth was hanging open. Jeanie was in hysterics, so much so that she nearly slid off the U-shaped couch in the darkened lounge area of our favorite after-work bar.

  “Yep, right there!” I said. It didn’t even feel like a lie. It was just a performance, and an entertaining one at that.

  My divorce had been finalized for nearly a year. I couldn’t expect my friends to believe that I’d stayed entirely single and celibate all that time. After I’d feigned grieving, they were after me to get back on the horse, and I couldn’t tell them that I already had, and my stallion’s name was Dr. Michael Baylor, not without risking his career. I had no choice but to invent this life where I was freewheeling around Tinder. And the storytelling could be fun, like I was the one living vicariously through my own made-up adventures, in an alternate universe where I’d never met Michael. We all need to be the person others expect us to sometimes. Most of the time.

  It was easier to fool Jeanie, in that she was gullible in the kindest sense. She wanted to believe me. But it was harder in that I felt much guiltier misleading her. Nat and I were more after-work cocktail pals, while Jeanie had cried on my shoulder many times during the IVF process that ultimately culminated in her having twins, now almost three years old. If she found it suspicious how little I’d cried over Young, she never said it to me. She’d also never protested about the downgrade in our intimacy, that we had lunch these days rather than dinner, that it was more laughs than heart-to-hearts, but she must have felt it. Michael was so consuming that I didn’t have the bandwidth to miss her like I should have.

  “You make my dates look good,” Nat said. She was around my age, early thirties; never married; and had a profile on four different dating apps. Attractive as she was with her long blonde hair and mint-green eyes, it had been hard for her to find men who wanted to get serious. She’d sworn off casual sex. They had to buy the cow. She seemed envious that I didn’t seem to mind giving the milk away for free. If she only knew.

  Jeanie was older, in her early forties. She always laughed the hardest at my tales, and while there was nothing condescending in it, I had the impression that it validated the benign and mundane domesticity of her marriage. She was attractive, too. It was a job requirement, as we were all pharmaceutical reps.

  “Which restaurant?” Jeanie asked.

  She wasn’t trying to catch me in a lie; there was no suspicion in her tone. But it occurred to me that I should have worked out all the details. Before I could even think, it was out: “Zuni Café.”

  “Zuni Café?” Jeanie and Nat responded in unison.

  “He’s spending two hundred dollars on dinner and then yanking his wank at the table?” Nat said with a touch of incredulity.

  “That just made it even weirder,” I answered, though I’d averted my eyes, presumably to sip my champagne. “He ordered the sixty-minute chicken for two . . . Wait, that must have been why h
e ordered it! I couldn’t walk out when the world’s best roasted chicken was still to come.”

  “Speaking of coming,” Jeanie said, and then they were both laughing again, and I thought, Whew, I got away with it.

  But I felt this twinge of sadness at the reminder of how distant I’d become from my own friends. I’d been trying to enjoy my double life, I really had, and sometimes I succeeded. Clandestine sex can be hot. Yet at some point, it stopped feeling like our secret and instead, I just became his. Two years was a long time, and lately I’d just been running out the clock.

  Only the buzzer had gone off, and he was still stalling. I could share my frustration only with Kate, because she was family, and because she’d never judge. She heard the story of Michael and me the way I wanted her to: like it was a great romance. Nat wouldn’t, and I couldn’t be sure about Jeanie. So Kate it was.

  “I can’t believe that in all this time, you haven’t found anyone who deserves a second date,” Jeanie said. “You must have terrible radar. Show me your phone. I need to do your swiping for you.”

  “I’m not trying to get serious,” I said. When I finally introduced them to Michael, I’d have to pretend that we just met at a grocery store or somewhere serendipitous, and it was love at first sight. He’d made me change my whole way of thinking. It was true; only the timeline was a fabrication.

  “Maybe you’re more hurt about Young than you’ve admitted to yourself,” Jeanie said. “Maybe you could use therapy. You thought your couples therapist was awesome. You could go back to him.”

  “I should get his name,” Nat said. “Maybe if I got rid of my baggage, I could finally find someone decent.”

  The last thing I wanted was Nat seeing Michael. It would practically be incest. “You don’t want to go all the way to the East Bay for therapy. There are a million good therapists in San Francisco.”

  “A million therapists,” Nat corrected. “Not a million good ones. You’ve vetted him for me.”