The Admirer's Secret (24 page)

Julie nodded. Speechless. How deep his love had been, even then. Struck with apparent awe, she accepted the gift. “Marc, I don’t know what to say.”

It was true. His devotion couldn’t be matched with words. He had an undying, patient, hopeful love that had let neither time nor distance diminish it.

“I guess you really do have some romance hidden somewhere in there,” she said, patting his chest where his heart was.

As she smiled through the happy tears, Julie cupped Marc’s face and pulled him closer into a soft kiss. Their lips searched for confirmation that life was starting anew, at this very moment, when they would soon depart from their two different lives and live one. When they would let go of past hurts and fully commit their lives to one another. And the kiss said everything words could not
.

**

As Marc arrived home that evening, Julie held his hand as they walked to the front door. She pulled him to a stop with a firm squeeze before they reached the front landing. Her fingers released his, then gently touched his clean-shaven chin.

“
Honey, I have something to tell you.”

Marc’s eyebrows lifted with interest
—then plummeted as Julie’s expression grew serious.

“What is it?”

“Please don’t get angry at me, but there was a reason I was late for dinner. I needed to do something… Maybe we should talk about it inside.”

“I really hope this doesn’t ruin the moment, Julie. We just got engaged—I want to savor this
happy moment.”

Marc
fumbled through his keys, then opened the door.

But what welcomed him wasn’t the eerie silence that had plagued the house since
Sheba’s death. Instead he heard a frantic yelp—of a puppy. A black puppy, pink tongue lolling out of its mouth, bounded toward him, leaving a stream of pee behind her. She skittered on the wet floor but maintained speed as she leapt into his waiting arms. The pooch reminded him of Sheba—what she may have looked like as a puppy. Marc scooped the dog into his crouched lap and let her lick every inch of his face.

“
Julie, what’s this?”

“I got you a puppy.
I saw her at the animal shelter and couldn’t refuse her. I figured since you gave Sheba such a good home, it was time to rescue another animal that needed love. And I know you have lots of love to give,” she said with a wink and a squeeze of his rear.

He looked
lovingly at the ball of fluff, then back up at his fiancée. “I love her. And I already have a name for her. Phoenix.”

Marc imagined his rebirth from the ashes of everything that had happened. Yes, it was the perfect name and the perfect ending.

Chapter 47

Six
months later…

“S
o you seem to be improving quite well during your time here, Haley.”

Haley had grown accustomed to these meetings with Dr. Rosin, but today was a big one. The most important one. She could tell it was important because they met in his personal office this time. Must be big news.

The white-smocked Dr. Rosin sat with his hands folded across a large mahogany desk, peering over bifocals perched precariously near the tip of his upturned nose. She wondered how he even kept them in place. A bookcase dominated the wall behind him, showcasing neatly lined leather-bound books from the floor to the ceiling. Judging from the titles, the volumes were all medical or psychology-related. Dr. Rosin’s educational credentials lined another wall, as each diploma with the university’s gold stamp of approval was protected in an expensive wood-framed plaque—but she wasn’t impressed. This man had been dictating her fate since the beginning, and it was almost comical how he told her what to think, as if he actually understood. It bugged her. He couldn’t relate, but he pretended to. He was just like her. Pretending his own reality. The blind leading the blind.

He apparently had a weakness for pop culture. The latest issue of
US Weekly
sat crookedly on the corner closest to her. The headline shouted in bold red letters:

Producer Allen Michaels Charged with
Wife’s Murder—Publicity Stunt or Ripe Vengeance?

The picture of a cuffed Allen, head bent low in shame, with a month’s worth of untamed beard, looked nothing like she remembered him.   

Oh yes. Dr. Rosin had commented on how well she was doing.

“Yeah, I feel like I’ve taken some big strides, Doctor.”

“Do you know why you’re here today?”

Haley shook her head no.

Beady brown eyes searching Haley’s green ones made her uncomfortable. Dr. Rosin leaned forward and flipped a few pages from her chart, running his finger along some of his doctor scribble that Haley couldn’t quite make words out of.

“You’ve been continuing to meet your therapy expectations and we’re looking to release you. Do you think that you are ready for that step?”

Sitting in the plastic-covered chair with nothing on but a paper-thin hospital gown for a shirt, drawstring-free sweatpants, underwear, and slippers, Haley had been waiting for this day for six excruciating months. She’d done everything she was supposed to—said the right things; did the right things; taken her medicine; sat through the therapy sessions. While most people commented on how fast the years fly by, her half-year of mental rehabilitation was quite the opposite. Each day dragged longer than the one before it. Like a family vacation to the beach, the ride down always felt longer as the anticipation of arriving made time tick in slow motion. Yet in Haley’s case, this was no trip to the beach. It was a trip to a mental ward. Now Haley’s destination was her return to the world, to her life, and today was the last step toward that goal.

Yes, she was ready.

“I feel like I have a handle on my illness,” she stated confidently and clearly, “and as long as I take my meds and take care of myself, I definitely feel like I’m ready to go back into the world again.”

“It’s good to hear that you’ve come to terms with your disorder. Now, we’ve had some difficultly
diagnosing you since your stay.”
Interesting word choice
, Haley thought, since a stay implied a choice, and perhaps something more user-friendly. “Mostly because not a lot has been documented about erotomania. But it seems that several environmental issues have contributed to this illness, like your father’s passing and your lack of good, healthy relationships. You’ve spent your whole life trying to fill the void of that lost relationship with your father, Haley, but not in a healthy way.”

He paused and raked over her with his eyes, sending off internal alarms that sent Haley’s heart in a race against itself. Then he continued, “You’ve admitted to your therapists that Marc reminded you a lot of your dad, which is probably why you were so magnetized to him. But based on what your therapists are telling me, and my own observations of you, you’ve been able to understand how your mind functions and you
have much better control over your erotomania. You seem to understand how to differentiate between healthy and unhealthy relationships, and I understand you are prepared to maintain therapy after you’re released. Is that correct?”

The sweat on her brow hadn’t surfaced yet, but she felt it nudging through her skin. The interview wasn’t over yet, and she knew his determination clung to her presentation. 

“Yes, I’m supposed to meet with my therapist twice a week and he’ll keep me accountable.”

“Excellent
… what do you think you need to work on with your therapist when you meet?”

“A lot of things, I guess,” she answered with childlike innocence. “I want to try to make real friendships and try to stay socially active. But I know that right now I am not ready for a romantic relationship. I just need to worry about me for now. And I’ll need to continue to focus on my thinking and identifying any false beliefs
evident in my daily life. Like trying to see things for what they really are. And I’ve decided to stay away from screenplay writing for a while until I can learn to cope with real life a little more. I used movies as my fantasy, my escape into another life, and I now see that. I think if I make those changes and have my support system—my mom and therapy—I can be normal again.”

“I’m impressed that you have made that connection on your own and are willing to make sacrifices in order to help yourself. That shows true maturity,” Dr. Rosin said with an approving smile, then nodded and thumbed through a few more sheets that
Haley assumed documented her progress. “It is evident that you are making wonderful strides in your personal growth, so…”

His voice trailed off as he closed the file, looked up, and examined her. She knew what he saw: a messed up patient
, not a person, sitting pitifully before him through his wire-rimmed bifocals. His open hands rested palms-down on the yellow folder as his mouth opened partially, then closed, then hung open as if stuck on a word. He cleared his throat and she anticipated his words.

“It all sounds like a good plan, Haley. One last question for you.”

Their eyes met through his glasses.

“I’d like for you to summarize your experience here over the past
few months. Tell me, what did you learn, how do you think you’ve improved, what would you change about your treatment here?”

It was a loaded question, yet Haley knew the correct answer. In that moment, with that final question, she knew her fate. Her former anxiety made room for assurance to step in. Her scripted answers in therapy sessions had prepared her for this moment. But she took her time anyway, just to make sure he knew she had thought it over.

“Well, I know that I’ve had difficulty in the past discerning fantasy from reality. I was deluded into thinking that Marc loved me, and that we had a relationship that didn’t exist. I made up letters to myself, pretending they were from him, because I felt like something was missing in my life. I felt that by having Marc, I could feel complete, whole again. I thought he would make up for things that were missing from my life, like my dad.”

She had the doctor’s full attention and she knew it.

“I allowed myself to live in my own make-believe dream where false relationships become real—in my head. But the therapists here have helped me to see that I can’t control other people or their feelings toward me. I can’t control the events that happen against me, like my dad’s death. I can only control myself. And I can control my imagination and my feelings. My treatments have helped me to overcome any unhealthy or irrational thoughts. I can honestly say that the world is different to me now. I see things differently, as they really are.”

Expected agreement etched across the doctor’s crinkled brow. “Well, I think that you’ve answered all my questions. Remember to continue to focus on what you’ve learned during your time here, and I wish you all the best. I will be signing your release today, and I assume you have somewhere to go once you leave?”

“Yes, my mother in Westfield, New York. I’ll be staying with her. That will give me time to get back on my feet, find a job, get my life back together. And she’ll be able to supervise me and keep an eye on me if I need help or anything.”

“Wonderful. Well, then I guess this is it. We’ll miss having you here. You were a delight to work with. The papers should be ready by this afternoon. And we’ll have a nurse drop all your personal things off at your room. Good luck out there.”

He rose and extended his hand, and Haley followed his lead and returned his warm handshake.

“Thank you, Doctor,” she said gratefully, this time full of sincerity.

Haley let herself out of his wooden office door and nearly skipped all the way to her room. The hallway was empty and sterile, with only the occasional groan or psychotic episode echoing from a room on her floor. When she arrived, her room looked different to her. It was no longer her “home,” as it had been for the past six months. It was just another colorless room on a strip of about fifty matching ones. It didn’t belong to her, and she didn’t belong to it.

Today wou
ld be a memorable step toward freedom, and there was one last thing she had to do before it would be complete. When she had first been admitted, the staff had stripped her of any writing implements for fear that she’d use them against herself as a weapon. Apparently crazy people did that sometimes, Haley later realized when one girl on her floor unsuccessfully tried to use her sheets to hang herself. But Haley wasn’t crazy. She had been in love. And when her treatments verified that she wasn’t suicidal, they started giving her perks, like pens and paper.

Four
months into her stay at the hospital, her counselor encouraged her to get involved in creative forms of communicating her feelings through writing. Of course, writing was Haley’s second love, so she immediately got on board with the therapy. Each day she had turned over her journals and creative writing to her psychiatrist, yet there was one little secret she kept to herself, well-hidden and highly confidential. She could never let them find it.

Haley went over to her bedside table and lifted it up. While one hand tilted the table up
ward, the other hand reached around underneath it, feeling for the paper that was tucked into the wooden joints. Then she felt it. She pried the stack of white college-ruled paper from where she had shoved it in place and pulled it down. It was a film script of all the thoughts and feelings she experienced since meeting Marc—her own form of self-therapy. It contained the events that never happened, except within her mind, and was the only way to get the thoughts out. It was the only way she could relive the memories with Marc. Though her therapists tried to erase them, they would always remain. They were a part of her, a part that would never die.

During her quiet moments, she would close her eyes and see him, breathe him, and
love him. She endured the separation for him—for their future together. And her heart knew he was waiting for her as well, for the day she’d come home at last. She had planned the ending to their story together for the past several months, and the time had finally come to write it down, every last detail.

With one more thing needing to happen to secure her and Marc’s future, she was ready to execute it and bring it to fruition. It was time to finish the story. She got up from the bed and walked softly to the door to her room. Peering around the doorframe, the hallway was completely vacant. She’d have just enough time before the nurse came with her clothes and other personal effects that had been confiscated upon arrival.

She turned off the light switch and dug a long index fingernail into the single screw that held the switch plate on. The screw was a little loose, loose enough to work out quickly. Her pinkie nail unscrewed it, and she pulled off the plate. Hidden in the work box was a hoard of pills—at least a month’s worth. She stuffed the pills into her bra and quickly replaced the switch plate. No point leaving evidence behind that she hadn’t been taking her meds.

Guessing she’d have about an hour to work, she bounced back to her bed and inhaled one long sweet breath. She grabbed her pen and paper and began writing what would be the conclusion to everything, the finale to a year’s longing:

FADE IN:

EXT: OUTSIDE RESTAURANT BAR
             

It is early evening, and HALEY MONTGOMERY stands outside the front door leaning against the wall.

HALEY: (talking to self) Tonight’s our night, Marc. Tonight we’ll finally be together at last. I will spend my life making you happy. I promise. I just hope you understand why I have to do this for us to be together. (she inhales deeply, then turns to go inside)

CUT TO:

INT. RESTAURANT BAR

Haley discreetly meanders through the dimly lit restaurant to the bar in the corner. She sits on a stool at the bar. She’s wearing a baseball cap, facing a table where MARC VINCETTI and JULIE CARTER are sitting across the room. Soft Italian opera music is playing in the background and several couples dot the dance floor dancing slowly to the music.