The Good Listener (16 page)

I felt a lump in my throat.

What?

I felt so many different emotions all at once, and I didn’t know which of them to act on first.

“Who?”

Joel stood and looked at me with eyes full of regret as tears started to stream down my face.

He took a deep breath and turned his back towards me.

“Summer.”

~***~

I was furious!

Not only had Mrs. Whiteside called the office over ten times between her last visit and her death, but she’d also emailed my personal email, numerous times, but Summer took it upon herself to respond.

But the sad part was that she pretended to be me.

She’d been sending her emails from my email login in stating that I had filled her position and that I didn’t have any room to take her back as a patient.

She told Mrs. Whiteside that I could refer her to one of my colleagues but that it was all in her mind, and she didn’t really need any help and that returning to therapy would be a waste of money and time.

The one time that she’d emailed her from her own email was because she’d reached out to her first to tell her that her last check, a week before she left hadn't cleared, and Summer reached out to ask her the steps of getting it paid. Mrs. Whiteside told her that she could send another one, Summer told her that she would be on the lookout for it, and Mrs. Whiteside responded “Okay. Thank you.”

But that was it.

I couldn’t believe that Summer would do something like that.

What right did she have to tell a patient of mine anything that I didn’t tell her to say to them?

She lied to her and caused that woman to take her own life.

What right did she have to do that?

She wasn’t a psychologist.

She was an assistant.

And her job was to assist.

Maybe that’s why Mrs. Whiteside called me private.

Maybe she thought that I didn’t want to talk to her.

Maybe she thought that I wouldn’t want to be bothered, or maybe she thought that Summer, who was pretending to be me, was right when she told her that she no longer needed therapy.

That it was all in her mind.

How could she do something like that?

And on top of all of that, she’d had sex with my husband!

That was an even bigger problem, and I was about to confront the situation head on.

She was supposed to be my friend.

“Get out of here now!”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me. Get your stuff, leave the key and get out of here Summer and don’t you ever come back!”

Summer looked at me confused.

Joel broke my heart when he confessed to sleeping with Summer.

He said that it only happened once.

He told me every detail, because I’d forced him to, but it only made the situation worse.

Summer often ran errands for me, even if that meant that she had to go by my house. There had been plenty of times that I’d left something at home, and I would send her to go and get it.

Joel explained that not too long ago, I’d sent Summer to get a flash drive from home while I was with a patient.

He said that he had just started working for Blake, and he too had forgotten something at home, and he’d taken a quick break to come home to get it.

He said that Summer was already there when he got there, and as he was coming in, she was about to go out, but she stopped at the sight of him.

Joel stated that it happened so fast that it was all still a blur.

But he swore that Summer had come on to him.

He said that we’d been arguing about starting a family and adopting the baby and Summer knowing what was going on because I’d told her, mentioned the subject to him and started a conversation.

He said the conversation started out innocently, and then somewhere along the lines Summer started to make comments on how I didn’t appreciate him and how I didn’t show him enough attention, and that was when everything started to head in the wrong direction.

He proclaimed that it happened so fast that even he couldn’t believe that he’d done it.

He said they both stared at each other after it was all over and done with and he said that Summer started to cry and tell him that it was a mistake. He said that she had been going through a lot and that she was sorry that she had taken things too far with him.

They agreed to pretend as though the incident never happened and they planned to carry the secret to their graves.

Not in this lifetime buddy!

After ten years of marriage, Joel had broken our vows, and I wasn’t going to just overlook it.

My early appointment looked on as Summer slowly stood up.

“You slept with my husband! After all, that I have done for you. I gave you a job when no one else would. I befriended you. I trusted you and taught you everything that you know. For years you have worked for me, and I have been nothing but good to you, and I have been an even better friend. But you betrayed me. You’re nothing but the whore that everyone always said that you were.”

Maybe I shouldn’t have said that in front of the patient but it was true.

Every man that Summer had dated her over the last few years dated her until she slept with them and then they disappeared.

I’d ran into one a time or two after they parted ways and inquired about their relationship.

He confessed to only wanting one thing from her and revealed that she had a reputation of being fairly generous with her goodies.

I never mentioned his remarks to her until now, and he had been absolutely right.

She looked at me as though she couldn’t believe that, I’d just said that and I could tell that she wondered how I’d found out the truth.

“And you told Mrs. Whiteside that I didn’t want to see her? Not once did you give me her messages and you erased my emails so that I wouldn’t see them. You had no right to do that Summer! It’s your fault that she is dead. Not mine!”

She opened her mouth to speak, but I stopped her.

“Get out! Now!” I screamed in her face and threw her purse at her chest.

Summer glanced at me one last time and then she hurried out the door.

I was in a rage so I closed my eyes and tried to pull myself together.

“Give me a minute,” I nodded in my patient’s direction as I stormed inside my office.

As I sat down in my chair, I saw the patient getting in her car from the window, and driving off.

Good.

I wasn’t in the mood to see her right now anyway.

My advice probably wouldn’t be the best and that cheating husband that she was also dealing with too would have probably been getting divorce papers after the ear full that I would have given her.

I took long, deep breaths and I tried to relax.

I was shaking.

My body twitched as though I was about to have a small seizure or some kind of panic attack.

How could either of them do this to me?

I looked towards the door as the tapping grew louder.

I’d locked the door behind me, and I could hear one of my colleagues tapping on it, and urging me to open it so that we could talk.

Joel was calling my phone over and over again, but I didn’t want to talk to him either.

I wasn’t sure what I was going to do about him as of yet but the best thing for both of us at the moment was for me to stay far away from him.

I didn’t want to see him.             

I didn’t want to talk to him.

I just needed to think.

I turned off my cell phone and headed towards the door.

But just before turning the door knob, Blake crossed my mind.

I guess the question was how did he know?

How did he always seem to know everything?

About everyone?

All the time?

I wasn’t sure.

But I was going to make it my business to try to find out.

~***~

I’d been waiting for my next session with Blake.

“I want to say, thank you.”

“For what?”

“For telling me.”

“Telling you what?”

“About my husband.”

“What about him?”

“You implied that he had an affair and---,”

“No, I didn’t. I simply said that people lie. I never said that he was having an affair.”

“But he was. Well, I guess it was something like that.”

He didn’t say anything.

“I don’t know how you knew, but thanks.”

He still didn’t say anything.             

I already had a new assistant, a male one, and though I was sure that I wouldn’t have to worry about anything of that nature, if I decided to keep my husband, I’d already made up my mind that I would keep our relationship strictly professional.

I never made the same mistake twice, and Summer was absolutely a mistake.

As for Joel, every time that I spoke to him, I wished death on him so he was giving me plenty of distance.

We were in the same house, but he was staying out of my way.

“How did it make you feel?”

I looked at Blake.

“To find out that your husband was just like everyone else. To find out that your marriage wasn’t the exception to the rule and that it was just as screwed up as everyone else’s. How did it make you feel to find out that the love that you thought that you had wasn’t real?”

I stood up and walked over to the window.

I felt hurt.

I felt betrayed.

But I wasn’t going to tell him that.

“As you can imagine I wasn’t at all happy about the discovery. But things happen. People make mistakes. He’s human.”

“Bullshit.”

“Excuse me?”

“Bullshit,” Blake repeated and walked over and stood beside of me in front of the window.

“You felt betrayed. You felt unloved. And I’m sure that you felt stupid. You wondered how you’d missed it. But that’s what people do, they miss it. Those little things. Those little signs that’s always there. Love causes you to miss them,” Blake concluded.

This was his therapy session…not mine!

“People that say that they love you will be the first to betray you every single time. Because they know that you won’t be expecting it and chances are they just might get away with it.”

I looked at him.

Blake was the smartest, and the craziest man that I’d ever known.

He might even make a decent psychologist if he didn’t have so many problems of his own.

I stared at him.

He didn’t make eye contact with me, but I knew that he knew that I was watching him.

For the first time, I looked at him in a different light.

Not so much as my patient.

But as a man.

Of course I always admired his clothing, and briefly noticed how attractive he was.

But I never allowed myself to actually take it all in.

He scared me half to death, so his beauty had become invisible; but at the moment, beauty was all that I saw.

Blake’s physique was alluring; exquisite.

The fine Italian suit that he was wearing complimented his body from head to toe.

I guess if he was going to pretend to be somebody, he had might as well play the part.

And that he did very well.

My eyes shifted from his clothing and his body to his face.

Blake actually had a lot of nice features; from his daring and unstable brown eyes to his white, stainless teeth, and even his wickedly charming smile.

In an irrational, deranged way…he was perfect.

Finally, he faced me.

I wasn’t sure what I was feeling but whatever it was made me nervous.

He was a killer.

He was a liar.

He was even five levels of psychotic.

But why didn’t any of that seem to matter at the moment?

I touched his arm, but he flinched.

He stared at me, and I could tell that he was trying to tame those crazy thoughts of his, but I wasn’t sure what I was doing.

I walked closer to him.

But he backed away.

I didn’t say anything, and neither did he.

I walked closer to him again but this time, he turned his back to me and headed back to the couch to take a seat.

I exhaled loudly.

Right.

Hannah, what are you doing?

Crossing the line with a patient, a killer patient at that was a no-no.

That could never happen; especially not with Blake.