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“You believe me.” This was not a question but a simple statement of fact.
I nodded. “Yes, I believe you. So why don’t we start there? The last diary entry you wrote described the man breaking into the house. What happened then?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
She shook her head. “It wasn’t him.”
“It wasn’t? Then who was it?”
“It was Jean-Felix. He wanted—he had come to talk about the exhibition.”
“Judging by your diary, it doesn’t seem you were in the right state of mind for visitors.”
Alicia acknowledged this with a shrug.
“Did he stay long?”
“No. I asked him to leave. He didn’t want to—he was upset. He shouted at me a bit—but he went
after a while.”
“And then? What happened after Jean-Felix left?”
Alicia shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about that.”
“No?”
“Not yet.”
Alicia’s eyes looked into mine for a moment. Then they darted to the window, considering the
darkening sky beyond the bars. Something in the way she was tilting her head was almost coquettish, and the beginning of a smile was forming at the corner of her mouth. She’s enjoying this, I thought. Having me in her power.
“What do you want to talk about?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Nothing. I just want to talk.”
So we talked. We talked about Lydia and Paul, and about her mother, and the summer she died. We
talked about Alicia’s childhood—and mine. I told her about my father, and growing up in that house; she seemed curious to know as much as possible about my past and what had shaped me and made me who I am.
I remember thinking, There’s no going back now. We were crashing through every last boundary between therapist and patient. Soon it would be impossible to tell who was who.