Lady in Waiting: A Novel by Susan Meissner

My voice fell away as images of dark seas and deep lakes filled my mind; bottomless places without any handholds or even a hint of where the unknown ended and safety began.
    It hadn’t struck me until that moment that my longstanding aversion to open water was in any way related to the reason why I now sat in the counselor’s office.
    Dr. Kirtland leaned forward in his chair. “Mrs. Lindsay, you’re not the first person to sit in that chair and wonder why they’re here. I know it took courage for you to come here. Let me put your mind at rest. You don’t have to worry about giving me any wrong answers. There aren’t any. I am not going to solve your troubles. You are. But I am going to help you. I promise you that.”
    He folded his hands in front of him and waited for me to say something. Framed documents hung on the wall behind him; rectangular evidences of his many accomplishments. A soft glare hovering on the glass covering his doctorate from Columbia University outlined his curly head like a pale halo.
    “Would you like to tell me what brought you here today?” His tone was patient. Several long, unhurried seconds floated by. He waited for me.
    “But you already know why I’m here,” I murmured.
    “I know what Molly told me. And I know what your file says. But you’ve told me nothing.” Still the patient tone. His eyes were locked onto mine. Soothing. Calming. Young. My gaze fell to his left hand. A gold band on his ring finger. Shiny. New.
    “I … I don’t think I can do this,” I finally said.
    “You don’t think you can tell me why you’re here?”
    “I … You … you seem very … I mean, I can see that you’ve got a PhD from Columbia, and there are half a dozen other documents on that wall giving me reasons why I should be able to talk to you, but you seem … Look. My husband left me after twenty-two years of marriage. And you seem very … young.”
    “I am thirty-four, Mrs. Lindsay.” He said it neither defensively or agreeably. He just said it.
    Only ten years younger. Ten years. When I was getting married, he was twelve. Did that matter? Perhaps not. I really didn’t know.
    But I knew I didn’t want to lie alone and awake anymore in the bed Brad and I had shared.
    His eyes never left mine. I eased back in my chair. “Can you please call me Jane?”
    “If you’d like.”
    I nodded.
    “All right, Jane. How about if we just start at the beginning?”
    “The beginning? You mean when Brad left?”
    “No. I mean the beginning. Tell me about you. I want to hear about you. Shall we start there? Can you do that?”
    “About me?” My eyes still shimmered with tears that threatened to slip over the edge. I felt them.
    “Yes.” His smile was gentle. He reached for a box of tissues on the windowsill between us and pushed it toward me. “Sometimes things geta little worse before they get better, Jane. But they will get better. I’m thinking you want that. Right?”
    Again, he waited—his breathing even and unhurried and his crossed legs still. I pulled a tissue out, and the fluffy sound of fragile paper scraping against stiff cardboard seemed to whisper the answer for me.
    Yes.

Twelve
     

     
    M y father called as my train pulled into Massapequa Park Station. He was stuck in traffic on Broadway. I told him not to worry; that I’d grab a cup of coffee and wait for him. I injected as much of a confident tone as I could as I told him good-bye, hoping he would pick up on it. My parents were going to want to talk about why Brad was really in New Hampshire, and I was not ready to have that conversation yet. My mother already hinted on the phone the night before that she and my father were getting the distinct impression something was up with Brad and me, and they’d rather not be in the dark about it—as if my marriage was a prized possession of theirs, on loan to me, and they needed to know the true reasons for Brad’s absence. Not his absence at Leslie’s party—I had a great