The Break-Up Retreat(7)

I give a nervous little laugh.

“Yeah,” I admit. “I haven’t slept a full night in weeks.”

It’s the truth. Just not for the reason she thinks.

Martina presses her lips together, furrows her brow.

“Tell me what happened,” she urges me, in a voice both that is both a whisper and a command.

Showtime.

“It’s just . . . I thought it was all going so well, you know? I thought we were so happy together, and then it all just . . . fell apart. So fast.”

“Tell me about him,” Doctor Martina tells me.

“I met Kaveh on Tinder,” I start. “I know, not very romantic, but I wanted to meet someone. I felt like I was ready for something real. We didn’t really click over text, but I agreed to meet him for drinks, anyway, and then when we actually met, it was like . . .” I snap my fingers, and then I hide my face in my hands.

Oh, God. Was that too much? It’s very quiet in here. All I can hear is the ticking of the clock on the wall.

I hear something sliding over the surface of the desk.

“Take your time,” Martina soothes me. “We’re not in a hurry.”

When I look up, I see a box of organic tissues. I reach for one despite my dry eyes.

“I just feel so lost, ever since he left,” I continue. “I thought he was the love of my life. When we met, I felt like . . . like it made it all okay, you know? Like all the mistakes I had made in the past, all the bad people I had picked, were worth it because it had all led me to him. And I thought he felt the same way. I mean, we moved in together after our fifth date.” I stop, take a deep breath, before continuing:

“He’d been acting a little weird, for a couple of weeks, but I thought . . .” I swallow, to make it seem like the words are burning my lips.

“I thought he might have been planning a proposal,” I say. “When he said he wanted to break up, I thought he was kidding, at first.” I close my eyes and shake my head.

“You’re embarrassed,” Martina says. “You feel humiliated.”

I open my eyes.

Martina is resting her elbows on the table, leaning forward, looking at me intently.

“Yes,” I say.

“You felt like you had spent so long looking for this thing, thinking it would complete you,” she continues. “Trying, over and over again, and getting rejected, again and again. You pretended to be fine, and pretended that it was all okay, but it started to eat away at you. You started to wonder, after a while, why it seemed so easy for other people. Why everyone else seemed to get this thing that you wanted, more than anything, and why you were still there, stuck in place, fighting desperately and getting nowhere, all while having to pretend that you didn’t care, so that no one would see how much it hurt you.”

My mouth has gone dry.

I see flashes of those interviews again. All those sad, resigned faces. My hands trembling with impotent anger under the table.

The faint disappointment in my mother’s voice.

The long, dark nights when I couldn’t sleep, when it was too late to call my mother, or Armin, or Sandra, or anyone else, when the weight of all my little failures threatened to crush me.

“Something like that.” For a moment, it’s not Isobel Anderssen speaking. It’s me.

Martina smiles, but her eyes are sad.

“You’ve been working so hard for such a long time,” she says. “You must be very tired.”

“It’s just hard to feel like you have a piece missing,” I hear myself say. “I wonder if there’s something about me . . . if I’m stuck. If I made the wrong decision, a long time ago, and maybe I’m just too stubborn to let go of it.”

I have to stop. Get a hold of myself.

“You’re hurt,” Martina notes. “That’s natural. And you’ve been hurt so many times, you’ve learned to cut yourself off from the things that hurt you.”

Martina reaches out across the table and touches my hand, ever so softly.

“I really am so glad you are here, Isobel,” Martina says. “I think you’re going to be shocked to see where you are, in just a week’s time. I think you are going to be truly surprised at the person you can be, once your past is no longer holding you back.”

Martina pulls her hand away and then bares every single shining white tooth in an unbearably radiant smile before saying:

“One last thing. Before Anna comes and brings you to your cabin, I just want to make sure that we have your card on file.”

I freeze where I’m sitting.

Then I have to hold back a laugh. Of course.

I was almost taken in there, for a minute. She’s better than I expected; better, I think, than I could have been prepared for.

But I’m not here for me. Not here to heal whatever petty little wounds I might think I’m carrying.

I’m here for the women I’ve read about. The ones who have sat in this chair, before me, feeling hope for the first time in weeks, or months, or years.

The ones who have taken out loans against their homes to fund their stay, hoping, desperately, that this doctor and this clinic might be the thing that can help them finally find the piece they have been convinced they are missing.

The ones who have been convinced to go back to relationships they ought to have left, because Martina Hastings told them to.