“Did Russell say it was completely inadmissible?” I wipe my eyes. “Maybe there’s a loophole.”
“She says,” Mirabel’s Voice begins, and I wait until I realize that’s all there is. Emphasis is hard for the Voice. What Mirabel means is She says. It isn’t Russell who won’t use it. It’s Mama.
“No. No way.” Not appalled. Incredulous. Less than incredulous. There’s not a part of me that believes it.
“Doctor-patient confidentiality,” Mirabel’s Voice repeats.
“Is that why he came?” I ask. “Somehow he knew we were close, and he thinks that since he told Mama in therapy she won’t use it?”
“I don’t think so,” Mirabel’s Voice says.
Monday is rubbing her bottom lip with her left thumb. Me too. It’s a weird thing to turn out to be genetic, or maybe we’ve just been mirrors for so long. You’d think she wouldn’t because it can’t be sanitary. You’d think I wouldn’t because she does. But maybe this is how it gets toward the end—everything stops making sense.
“Fine,” I finally sputter. “You’ll tell them.”
“No,” Mirabel’s Voice says.
“What do you mean?”
“No,” she explains.
“Why the hell not?”
“Doctor-patient confidentiality,” she says a third time.
“You’re not a doctor.”
“Neither is Mama,” Monday points out, predictably.
“You’re not a medical professional,” I amend, though I needn’t, not for Mirabel’s sake. “You aren’t a therapist. He wasn’t getting treatment from you. You were just there.”
She types. “Nora told him nothing he said would leave the room.”
“She was wrong!” I shout.
“No,” her Voice says.
“Why the hell not?” I demand again, louder.
“Wrong,” her Voice says.
“It’s not wrong. What they did was wrong. What they’re doing is wrong. The whole thing is wrong. They’re corrupt and morally bankrupt and ethically void, and they play dirty, and they’ve shown very clearly for two decades that they don’t give one shit about us. And you’re going to die on the hill of a tiny stupid technicality because you’d be breaking a pinky swear?”
“Yes,” says her Voice.
“Are you nine?”
“No.”
“Are you joking?”
“No.”
“Then why do you even go to therapy?” My arms are wide, my head flung back so I can rail at the heavens but really at my sister and not the usual one.
“Didn’t know he was coming.”
“But you knew Apple was. You’ve been eavesdropping on Apple’s sessions for weeks. It’s not like it was ever much of a plan—that she would just happen to mention something to her therapist about some documents her husband and father-in-law were hiding—but if you weren’t going to use it anyway, why bother?”
“Point,” she says.
“How is that the point?”
But she shakes her head, annoyed, frustrated I’m not getting it. “… us,” she adds, and now I have even less idea what she means.
She rolls her eyes and types, “… to what we need.”
“So you’ve actually overheard the evidence we’ve been desperately searching for, which would end a battle your mother’s been fighting since you were born and avert a crisis for an entire town, but you won’t tell our lawyer about it because you overheard it in therapy. But if something Apple said, also in therapy, pointed us to evidence you could find yourself, that would be fine.”
“Yes.”
“You’re not Nancy Fucking Drew.”
“In addition to the Nancy Drews in our clothing drawers, there is a copy of The Clue in the Old Album on the fifth stair from the bottom on the right side as you are going up”—Monday sounds even more nervous than usual. She does not like yelling—“and a copy of Nancy’s Mysterious Letter under the rubber bands in the junk drawer.”
“Tell me that’s not why,” I say to Mirabel. Implore. Plead. Beg. Whatever. “You’re having such a good time putting together clues and solving mysteries and being at the center of the action for once in your life you hate to see it end.”
“No.”
“If he just tells you, it’s too easy.”
“No.”