She nodded. “Maybe.”
“You said lately you’ve been thinking about the secret you kept during dinners. Does that mean these are new thoughts, or that they’ve just popped into your mind more in recent times?”
“I never gave the fact that I kept my friend’s affair a secret any thought until the last month or so. That might not say a lot about me, but it’s the truth.”
“Did something happen recently that made you think of the affair?”
“Not really. But I did notice a change in Merrick. I’m not sure if that’s relevant or not.”
“What kind of a change?”
“Well, he hasn’t been around much the last couple of weeks, but before that I noticed that he smiled more in meetings. And he laughed more. It wasn’t until I saw him seeming happy the last few months that I realized how long he must have been unhappy. It made me realize how much he suffered after Amelia’s death.”
My forehead creased. “Did you think he didn’t suffer?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I blamed him for her death. But maybe I just needed someone to blame.”
“Why would you blame him for her death?”
“Because he was her health care proxy and made all the medical decisions. He found out she was having an affair when she was brought into the hospital, and then got to decide what drugs she would take and what procedures she would undergo.”
Oh, God.
Colette noticed my face and nodded. “Yeah. It was screwed up.”
It was difficult not to take what she’d just told me and focus on Merrick, but he wasn’t my patient. He wasn’t even my boyfriend anymore. So I forced myself back to what I should’ve been doing—helping Colette untangle her feelings.
“Let’s back up a moment. It sounds like you’re starting to question whether the things you’ve been holding Merrick accountable for are really his fault. And at the same time, you’re reminded of things you kept from him when you were once friends. You’re bringing a lot of guilt to the surface. Why do you think that’s coming up now? Because you’re leaving?”
Colette smiled sheepishly. “Well, I’m taking some clients with me. That’s against my noncompete. Merrick won’t be happy about it, though it won’t make a blip in the firm’s profit. But I also know he won’t do anything about it because I’m not the only one who’s held him accountable for what happened.”
“What do you mean?”
“The only person who was tougher on Merrick than me was Merrick.”
? ? ?
That evening, even though it was Friday night, I didn’t feel like going home. I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Merrick since my session with Colette earlier in the day. I’d even broken my week-long streak of staying on my own floor and not going upstairs in an attempt to catch a glimpse of him, but he was nowhere to be found. It was just as well since I was feeling vulnerable, and the last thing I needed was a reason to justify the way he’d acted and give myself hope that things could work out.
It was a beautiful night, so I decided to take the bus to Glass Bottle Beach in Brooklyn instead of going home. I walked the shoreline for an hour, picking up sea glass and sidestepping sharp pieces the ocean hadn’t taken for a long-enough tumble yet. But even my happy place wasn’t cutting it tonight. I sat down on a big rock at the ocean’s edge to watch the sunset. The sky lit with a mix of purples and pinks, and I closed my eyes to listen to the soft jingle the beach played as it hit all the glass. It seemed louder with each breath—so much so that I opened my eyes to look around and see if the waves had changed. But it wasn’t the ocean jingling; it was a set of keys.
I blinked, assuming the person holding them in his hand was an apparition.