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But still. I wasn’t focused on my rightness. My rightness didn’t hurt, and I was after full-bore self-immolation. So I did what I did every night at Westonwood: I chose a random incident from my life and turned it over in the dark. That night it was Owen. I didn’t have to punch him in the face. He’d been a harmless surfer with a huge dick and a permanent boner. I didn’t have to make sure none of my friends spoke to him again, or throw his phone out the window on the freeway. It was expensive to him, and I hadn’t given a fuck.

Somewhere, a toilet flushed. The pipes whooshed.

It was morning.

***

I didn’t tell my new therapist shit. She was just a bitch behind a desk who pretended to support my “healing process.” The fact that I’d never put my fist in her face was a testament to my healing process, but I walked out of there twisted in knots every time. I was sure she and the fistful of drugs they gave me were the source of my insomnia. I hadn’t slept more than a couple of hours a night since Elliot left.

“You’re not schizophrenic,” my new doctor bitch said. “You don’t suffer from narcissistic personality disorder. You have no history of compulsion.”

Her office was a museum of Native American artifacts. Dream-catchers. Masks. Beaded wall hangings and handmade blankets in frames.

“You’re saying there’s nothing wrong with me.” I wasn’t even hopeful, just killing time. We’d had that conversation a hundred times already. I didn’t know what she was waiting for me to realize, because I’d have the epiphany of the century if I knew.

“The whole idea of sex addiction is a way to impose cultural models to make normal people seem abnormal. Mostly, these normal people are women. If you’re not upset with your behavior, then there’s nothing to say what you’re doing is wrong.”

“Then you’re going to let me go?”

“What I’m trying not to do is pathologize your sexuality, but your mind is still not clear. Your memory is garbled, and I suspect you went through more in those stables than you’re ready to admit. You’re still prone to violence, mostly when men are in the room. I’d like to get to the bottom of it.”

Considering I usually lost my shit in the cafeteria at about three o’clock, she was right. It was a co-ed facility, so there were always men around. The only time men weren’t around was in that room with her.

“Do I need to be here for you to do that?” I asked. “Because you know, we’re supposed to get me back to functioning in society. This isn’t a whole thing where I’m walking out some healed person who can get a job and land a good husband, right?”

“You’re here. This time is for you. Think about it. I could buy you enough time to really get to the bottom of your issues with Deacon and your father.”

She presented it like a birthday cake. The luxury of the century. An indefinite amount of time at Westonwood Spa, with the mental equivalent of hot rocks and exfoliating rubs, with her inferences about my father, who I hadn’t mentioned to her, and Deacon, who was none of her business.

“And you walk out with what?” I said.

“I don’t understand your meaning.” She tilted her head, her pin-straight Brazilian blowout falling perpendicular to the earth while her face rested at the angle of inquisitiveness.

“I mean, we find some deep trauma in like, what two, three months, and you? It’s a lot of work for you.”

“It’s work I love. Helping you to heal yourself,” she said.

“Don’t you have some high-paying gig in Beverly Hills?”

“I have a private practice, yes. Where are you going with this, Fiona? Are you afraid I’ll abandon you like your last therapist?”

She should have known better. I’d cut her off the last time she’d tried to come down on Elliot for leaving, because I figured out that when he’d admitted to leaving to protect me, he’d only admitted it to me. I wouldn’t betray him, and more than that, I respected him. But there she was, with her patronizing little smile and her forearms on the desk, accusing Elliot of shit outside her sphere of fucking knowledge.

I hated her. Maybe I hated her because she wasn’t Elliot. Or maybe I hated her because I didn’t want to be there. Maybe I just hated her because she was hateful, and because she was trying to get me to hate men instead of her Brazilian blowout.

And fuck, I hated her Brazilian blowout.

Most of our sessions went like that. I just disagreed with whatever she said. She said the sky was up, and I insisted I walked on clouds. She told me I was sick, and I said I was fine. She’d tried to con me into agreeing that my father had molested me, that Deacon beat me in a way that was non-consensual, that in fucking whomever I wanted, I’d agreed to be degraded. She couldn’t get that the fucking itself wasn’t degrading. The intentional degradation was degrading. And hot.

I didn’t understand her. Why did she seem to care so much? Why couldn’t she just listen to my problems, decide whether or not I was sane enough to be questioned, keep my meds low so I didn’t feel like throwing things, and let me go? Surely the hospital didn’t need my family’s money that badly.

“It’s not about money,” Karen said one day at lunch. She was on a feeding tube and rolled her IV around with her. Mostly she was too weak to even get up, but when she did, she managed to find me. “You’re like this rare creature. Rich. Famous. Living in a fish bowl. How many of you are there in the world? And you’re in their chair. They can latch on to you and use you.”

“For what? It’s all confidential, isn’t it?”

“Sure. But you know, over drinks? Who knows what they say at parties to get another client. Or to their own therapists. There aren’t any secrets. My last guy wrote a paper about anorexia and wealth, and there was a patient in the paper who sounded just like me. My lawyer couldn’t do anything.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah. I don’t tell these fuckers anything anymore. I don’t tell anyone anything. Not even my friends.”

What had I told Elliot? Anything? Everything? Dr. Brazilian Blowout hadn’t gotten much more than evasion, but Elliot had gotten more from me before he split. I trusted him, but should I? I missed my fish-bowl friends who understood what to say when. I trusted them because they lived a shade of my life.

“It’s not all like Ojai,” I said. “You’ve been hanging out with the wrong people. Chill with me when you’re out. We’ll lay back. It’s all on the DL.”

“Really?”

“Yes.” I pushed my food around. What if Elliot told everyone about me? That I was a sex-addict celebutante who didn’t know how or why she’d stabbed the only man who loved her?

I didn’t care what people thought, but imagining Elliot at a party, casually talking about my problems without mentioning my name, people’s eyes going wide as they judged me—the scene I created bothered me. Elliot casually discussing my problems hurt in a way I couldn’t even pin down. It was
him,
how
he
felt.

Did he feel nothing?

Was I just a curiosity to him?

Did he leave because he couldn’t stand me?

I couldn’t tolerate the thought, and I couldn’t banish it from my mind. It played on a loop, and with each successive telling, he was more and more dismissive and contemptuous. I gripped my fork so tightly, the edge indented the flesh of my fingers. I pulled it away and looked at the brown-and-purple ridge it created. I ran my thumb over the skin. It was both numb and oversensitive.

“Did you sleep last night?” Karen whispered.

“No. I can’t.”

“Are they giving you something for it?”

“It’s not working. I need Halcion. That’s the only one that works.”

When someone put their hand on my shoulder, I jumped.

“Sorry,” Frances said. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

I hadn’t heard her come up behind me. “It’s okay.” I said it, but I didn’t mean it. She dealt with people like me all day. She knew how to approach. But I was so tired I was docile.

“You have visitors.”

I didn’t know why I thought it might be Deacon. I still held some childish hope that he’d come get me. The thrill of the thought must have been all over my face.

“It’s your sisters.”

FIONA

M
y sisters.

I had six of them, and a brother. So though Frances had said it as if she was talking about a complete set, there was no way all of them had shown up at Westonwood all at once.

Margie got up as I walked out onto the patio, and she hugged me.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” she said. “I’m sorry I left you.” She pushed me away, holding my biceps. “You look good.”

“Are you my lawyer again?”

“No. I just came to see you.”

“I didn’t like that other guy.”

“He’s very experienced,” Theresa said from behind Margie. “He already got you a new judge.”

“Jesus, Theresa. Don’t sneak up on me like that.” I hugged her, and when we separated, she got her hair back into place.

Some girls become stuck-up bitches early in life, and at eighteen, Theresa was just as stuck up as any of them. Always good, always correct. She sat up straight and chewed with her mouth closed, said please and thank you and dressed right for the occasion. It was an accident of her birth, that perfection. None of the rest of us were as pin straight as she was. She wore her little soup of redheaded genes like a tiara. I had no idea why she even showed up to see me. She hated me.

“So?” I said, throwing myself onto the garden bench and spreading my legs in an unladylike fashion. I wanted to throw my whore body in her face, just to make her uncomfortable. “How are you guys?”

“I’m fine,” Theresa replied, pressing her knees together. “How are you?”

“Crazy. What do you want?”

“I came checking after you. It’s a courtesy.”

“Great, I’m having tea with Spence and Chip at three, then a little badminton. Shall you join for a swipe at the shuttlecock?” I tipped my head back toward the field where the croquet and badminton had been set up.

“Oh, Fiona.” Margie swung a chair around.

“Small talk is a lubricant, not an insult,” Theresa huffed.

“I’ve never needed lubricant unless I’m getting it in the ass.”

I’d aimed to shock her, and I’d done it. Her face, a mask of perfection under her red ponytail, seemed to fall for a second. I thought I’d hit home until she laughed. Then Margie laughed. I felt a swell of pride in pleasing them, even though Theresa was younger and hateful, and I was mad at Margie. It was as if, in that laugh, they accepted me. They didn’t, I knew that, but it was my moment.

“Okay, guys. I’m busy finding wholeness,” I said. “Seriously. Why didn’t you come with Mom and Dad?”

“They’re busy,” Margie cut in.

“Yeah, more like, Mom hates discomfort, and since she came around here last time asking if Dad ever touched me, I’m thinking I’m not a happy sight for her right now.”

“What did you tell her?” Margie’s voice was clipped.

I pressed my lips together then puckered them. “He never touched me.”

“Is that what you told her, or is that just a fact?” Margie asked.

“Both.”

She scanned my face, looking for any other tidbit, like an open pledge I’d betrayed or the slip of an unsavory truth.

“What do you want from me, Margaret?”

“The judge changed. Dad wants you out. Why, is a matter of speculation,” she said.

“He wants to divert attention,” Theresa said softly, into her hands. “Away from what’s happening with Jonathan. I know him. I know how he thinks.” She held up her hand, but she looked reluctant to open pledge. As second youngest, she rarely did. There was a tacit, unspoken courtesy to the elders that they opened it.

“I swear to god,” I said, holding up my hand, “sixty percent of my brain capacity is taken up by what’s said under pledge and who was under pledge when it was said. I’m not that bright, guys. Don’t fill up the bucket, or it’s gonna spill.”

“Pledge open,” Theresa said.

“Okay, go.”

“Jonathan.” All Margie said was our brother’s name, and the beginning of that potentially long sentence ended in silence. The chatter of birds and insects in the garden seemed too loud to bear.

“I know there was something with his girlfriend…” Something about it nagged me, as if I’d met her or done something I should be ashamed of.

“Rachel. She’s dead,” Theresa said, closing her eyes as if gathering strength. Margie put her hand over Theresa’s and let her finish. “Sheila had a party Christmas night. Rachel and I went two days before to help her set up. She knew the neighborhood. So, night of the party, Rachel shows after most of the family leaves. Jonathan gets drunk and starts acting like an ass. She takes off in his car and….” She cleared her throat before continuing. “They found the car, but not the body.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Rachel was my friend. She had a tough home life, so she came back to the house with me a lot. Dad, he… Well, she started getting all gifts and wouldn’t say from where, and this was a few years ago. So.” She cleared her throat again, and her eyes darted over the garden.

“She and Dad, when she was fifteen,” Margie cut in with her businesslike tone.

Theresa picked up the thread. “Jon didn’t know until a few weeks ago.”

“None of us did,” Margie said.

“It’s the creepiest thing ever,” I said. “Seriously, I thought his thing with Mom was like true love that transcended age. I’m a rose-colored dumbfuck.”

“You shouldn’t use words like that.”

“Fuck fuck fuck.”

“Can you stop? This doesn’t need to be harder.” Theresa’s face was tense, her fingers clenched into hooks.

Margie glanced at me, her look telling me to shut the fuck up. Delivering bad news was usually Margie’s job, but Theresa seemed hell bent on saying hard things, and it appeared Margie was backing her up.

“Okay, go on,” I said.

“They haven’t told you because they didn’t want to upset you.”

“They don’t want to upset themselves.”

“Jon tried to commit suicide,” Theresa said.

“What? When?”

“Little less than a week ago.” Her voice dropped. “I found him. He took a handful of pills and gave himself a heart attack. It was awful. I mean, really awful. It’s going to break Mom.”

I looked at Margie. “He’s okay?” My brother, the only boy and the youngest of eight, was the scion, the gem, and an arrogant ass I’d never want harmed.