Angel of Darkness Read Free Page B

cause of Michael’s grief. As pitiful as it sounds, I needed to know that I had mattered to him. I needed to know he remembered me.
    Michael was sprawled across his narrow bed, staring at a book that I was pretty sure he wasn’t really reading.
    â€˜I’m Dr Fowler,’ Miranda explained, offering her hand as if he were a grown man. Michael held the grip awkwardly before letting go. He inched away from her. She made him nervous. She was too calm, too self-possessed. He was used to fighting Connie’s passionate concern with sullen indifference. How do you fight calm?
    â€˜I’m going to be your therapist while you’re here,’ Miranda explained. ‘I’m not a medical doctor. I have my PhD in clinical psychology, with a specialty in treating early adolescent depression.’
    â€˜I’m not depressed,’ Michael insisted stubbornly. ‘I’m just pissed off.’
    â€˜I bet you are.’ Miranda dragged a chair closer to Michael. She was not going to ask that he join her in an office. She was willing to join him. ‘It’s appropriate for you to be pissed off right now. Your father dies, no one ever talks about it, then your mother replaces him pretty quickly, I’d have to say. On top of all that, I’m willing to bet there’s not a person in this world who seems to be paying you a damn bit of attention. Did I leave anything out?’
    Michael closed the book on his lap. He may even have been trying to smile. ‘Yes. I’m in love with a girl who barely knows I exist,’ he added. ‘Even though I talk to her every day at school.’
    â€˜No!’ Miranda seemed genuinely shocked. ‘Now you’re depressing me .’
    Michael smiled in spite of himself. That single spark of humor gave me hope. ‘My mom thinks I’m just like my dad,’ he told Miranda. ‘She thinks that I’m going to grow up to drink and mope and screw up all the time, and not care about anyone but myself.’
    There it was: the most matter-of-fact indictment of my life I had ever heard.
    â€˜And yet you loved your father,’ Miranda said. ‘And I have no doubt that he loved you deeply.’ Thank you, bless you, thank you, Miranda. ‘Now his love is gone. It has to hurt, Michael. To know that his love is gone.’
    Just like that, my son was fighting tears. ‘I wasn’t trying to kill myself when I crashed my mom’s car,’ he said through clenched teeth.
    â€˜Maybe not,’ Miranda answered gently. ‘But you did steal it. And we need to talk about that. And you could have killed the family in the other car. We need to talk about that, too. And, Michael – I don’t think your mother would survive if something happened to you. Nor would your brother’s world ever be the same.’
    â€˜I’m only fourteen,’ he whispered.
    â€˜I know,’ she said. ‘It hardly seems fair, does it? That so much should be on you?’
    The tears came.
    I left them.
    His secrets were not mine to hear.

FOUR
    I wondered if Connie blamed me for what was happening to Michael. Always a glutton for punishment, I went in search of her and found her in the courtyard that marked the center of Holloway’s vast grounds, holding Cal’s hand as they waited for Michael’s therapy session to end. If Cal was impatient to get back to work, he did not show it.
    I saw Olivia, the patient I had cast in my imaginary Holloway family, sitting in her customary spot on a bench close to the fountain of marble cherubs. I joined her on the bench, where I had a good view of Connie and her fiancé, though it was hard to look at anyone other than Olivia. The hints of magenta in her hair seemed to dance in the sunlight, mesmerizing me. Her face was so pale and solemn that she looked like a Madonna sitting in repose at the feet of the angels.
    It wasn’t that I was trying to eavesdrop. I was just trying to find