sleeping pills. Another one had taken herself off all meds and was beginning to show signs of a manic episode. When they got to Lilly, Zee told Mattei she had nothing to report.
âUnsatisfactory,â Mattei said. Normally Mattei didnât seem to care one bit about Lilly Braedon. But something Zee had said at their last meeting had piqued her interest for a change and prompted a question. When Zee reported that nothing had changed, Mattei wasnât having any of it.
âDoes that mean that Lilly is in a normal phase?â Mattei was referring to Lillyâs bipolar disorder, which had been their diagnosis. Bipolar disorder was something Zee understood only too well. It was what her mother had been diagnosed with years ago, except that in those days it had been called manic depression, which Zee had always thoughta better description. In most cases the disorder was characterized by severe mood swings followed by periods of relative normalcy.
âI wouldnât say normal,â Zee said.
âAny more trouble with the Marblehead police?â
âNot lately,â Zee said.
âWell, thatâs something.â
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A T 3:35, L ILLY STILL HADNâT arrived. Zee walked to the window. Across Storrow Drive a homeless woman sat on one of the benches, but there was no one walking along the Charles River. It was too hot and humid for movement of any kind. Traffic was snarled, the drivers honking and agitated, trying to get onto roads heading north. The âcardboard bridge,â as Zee called the Craigie, looked like a bad fourth-grade art project. Years of soot had collected in the wrong areas for shading, and todayâs haze made it look even flatter and more one-dimensional and fake than it had ever looked before.
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A T 3:45, Z EE DIALED L ILLYâS number. It was a 631 exchange, Marblehead. It used to be NE 1, Lilly had told her when sheâd scribbled down her phone number for the records. âNE for Neptuneâyou know, Neptune, the Roman god of the sea?â
Zee thought back to her school days. Neptuneâor Poseidon, his Greek equivalent, god of the sea and consort of Amphitrite, which had been Zeeâs motherâs middle name. Though Maureen Doherty was a decidedly Irish name, Zeeâs grandmother had given all three of her children the middle names of Greek gods and goddesses. Thus Zeeâs mother was Maureen Amphitrite Doherty. Uncle Mickeyâs middle name was Zeus, and Uncle Liam, who had died back in Ireland before Zee was born, was Antaeus, a clear foreshadowing of the mythmakingviolence in his future. Zee remembered Maureen teasing Uncle Mickey about his middle name. âWell, what mother doesnât think her son is a god?â Mickey had answered. Indeed, Zee thought.
Zee willed herself back to the present. Lately her mind had been wandering. Not just with Lilly, but with all of her patients. They seemed to tell the same stories over and over until her job became more like detective work than therapy. The key wasnât in the stories themselves, at least not the ones they told and retold. Rather it was in the variations of their stories, the small details that changed with each telling. Those details were often the keys to whatever deeper issues lay hidden beneath the surface. What wasnât the patient telling the truth about?
âEverybody lies,â was another of Matteiâs favorite expressions.
And so as the weeks passed, Zee listened to Lilly, to the variations in the stories she told over and over. But on the day that Lilly had mentioned Neptune, the story she told was one that Zee had never before heard.
âBack in the day,â Lilly was saying, âbefore the phones in Marblehead had dials, way back when the operators used to ask âNumber, pleaseâ in a nasal four syllables, you would have to say âNeptune 1â for the Marblehead exchange.â Lilly was far too young ever to have remembered phones