Hide & Seek - James Patterson [17]
My mind felt as though it had exploded. Phillip was in it, as vivid as when he was alive. I could hear his footsteps on the stairs in our old house, the menace in his voice: You can't hide from me! My hand was trembling.
I willed my fingers to strike the piano keys. I sang with all my heart, everything inside of me:
I used to be a housewife
A new wife
A midwife
I used to live the good life
High in the storm king mountains.
I used to give him haircuts
Fix cold cuts
Mend shirt cuffs
My name was Mrs. Bradford
And I thought I was going to die.
Battery
He hit me!
This can't be me
This can't be me
Battery
I used to be a housewife
A new wife
A midwife
He hit me!
How can he say he loves me
When I think I'm going to die?
The applause grew louder, and then unbelievably louder. People began to stamp their feet in rhythm to the beat. The noise was like a physical presence rising out of the stadium. It carried me higher than I had ever been in my life.
It told me that all these people believed in me. They believed my story.
It was like nothing I had ever experienced, not even in dreams, and I have to confess, I never wanted it to stop.
Hooo boy, hooo boy, hooo boy.
CHAPTER 16
THAT WAS THEN; and this is now.
I could never have imagined being where I am right now, in prison in New York.
It seems so inconceivable, so impossible. I couldn't conceive of any set of circumstances that would have gotten me here.
This week they brought a top, well-respected psychiatrist to see me, a woman named Deborah Green.
I guess I couldn't blame anyone for thinking that I might be crazy.
The husband killer. That's what I'm called in the newspapers.
The black widow of Bedford.
I visited with Dr. Green in a small conference room beside the chapel, which made me smile at least.
I was pleased to learn that Dr. Green specialized in physical-abuse cases, rather than homicides.
She made it easy for me. She told me about herself, and why she had been chosen, and that if she wasn't right for me, she'd leave. She was my age, soft-spoken, unassuming.
I guess I liked her well enough. Trust? Well, that might come later.
“How's this?” I said to her. “I'll make this easy. I'll tell you everything that's on my mind. I don't see the point in the two of us having secrets.”
I was facing Dr. Green, rather than lying on the cot that had been provided. She nodded, then she smiled. She was good at this, getting people to talk.
Of course, I wasn't being truthful with her—there was one important secret I wasn't telling her, or anyone else.
Ironically, it was what might have saved me.
“However you want to do this, Maggie,” she said. “If you want to unload a lot of junk, go ahead.”
I laughed. “It is junk, isn't it?”
Yes, I wanted to unload.
So, in those first few sessions, I told Dr. Green everything that all the newspapers and TV stations wanted to know, and couldn't get out of me for any amount of money.
I told Dr. Green what made me anxious, ashamed, and also, very angry.
Like about my father, and how he'd left my mother in 1965. Just walked out and left us as though we were some motel he'd visited going cross-country.
Like my terrible stuttering from around age four to thirteen. How it had hurt so much when kids made fun of me; how it had made me feel worthless and small; how I had beat it by myself, with no help from anyone.
Like writing songs in my head, to escape from the negative voices in my childhood world.
Like Phillip, who everybody thought was this nice, quiet college professor—but he wasn't, really. He had his black Corvette that he used to back out of the drive at about forty miles an hour; he had his gun collection; he had his rules to be followed at every waking moment, and probably while I was sleeping too.
I talked for about two hours at a clip, and Dr. Green rarely stopped me.
Finally, though, I was talked out during our third or fourth session.
“I do think you left something out,” she finally said.
“What's that?” I asked her.
“Well, what about Will Shepherd?