“It’s as if any true intimacy has died. My wife and I don’t have that authentic connection anymore,” he said, and his words made the hair on her arms stand on end. She’d written a paper for a journal that used those terms. True intimacy and authentic connection. They weren’t trademarked or coined by her, nor were they unusual words. But they weren’t often used by her patients. It was as if he was quoting her back to her. “I read that in one of your papers,” he added, flashing her a grin.
She breathed a sigh of relief and smiled that he was so open about it. It all made sense. “I hope it was useful.”
“Very much so. I hope you don’t mind, but I read a bit of your research before I made the appointment. That’s my field. I’m a market researcher, so it’s sort of a natural habit for me. And I was impressed, so that’s why I had wanted to see you,” he said, fiddling with the wedding band on his left finger.
“And I’m glad you found me,” she said, and privately she was grateful that all he seemed to care about were her professional credentials, not her personal track record in bed. “Let’s talk some about why you feel true intimacy has died. Can you give me an example?”
He nodded several times and exhaled heavily, as if what he was about to say would be hard. “I feel like Sarah doesn’t want to have sex anymore. The other night I was—”
He hacked sharply. A loud, bark of a cough. Then came another. His hand flew to cover his mouth, and he coughed once more, like a wheezing trombone. His cheeks began turning red.
Michelle sprang up. “Let me get you some water,” she said, and quickly headed to the door, then down the hall to the small kitchen tucked in a corner of the office suite. She opened the fridge to grab a water bottle, but it was empty. Crap. They’d need to replenish the supply. She swiveled around, spotted a clean mug from the cupboard, filled it from the tap, and returned to her office, the sound of wheezing like a homing beacon guiding her back. She handed him the cup, and he gulped most of the water down greedily. Then he took a deep breath, and finished it off.
“You okay now?” she asked gently.
He nodded.
“Do you want more?”
He peered in the cup and tossed the rest of it back. “I think I’m better now. That was embarrassing. I’m so sorry.”
“Please don’t apologize for coughing. Shall we go back to your concerns about true intimacy?”
They chatted more, and as he shared his concerns about the lack of sex with his wife, she felt a strange sense of déjà vu. She flashed back to her last session with Shayla. The problems mirrored Shayla’s challenges. Shayla had even said before that her husband had a paranoid side. Could he be so worried about trying to keep her that he was infiltrating her therapist to try to learn what sort of advice Shayla was getting? Could this man actually be Shayla’s husband? With a fake name?
No, she sharply admonished herself. Plenty of couples had marital woes and there was no need for her to jump to any conclusions, and assume Shayla’s hubby was here under false pretenses.
She had no true evidence that he was a fraud, so she mentally talked herself down. For now she had to treat him as she would anyone else. Besides, he seemed open to some of her suggestions about reconnecting with his wife, so she recommended a book for him that she thought might be helpful. “I don’t have a copy to loan you, but perhaps you could check it out on Amazon or your bookstore,” she said, and he grabbed a pen and small notebook from inside his jacket.
He spread the notebook open on the ottoman in front of him, then dipped his hand into his pocket once more and pushed on a pair of glasses. “Can’t see a damn thing up close without these on,” he said, then wrote down the name she gave him, folded up the paper and removed his glasses once more. She caught the briefest glimpse of him with the glasses on—thick and black—and it was as if she’d been shot back to the night she went to Gia’s with Jack. The man she’d bumped into outside her building had worn glasses like that—thick and black. He’d had dark hair too, but it was longer, wasn’t it? The memory was far too fuzzy, and that’s all she could latch onto. It had been such a lightning-fast encounter that more than two weeks later she couldn’t recall any more details.
And really, what were the chances that this man was the same guy? Even if she had bumped into Clark, maybe he’d just been doing his research and scoping out the building before the appointment, to get the lay of the land. A lot of patients did that. That was normal. Plus, he’d said he was a market researcher, so it would make sense that he’d checked things out in advance.
But after he left, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was amiss. Perhaps it was simply this day. Perhaps it was a side effect of Shayla’s nosiness. Lately, she’d been feeling like others knew things about her before she learned them. And she didn’t like being in that position.
She didn’t have another session for an hour, so she locked her door. She never locked her door. But then, she was about to do something she rarely did. She was going to Google a patient. She’d made it a point not to search out her patients online—what mattered was what they shared in her time with them. Still, Clark Davidson had left her feeling unsettled, no matter how hard she tried to apply logic to the situation. She flipped open her laptop, and plugged his name into Google.
She found a Clark Davidson who was a realtor. A Clark Davidson who was a sales manager at an advertising technology company. And a Clark Davidson who was a lawyer. But none were market researchers. And none of the images that returned matched the man who’d been in her office.