Trouble Me: A Rosewood Novel

by Laura Moore

  They’d reached a short concrete walkway that was edged with rhododendrons. Suddenly unsure whether she truly wanted to go through with this, Jade came to a stop. Greg would understand. Hadn’t he himself warned her against pursuing the search?

  No, she’d come too far.

  Spotting a large wooden sign positioned to the left of the walkway with a long row of names posted on it, she walked up to it. “I guess this is the moment I’ve been waiting for. What’s his name anyway?”

  “Tomasz Myszkiewicz.”

  The name eluded her after the first unexpected sh sound. “Excuse me?”

  “He’s right there. The third one down.”

  Jade looked where Greg was pointing and read Dr. Tomasz Myszkiewicz. Next to his name were some initials she couldn’t identify and then the word Psychologist.

  Such was Jade’s continued state of shock that the details of the waiting room were reduced to a blur. She wasn’t even sure if the buzzing noise she thought she heard was coming from a white-noise machine or from inside her head; her mind was spinning like a top.

  They didn’t wait long. Greg gave the receptionist their names, she picked up the phone, and within seconds they were ushered inside Dr. Myszkiewicz’s office. Directly in front of Jade was a framed poster of a painting by Magritte: a man in a bowler hat and a red tie with a green apple floating in front of his face. Well, that was suitable, she thought. This situation was entirely surreal.

  Ever since reading Tomasz Myszkiewicz’s name, Jade’s every expectation had been upended. Now, as she looked at the man who’d gotten up from a corner desk to greet them, hysterical laughter bubbled up inside her.

  She couldn’t believe she’d hired Greg Hammond. What a colossal failure he’d turned out to be. This man, this supposed TM, with his untrimmed gray beard and wire-rimmed glasses and a tan corduroy jacket, could never in a million years have been her mother’s lover.

  But just as she was about to drag Greg out of the office, with its two reclining leather chairs and matching ottomans, and tell him that he’d bungled the job big time, Dr. Myszkiewicz spoke.

  “Miss Radcliffe? I’m Dr. Myszkiewicz.” His voice held a trace of an accent, lending his baritone an element of the exotic. “This is far too late in coming, but I am terribly sorry for your loss. Your mother was an extraordinarily dynamic woman.” He was studying her closely. “The resemblance is striking.”

  “So you actually knew my mother?” She sounded stiff and oddly defensive, but she was unable to make herself relax. “May I ask how?”

  “Why, she was my patient, of course.”

  The buzzing inside Jade’s head stopped, replaced by an utter blankness, like a heavy snowfall coating the world with inches of white. She couldn’t think, could only hear the word patient echoing again and again.

  “Why don’t you sit down, Miss Radcliffe, Mr. Hammond?” he said, gesturing to a sofa. Tan colored, it matched his jacket. She chose the side where a large ficus tree stood. Greg took the other end. As Greg settled against the cushions, Jade felt his eyes on her, but for some reason she couldn’t bring herself to meet his gaze, no matter how much silent support she might find there.

  Dr. Myszkiewicz pulled a chair away from his desk and swiveled it to face them. “Mr. Hammond indicated that you had some questions about your mother for me.”

  Yes, and upon hearing that she had been his patient, the questions haunting Jade had grown exponentially. Where to begin? She hardly knew.

  The hell with it, she thought. A psychologist—he was probably used to people blurting out stuff. “My mother kept a diary. In it she talked about a man called TM. He was her lover. Are you the TM she wrote about?”

  He didn’t appear shocked by the question. “Yes and no.”

  Like a volcano, sudden fury erupted inside her. She glared at him. “What in freakin’ hell is that supposed to mean? My father found that diary. It tore him apart. So you damned well better be straight with me.”

  “Jade.” Greg reached out and touched her arm—either to steady her or to warn her, she didn’t know which. Didn’t care either. Impatiently, she shook it off.

  “Perhaps I should explain why your mother was seeing me.”

  “What an excellent idea. Though if you could avoid the wishy-washy double-talk, I’d be super-grateful.”

  He seemed unaffected by her sarcasm. “Your mother came to me for help with a number of issues that were causing her deep unhappiness.”

  Like how much she disliked her only child. Jade hated the idea of her mother ever thinking of her as an issue. But obviously in a masochistic mood, Jade needed to hear Dr. Myszkiewicz confirm it. “And I was one of them.”

  He inclined his head, his brown gaze regarding her steadily through the lenses of his glasses. “That’s true in a sense, though I’d say her problems with you were just the most recent in a long succession of difficulties she had with women, in particular those she perceived as the sexual competition.”

  “I was only a kid—”

  “No, Miss Radcliffe, you were not,” he corrected. “You were an adolescent, and thus to your mother you changed from a sweet angel to a threat to her supremacy. If you think back, I believe you’ll remember her behaving with much the same irrational aggression toward your half sisters. Of course, with Margot and Jordan—I do have their names right?”

  At her mute nod, he continued. “The tensions in their relationships began much earlier, I suspect, because from the day she and your father wed, she viewed them as rivals for his love. In addition, there was no previous bond with either girl. There would have been a fair amount of hostility on their part too. After all, she was the stepmother, the interloper. With you, however, the anger and hostility, the constant warring, really began to dominate your relationship only when you reached your teenage years.”

  It was possible he was right. Although Jade remembered her mother’s attitude as born overnight, with her suddenly exhibiting the full-fledged hostility of an archenemy, perhaps the antagonism had developed more slowly and she, wrapped in pubescent self-absorption, simply hadn’t noticed.

  “One of the reasons your mother came to me was to try to understand the feelings that were driving her anger toward you as well as toward other women—particularly young, attractive women. She wanted to learn how to control her aggression. As you might imagine, much of your mother’s problem stemmed from her insecurities about her own appeal—”

  “Mom insecure? No way. She was dazzling; she could wrap any male, aged thirteen to eighty-five, around her finger.”

  “Agreed. But that didn’t prevent her insecurities from affecting her behavior. Her self-doubts had begun to have an impact on her marriage too. As she neared the age of forty, she began to obsess that she wouldn’t be beautiful enough to keep your father’s love and that, if she lost her looks, she would lose him. This only exacerbated the threat she perceived in you, Miss Radcliffe. She came to see you as a symbol of what she was terrified of losing—youth, beauty, and sexual promise.”

  “I …” Jade began, only to fall silent, too saddened by the portrait he’d painted to continue.

  “This is difficult to absorb, I know,” he said gently. “What you should remember, though, is that your mother came to me because she recognized the depth and severity of her problems and needed help. She saw that she was destroying her relationship with you and understood that if she continued to treat you as an enemy, she would lose not only you but possibly your father as well. She admitted that he didn’t like the fights that had grown increasingly frequent between you and her. Her decision to seek professional help showed how much she loved both you and your father—not the reverse.”

  Overcome, Jade slumped forward on the sofa, covering her face with her hands as she wept for all the long years she’d been wrong about her mother. All that anger, all that misery, had been without cause.

  At last she straightened, and Dr. Myszkiewicz passed her a box of Kleenex. Dabbing her eyes, she blew her nose and d
rew a shaky breath. “Here’s what I don’t understand. The diary Mom wrote. In it she seemed even more filled with hate for me than she was during the worst of our fights. And you were in the entries too. But you didn’t come off as a shrink—a doctor,” she corrected hurriedly. “She wrote as if you and she were lovers. And why did she call you TM and make it sound like you were some mysterious man, not a doctor?”

  He sighed heavily. “Let me start with the easy question. From the start of our sessions, your mother decided that she would address me as TM because Myszkiewicz gave her quite a bit of difficulty.”

  For the first time since entering the office, Jade smiled.

  “Calling me ‘Doctor’ was equally hard but for a different reason. Even though your mother sought me out, she felt deeply ambivalent—embarrassed, even—at consulting a psychologist. Linked to that was the firm belief that your father would be aghast to learn that she was seeing me. It’s why she kept our sessions a secret, so your father would never know his wife was ‘so screwed up.’ Those were her words, not mine,” he finished ruefully.

  “Yeah, that sounds like something she’d have said.”

  They exchanged a slight smile.

  “With respect to the diary, I’m afraid you have me to blame. I encouraged your mother to write down her feelings.”

  “But why would she need to do that when she was seeing you?” she asked, perplexed.

  “Soon after we began treatment, your mother told me that when she was away from here she felt as if she couldn’t control the emotions inside her, that they were causing her to lash out. I should tell you, Miss Radcliffe, that your mother’s sense of being at the mercy of her feelings and impulses is a common reaction. Once a patient undergoing therapy begins to voice long-suppressed feelings, it can be incredibly difficult to then keep them in check.

  “Thinking it might be beneficial, I suggested a journal or notebook where she could express her feelings and get them out of her system in a safe way. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of not anticipating that your mother would choose a diary in an eye-catching hue and that your father might read its contents.”

  “Mom liked flash.”

  His smile widened briefly. “Yes. As I’m sure you can imagine, she was quite the most exotic creature ever to grace this office complex. Now, as to what she wrote in the journal and the tone in which she wrote it, this is trickier for me to answer. Obviously I never read it. But from your and Mr. Hammond’s remarks and what your father apparently concluded when he found it, it sounds as if your mother was undergoing a classic case of transference.”

  At her puzzled look, he explained, “By transference I mean that she was transferring some of her feelings about men onto me. She was probably feeling an immense gratitude that she had someone who was listening to her and understanding what she was going through and not judging her. That sense of euphoria could have caused her to write wildly exaggerated descriptions of me. I’m sure you recall that your mother had a flair for the dramatic. As for our having any kind of relationship other than a doctor-patient one, that is simply not the case. Even if I had been a very different, not to mention unethical, man, I don’t believe I could have seduced her away from your father, no matter how deep her gratitude for me ran. She loved him.”

  “Do you think my dad died—” Jade had to take a deep breath to steady her voice, for the pain of her parents’ deaths was now suddenly as fresh as if they had died that very day. “Do you think he died believing Mom was unfaithful? He and my brother-in-law Travis Maher fought over Mom a couple of weeks before the crash. Dad accused him of being her lover, so clearly he was haunted by the idea that there was another man.” She made herself take another deep breath, but her voice trembled nonetheless when she asked, “What if, when their plane went down, he didn’t know the truth?”

  Dr. Myszkiewicz reached forward and squeezed her hand. “Here I can put your mind at ease. That positively was not the case.”

  Jade was somewhat taken aback by the unequivocal response. She’d been expecting a soothing but ultimately vague reply. “How can you be sure?”

  “Because in the two sessions prior to their trip to interview a prospective trainer for Rosewood Farm, I’d made considerable progress in persuading your mother to tell your father about our work here. She’d sensed a distance in him—caused no doubt by his discovery of her journal. As she’d stopped writing regularly in it, she probably hadn’t noticed its absence. I managed to convince her that opening up to your father about her problems and explaining that she was trying to solve them would help their relationship. She promised me she was going to talk to him while they were in New Jersey and away from Rosewood. I received a telephone call from her while they were on their way to the airport. She was crying—crying with happiness. She’d told your father everything. He was going to accompany her to our next scheduled session.”

  “Oh God!” Wrapping her arms about her middle, she rocked on the sofa. “Couldn’t you have contacted me about her years ago? Do you know what I would have given to know any of this?” she cried.

  “Actually, no, I couldn’t have contacted you,” he replied, his voice heavy with regret. “First of all, patient confidentiality would have prevented me. Then, too, even though you were your mother’s next of kin, you were a minor when she and your father died. I very much wish, however, that I had been aware of your father’s discovery of the journal. I might have found a way to contact your sisters and thus been able to clear up the misunderstanding. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.”

  Jade thought she understood his position, but at the moment she was remembering the years spent struggling with her bitterness, confusion, and resentment. To learn that all the horrible things she’d come to believe about her mother were based on a gross mistake was as disorienting as what she’d felt that long-ago evening when she first opened the diary.

  What alleviated her sorrow was the realization that, far from being hateful and faithless, her mother had been brave. She’d been trying to be a better person. She’d cared enough about being a mother and wife to confront what were evidently long-standing and deep-seated emotional problems. To take that difficult step required courage.

  And thank God Mom had chosen to tell Dad about Dr. Tomasz Myszkiewicz. All her mom would have had to do was describe her therapist’s somewhat fuddy-duddy appearance for her dad to understand that the doctor would be the last person her mother would choose as a lover. Having just experienced it herself, Jade knew the piercing relief her father would have felt at learning that his suspicions were false and his wife truly loved him.

  At least when he died Dad had known the truth.

  A memory, fresh and vivid, flashed in her mind. It was of Rob holding her after they’d made love and telling her of having arrested the drug runner. She remembered her fear at the thought of what might have happened to him had the runner drawn his gun, and she remembered his response. You and I both know from experience that a life can end at any time.

  Gripped by urgency, Jade sprang from the sofa. “Excuse me, but I need to leave right now. There’s someone I have to call.”

  JADE’S CELLPHONE was in her hand by the time she rushed out of Dr. Myszkiewicz’s office and into the late-afternoon sun. She pressed the ON button, having turned the phone off earlier to avoid any interruption during her meeting with TM.

  The phone came on with a message on the screen. Ted Guerra had called—twice—and he’d also left a voice mail.

  When she listened to it, the principal’s tone was brusque. “Jade, I need to speak with you. It’s about an important matter. Please come to my office. I’ll be here until five-thirty.”

  She glanced at the iPhone’s clock. It was just twenty minutes past four now. She was amazed to realize she’d been talking to Dr. Myszkiewicz for only an hour. She scrolled through her address book until she reached Rob’s home number and selected it.

  Please answer, she thought, listening to the rings. Instead, the machine switched o
n, with Hayley’s voice instructing her to speak after the beep.

  Closing her eyes as a wave of disappointment washed over her, she hung up. She couldn’t leave a message. Hayley would recognize her voice, and that would lead to awkward questions for Rob. She didn’t have Rob’s cell number in her contacts and there was no way she could bring herself to call the police station, not with the way things stood between Rob and her.

  God, she’d been such an idiot to freeze him out. She’d try him again later. Hopefully she’d be able to fix things between them, repair the hurt she’d caused. She might as well drive back to school and deal with whatever Ted Guerra needed to see her about. Perhaps by then Rob would be home and picking up.

  Jade’s steps echoed in the now-deserted elementary school. But as she neared Ted Guerra’s office, she saw that the door was open and a rectangle of light spilled onto the buffed linoleum floor. Knocking on the glass inset of the door, she called, “Hello? Ted, it’s me, Jade. I got your message.”

  “Jade. Come in,” came the reply.

  Ted was behind his desk. He rose when she entered but didn’t come around to greet her, and his expression lacked its customary friendliness. “Please take a seat.”

  “What’s wrong, has something happened? Is it something to do with Eugene?” She tried to think of anything else that might be amiss but came up blank. Granted, she wasn’t firing on all cylinders. It had been a hell of an afternoon, and she was exhausted.

  He didn’t answer her question, saying instead, “I had a visitor to my office this afternoon, Jade, who brought to my attention one of your activities in college, of which I had been previously unaware. I was told that you wrote a column for your school newspaper. After the meeting I checked the résumé you submitted to us. It says that you were on the school newspaper’s staff, but there’s no mention of your having penned a column. Is that because your column was devoted to the topic of sex?”

  She’d guessed what was coming the second Ted pronounced the words activities in college, but still, when he finally asked about the specific nature of the column she’d written for two years, it felt like a brick had been slammed into her chest.