“I try not to worry in front of her,” Cynthia said. “We try not to talk about things in front of her.”

I guess I made a noise, a snort or a sniff or something, enough to get their attention.

“Yes?” Dr. Kinzler said.

“She knows,” I said. “Grace knows a lot more than she lets on. She’s seen the show.”

“What?” Cynthia said.

“She saw it at a friend’s house.”

“Who?” Cynthia demanded. “I want a name.”

“I don’t know. And I don’t think there’s any point beating it out of Grace.” I glanced at Dr. Kinzler. “That was just a figure of speech.”

Dr. Kinzler nodded.

Cynthia bit her lower lip. “She’s not ready. She doesn’t need to know these things about me. Not now. She needs to be protected.”

“That’s one of the toughest things about being a parent,” Dr. Kinzler said. “Realizing that you can’t protect your children from everything.”

Cynthia let that sink in a moment, then, “There was a phone call.”

She gave Dr. Kinzler the details, offered up a near-verbatim account. Dr. Kinzler asked a few questions that were similar to mine. Did she recognize the voice, had he ever called before, that kind of thing. Then, from Dr. Kinzler:

“The caller said that your family wants to forgive you. What do you think he meant by that?”

“It doesn’t mean anything,” I said. “It was just a crank call.”

Dr. Kinzler gave me a look that I took to mean, “Shut up.”

“That’s the part I keep thinking about,” Cynthia said. “What’s he saying they forgive me for? For not finding them? For not doing more to find out what happened to them?”

“You could hardly be expected to,” Dr. Kinzler said. “You were a child. Fourteen is still a child.”

“And then I wonder, do they think it was my fault that it happened in the first place? Was it my fault that they left? What could I have done that would make them leave me in the middle of the night?”

“There’s part of you that still believes that it was somehow your responsibility,” Dr. Kinzler said.

“Look,” I said before Cynthia could respond. “It was a crank call. All sorts of people saw that show. It shouldn’t be a surprise that a few nutcases would come out of the woodwork.”

Dr. Kinzler sighed softly and looked at me. “Terry, maybe this would be a good time for Cynthia and me to speak one-on-one.”

“No, it’s okay,” Cynthia said. “He doesn’t have to go.”

“Terry,” Dr. Kinzler said, trying so hard to be patient that I could tell she was pissed, “of course it may have been a crank call, but what the caller said can trigger feelings in Cynthia just the same, and by understanding her reaction to those feelings we have a better chance of working through this.”

“What is it, exactly, we’re working through?” I asked. I wasn’t trying to be argumentative. I really wanted to know. “I’m not trying to be a jerk here, I guess I’ve just lost sight of the goal for the moment.”

“What we’re attempting to do here is help Cynthia deal with a traumatic incident in her childhood that’s resonating to this day, not just for her own sake, but for the sake of the relationship the two of you share.”

“Our relationship is fine,” I said.

“He doesn’t always believe me,” Cynthia blurted.

“What?”

“You don’t always believe me,” she said again. “I can tell. Like when I told you about the brown car. You don’t think there’s anything to it. And when that man called this morning, when you couldn’t find it in the call history, you wondered whether there’d even been a call.”

“I never said that,” I said. I looked at Dr. Kinzler, as if she were a judge and I a defendant desperate to prove his innocence. “That’s not true. I never said anything like that at all.”

“But I know you were thinking it,” Cynthia said, but there was no anger in her voice. She reached over and touched my arm. “And honestly, I don’t entirely blame you. I know what I’ve been like. I know I’ve been hard to live with. Not just these last few months, but ever since we got married. This has always hung over us. I try to put it away, like trying to put it in the closet, but every once in a while, it’s like I open that door by mistake and everything spills out. When we met-”

“Cynthia, you don’t-”

“When we met, I knew getting close to you would only bring you some of the pain I’d been feeling, but I was selfish. I wanted to share your love so desperately, even if that meant you’d have to share my pain.”

“Cynthia.”

“And you’ve been so patient, you really have. And I love you for it. You have to be the most patient man in the world. If I were you, I’d be exasperated with me, too. Get over it, right? It happened a long time ago. Like Pam said. Just get the fuck over it.”

“I’ve never said anything like that.”

Dr. Kinzler watched us.

“Well, I’ve said it to myself,” Cynthia said. “Hundreds of times. And I wish I could. But sometimes, and I know this is going to sound crazy…”

Dr. Kinzler and I were both very quiet.

“Sometimes, I hear them. I can hear them talking, my mother, my brother. Dad. I can hear them like they’re right here in the room with me. Just talking.”

Dr. Kinzler spoke up first. “Do you talk back?”

“I think so,” Cynthia said.

“Are you dreaming when this happens?” Dr. Kinzler asked.

Cynthia pondered. “I must be. I mean, I don’t hear them right now.” She cracked a sad smile. “I didn’t hear them in the car on the way over.”

Inside, I breathed a sigh of relief.

“So maybe it’s when I’m sleeping, or daydreaming. But it’s like they’re around me, like they’re trying to talk to me.”

“What are they trying to say?” Dr. Kinzler asked.

Cynthia took her hand off my arm and linked her own fingers together in her lap. “I don’t know. It varies. Sometimes, it’s just talk. About nothing in particular. About what we’re having for dinner, or what’s on TV, nothing important. And then other times…”

I must have looked as though I was about to say something, because Dr. Kinzler shot me another look. But I wasn’t. My mouth had opened in anticipation, wondering what Cynthia was going to say. This was the first I’d heard her speak about hearing members of her family speak to her.

“Other times, I think they’re asking me to join them.”

“Join them?” Dr. Kinzler said.

“To come and be with them, so that we can all be a family again.”

“What do you say?” Dr. Kinzler asked.

“I tell them I want to go, but I can’t.”

“Why?” I asked.

Cynthia looked into my eyes and smiled sadly. “Because where they are, I might not be able to take you and Grace with me.”

“What if I skipped all this other stuff, and just did it right away?” he asked. “Then I could come home.”

“No no no,” she said, almost in a scolding tone. She took a moment, tried to let the calm wash over her. “I know you’d like to come back. There’s nothing I’d like more. But we need to get these other things out of the way first. You mustn’t be impatient. There were times, when I was younger, when I was a bit impetuous, too impulsive. I know now it’s better to take the time to do something right.”

She could hear him sigh at the other end of the line. “I don’t want to screw it up,” he said.

“And you won’t. You’ve always been a pleaser, you know. It’s nice to have at least one in the house.” Half a chuckle. “You’re a good boy, and I love you more than you’ll ever know.”

“I’m not really a boy anymore.”

“And I’m no little girl anymore either, but I’ll always think of how you were when you were younger.”

“It’s going to feel weird…doing it.”

“I know. But that’s what I’m trying to tell you. If you’re patient, when the time comes, once the stage is set, it’ll seem like the most natural thing in the world.”