I was challenging Bob much more than I usually did. For many patients, perhaps most, my insistence on talking more about Doyle and the garage would not have been perceived as much of a confrontation. But Bob was feeling pressured by my persistence and he was figuratively reaching out behind him, searching for the perimeter of the corner I was edging him toward. His breathing grew more rapid and his normally pale cheeks drained even further of color.

“Yes,” he said, but it was tentative. His defenses were much more nimble than I would have predicted.

As I swallowed a silent question to myself about whether my persistence was really therapeutically indicated, I made the point I’d been leading up to for minutes, “And I thought you were implying that you’re concerned about Mallory.”

He snapped back, “Isn’t everyone?”

Another good reply. I was impressed, but perhaps I shouldn’t have been. The one thing that schizoid personalities usually have mastered is distancing behavior.

Two years and counting and I was still learning things about Bob.

The banter was therapeutically enlightening, but I wasn’t about to be deterred from my quest to understand more about his surprising revelations about Doyle, and his intimations about Mallory. “Earlier in the week-when you played the song?-shortly after you mentioned the guy you rent the garage from, you specifically expressed concern about Mallory, and talked about the writing you’re doing. And today you said, ‘It’s not safe yet.’ ”

“So?”

“What connects Doyle’s garage, your writing, and Mallory?”

Bob’s mouth was open about half an inch and he’d thrust his jaw so far forward that it momentarily appeared as though he had a chin. He said, “She’s been gone a… while. Everyone’s concerned. I bet even you are. Aren’t you?”

Even me? “Bob, this is important. Do you know if Doyle has anything to do with Mallory’s disappearance?”

He shook his head. “You never really know about people, do you? You think you know… but then,” he said, his voice unsteady. “I think… things always turn out to be different.”

Bob’s platitude was true, of course. And Bob’s psychopathology probably left him more vulnerable to doubt about other people’s motives than most of us. But I also knew that Bob’s statement hadn’t been an invitation to parse psychological principles. I asked, “What are you thinking specifically?”

“Nothing,” he said. Then he added, with a side of sarcasm, “My mother.”

I went back to the beginning. “Why don’t you tell me about Doyle?”

Bob stuck his tongue between his teeth. When he released it, he said, “I know her. Mallory. I didn’t think you’d…”

What? You didn’t think I’d what?

I know her. Mallory.

Interesting non sequitur. Or apparent non sequitur. He hadn’t answered my question about Doyle. Instead, he’d turned my attention back to Mallory.

Or… perhaps talking about Mallory was his way of talking about Doyle.

Patience, Alan.

“You do?” I asked. “You know her?” Despite what I’d learned about the location of the garage, and about Doyle, I wouldn’t have guessed that Bob knew Mallory. Why?

Because Bob was Bob.

“We talked. While I was working at Doyle’s. She’d come by sometimes. She was curious what we were doing. She liked the fish. And the waterfall. She said she could hear the water running from her bedroom window. I saw her up there sometimes. At her window. When Doyle wasn’t home she’d go down and sit by the pond and watch the fish.”

Bob was having trouble stringing the short sentences together. Something was aggravating his natural wariness. Was it thoughts of Mallory?

Had to be. Or maybe Bob’s admission about Mallory was diversion? Was he uncomfortable talking about Doyle and was he taking me someplace he figured I’d willingly go instead? Was Bob that cunning? I didn’t think so, but I couldn’t rule it out.

“We talked through the fence,” he added, not waiting his turn. “A few different times.”

Not waiting his turn was another sign of his discomfort. The fact that he and Mallory talked through the fence? I suspected that the physical separation of the barrier made the conversation more palatable for Bob, maybe even made the conversation possible for Bob. Metaphorically, it was elegant.

But still… “Go on,” I said.

“She’s a nice girl.”

“And you spoke with her?”

“I have, yeah. A lot of times.”

Well, Bob, was it a “few times” or “a lot of times”?

He squinted his eyes and tightened his jaw. The grimace caused his chin to retreat. It looked for a moment as though his face just melted away half an inch below his lower lip. “She’s my… friend.”

As surprising as it might sound, the fact that Bob had personally met Mallory was merely a curiosity to me, another one of those “I know someone who” anecdotes that were still swirling around Boulder about the Millers. But the fact that he’d conversed with Mallory on a personal level? And multiple times? And that he considered her a friend? That was epiphany-quality news where Bob was concerned.

From what I knew about him socially-and before that day’s session had started, I thought I knew most of what there was to know-Bob didn’t have repeated personal conversations with people with whom he wasn’t somehow compelled to relate.

He just didn’t.

“She’s your friend? You talked about…?”

“I told you. The waterfall, the pond. The fish. She loved the waterfall. Other things. She likes my car.”

“Other things?” I was reaching. I knew I was reaching.

“Yeah.”

“Such as…?”

Another grimace. Then, again, “My mother.”

I went to safer ground. I didn’t want to. But I felt I would push him farther away if I came any closer. “And you thought she was nice?”

Shortly after the words exited my mouth, I realized that my caution had come too late and that our rat-a-tat conversation was over. Silence descended on the room the way darkness follows a closing curtain. I waited. Bob had started breathing through his mouth. Each exhale was accompanied by a faint whistle.

Finally he spoke. He said, “She doesn’t look fourteen.”

My spleen spasmed. At least I think it was my spleen-something in there suddenly got twisted into a big, fat knot. I hadn’t been aware that I didn’t want to hear those specific words from Bob, but now that he’d said them I knew that I hadn’t wanted to hear them.

“Time’s up,” he said.

I looked at the clock.

He was right. Time was up.

Didn’t matter to me. I needed some magic that would encourage Bob to stay and tell me what was haunting him. Because something was haunting him. I couldn’t find any magic, so I focused on what I feared: “You don’t think she looks fourteen?”

“Do you?” he asked.

Frankly, no. In Boulder, most eleven- and twelve-year-old girls look fourteen. Fourteen-year-old girls look, well, older-sometimes a lot older. Sometimes way too much older. But I wasn’t about to tell Bob that. I suspected his comment about Mallory’s age had little to do with musings about the sociological implications of the increasingly early psychosexual maturity of adolescent girls.

I said, “Bob, look at me. Please.”

He did, holding the connection for almost two entire seconds. I asked, “Do you know something about Mallory? Where she is? How she’s doing? Had she said something to you? Has Doyle?”

Way too many questions on my part. Way too many. A rational observer would have had a hard time determining who was more flustered at that moment, doctor or patient.

“Maybe you know something you should tell the police,” I added-my way of adjusting the seasoning on a therapeutic dish I was already responsible for overcooking.

Bob did the half head-shake thing again, this time minus the “sheeesh,” before he said, “I have to go.”