“What do you mean?” he stammered.

“You said that you’ve seen me at your neighbor’s house twice in the past couple of days. I’m wondering whether that is the reason that we’re talking today, or whether you had been considering asking me for help prior to that.”

Shit. By babbling on, I’d just given him a road map for how to respond.

No surprise, Bill consulted the map before he replied. “I’d been considering it. Seeing you next door brought everything closer to the surface, a lot of old memories, unresolved, you know, feelings about… what’s happened, so I decided to call and set something up. But I feel I deserve an explanation as to why you’ve been in my neighborhood so much. I do.”

Did he deserve an explanation? It was an interesting question. Were I truly interested in buying Doyle’s house, that would potentially make me Bill Miller’s next-door neighbor. If he and I were neighbors, the dual-relationships ethical restriction would definitely kick in: Preexisting therapeutic relationship or no preexisting therapeutic relationship, missing daughter or no missing daughter, I certainly could not provide psychotherapy to my next-door neighbor.

I decided to provide just enough of an explanation to allay his concerns.

“Bill, I can assure you that my presence at your next-door neighbor’s house had nothing to do with you or your family.”

Was that really true? I actually wasn’t sure.

“Are you thinking of buying that house?” Bill asked.

An easy question, finally. “No, I’m not.”

“You were there with the woman who is listing that house.”

“I’ll repeat what I said. I’m not considering buying the house.”

“Then why were you with her?”

“My presence had no direct relevance to you or your family.” Did it have indirect relevance? The question of indirect relevance had to do with Bob Brandt and the conversations he’d had with Mallory through the fence. The answer to the question of indirect relevance was either all chronicled in the pages in the Kinko’s box Bob had given me, or it wasn’t. My money was still riding on “wasn’t.” Barely.

I went on. “Assuming for a moment that we each decide that we are comfortable working together…”

“Yes,” Bill said.

“How can I be of help?” A quick glance at the clock told me we had precious little time remaining until my twelve thirty showed up in the waiting room.

“I’m under a lot of stress.”

I can only imagine.

“I’m not sleeping. I’m losing weight; I don’t have any appetite at all.”

Likely culprits for that constellation of symptoms? Depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress. Given the circumstances of Bill’s life, there were no surprises on that list. The most natural thing for me to do at that moment would have been to presuppose the source of Bill Miller’s symptoms. I cautioned myself not to do it.

I pressed him, wondering aloud what he thought was going on. He responded with generalities about “events” and “the kids” and “work.” I tried for some clarification. He eluded me.

Was I observing resistance-that psychotherapeutic Great Wall that separates so many patients from the issues that are most tender to them? Possibly. I decided to challenge the resistance a little. “How was she feeling, Bill?”

“My daughter?”

Not Mallory. My daughter. I nodded.

“The holidays are hard for her. Always. This year, too. They haven’t been fun for her since…”

I filled in the blanks with her mother left.

“Hard how?” I asked.

“She gets nervous. Withdrawn, irritable. She’s definitely a teenager.”

Bill had grown anxious and withdrawn, too. As I considered the fact that the media had failed to report any details of Mallory’s troubled holiday mood, and as the final moments of our appointment time dripped away, I decided not to test the flexibility of Bill’s resistance any further. We made tentative plans to meet again the following Monday. I told him that I’d call him if I ultimately decided that my ethical concerns were so grave that I couldn’t proceed.

Bill Miller left my office that day without having once spoken aloud his daughter’s name.

Was it too painful for him?

I didn’t know.

To my relief, my note on the door worked and none of Diane’s patients camped out in the waiting room.

Until four o’clock.

At four o’clock, I walked out to retrieve my scheduled patient but was greeted not by one person eager to see me, but by two.

The unexpected person was the woman with the cheddar-colored hair who had been so insistent on seeing her therapist on the day that Hannah Grant died. I recalled that Diane had told me that she had begun seeing the woman for psychotherapy. Was she there for her appointment?

I told the young man whom I was scheduled to see at that hour that I would be back with him in just a moment, and invited the Cheetos lady to come down the hall. We walked halfway to my office, far enough to be out of earshot of the waiting room, before I asked, “Did you see my note on the door about Dr. Estevez? She can’t be here today.”

“I saw your stupid note. I have a right to know what’s going on.”

In the weeks since Hannah’s death this woman had not shed any of her petulance. “She’s unfortunately away unexpectedly,” I said, stumbling over the adverbs I was stringing together.

“What does that mean?”

“She’ll call you when she’s back in the office.”

“That’s what you said about Hannah.”

She was right. That is what I’d said about Hannah.

“I’m sorry.” I was sorry. “I don’t know what else to say. I’m sure, given what tragically happened with Ms. Grant, that this is especially difficult for you.”

I didn’t know what else to say. I was also running out of big adverbs.

“How long has she been gone?”

“I’m afraid I’m not in a position to answer that question.”

“Then change your damn position.”

The top of her frizzy head reached just about to the level of my chin. Her hair had a scent that I associated with bad Indian restaurants. “I’m available for-”

“I don’t care what you’re available for. Have you checked Diane’s office?”

Diane, not Dr. Estevez. “There’s no need to check her office.”

“Then you know where she is. Tell me what the hell is going on.”

“I’m sorry that Dr. Estevez isn’t here for your appointment. She’ll call you as soon as she is free to do so. I have someone I have to see now. Please excuse me.”

I led her back toward the waiting room.

“This isn’t going to stop here,” the woman said before she left.

Before I retrieved my patient, I rushed back down the hall, grabbed my keys, and opened Diane’s office door. I was so relieved that it was empty.

“Jay?” I said to my four o’clock after I’d recovered my composure and returned to the waiting room. “Why don’t you come on back? I’m sorry for the late start.”

My last appointment of the day was scheduled to begin at five o’clock. I took a deep breath, reassured myself that the finish line of my day’s therapy marathon was only forty-five minutes away, and made the stroll down the hallway. Once again, though, I found two people, not one, waiting for me.

One was my five o’clock. She was a thirty-eight-year-old woman whom I’d successfully helped with depression a year before, but who was back in my care to try to stave off a recurrence of her profound melancholy after a recent diagnosis of breast cancer. She had a PIC line in her upper arm and was in the interlude between her first and second rounds of chemo. She was sitting in the waiting room with her hands folded in her lap, her eyes closed, meditating, I supposed, on some aspect of life’s caprice.

At that moment my empathy for her was even more acute than usual.