Getting to her feet, she stretched, and went to the front door. Stepping outside, she took in the damp air and the smell of the ocean.

It’s all about memory, she told herself. About Nikki’s confabulations, and Duran’s. Doctor Shaw was the Memory King, and if he couldn’t help her, no one could. But would he?

She took in another lungful of salt air, and returned to the kitchen, passing Duran on the way. “You want some coffee?” she asked. He shook his head, caught up in the histrionics of a soap opera.

In the kitchen, she made a cup of instant coffee, and sat down in front of the laptop. Logging onto the Web, she ran a search in Dogpile, telling it to fetch pseudomemory. A minute later, she had dozens of hits, most of which revolved around the use of hypnosis to “recover” memories of alleged sexual abuse—precisely what had happened with Nikki. The phenomenon appeared to be epidemic, the debate intense. There were even dueling nonprofits: the False Memory Foundation, which set out to debunk such accounts, and Believe the Children (Inc.), which sought to shore them up. Nikki, she remembered, had left some money in her will to the latter.

By now, the “recovery” of memories had become so commonplace—and so controversial—that The National Association of Psychology had instituted guidelines. First, therapists should be on guard against unconsciously guiding their clients toward the “discovery” of long-repressed incidents of abuse—which, in fact, may never have occurred.

A second guideline suggested that therapists should be aware that memories recovered through the use of guided imagery or hypnosis were likely to be challenged in court—should any litigation occur. Since these “memory enhancing” techniques had been shown to increase “suggestibility” and the formation of pseudomemories, most insurance companies now required that sessions of this kind be taped for the protection of the therapist.

And, in fact, it was this very practice that won the Brewster case. According to The American Lawyer:

Adrienne shut down the laptop, got up and stretched. The pounding of the surf was beginning to get on her nerves.

“Hey,” she called to Duran. “You awake?”

He appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, looking rumpled and sleepy. “More or less.”

“You know those tapes you made?” she asked.

“For the insurance company?”

Adrienne nodded. “I was wondering if you could call about them. Maybe you could get copies.”

Duran gave her a quizzical look. “You mean… now?”

She looked him up and down. “Well… yeah, now. Unless you’re too busy—”

He glanced at his watch, gave her a lazy smile. “I guess I’ve got a little window here.” Going into the living room, he picked up the remote and turned off the TV. Then he went to the phone, and called Information. Five minutes later, she heard him say, “Just don’t turn me over to the machine, okay? Because I already made this call once. I want you to check Mutual General Assurance, all right? M-G-A. Mutual General Assurance anything. Limited. Inc. Company. Whatever.” He listened in silence for a while, and then hung up.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“I can’t get a number for the company. Which doesn’t make sense, because I know the address. I mean, I sent tapes out two or three times a week. In fact—” he patted the pockets of his sports jacket. “I’ve still got one.” He removed a cassette from his inside jacket pocket, and laid it down on the counter. “I never got a chance to mail it, but… I know the address: 1752 Avenue of the Americas. Suite 1119. It’s… Manhattan.”

“Let me look it up,” she suggested, and turned to the laptop. “Anywho’ll have it.”

“Mutual General Assurance,” he said. “Not Insurance. A—”

“I know,” she said. “I heard you.” As the modem dialed into the Web, she picked up the pill bottle she’d found in the computer’s case, and held it out between her forefinger and thumb. “You know anything about this?” she asked.

He took the bottle from her and examined it while she searched the Web for Mutual General Assurance. Finally, he put the bottle back down on the counter, and shook his head. “Maybe it’s some kind of clinical trial,” he suggested. “Though… ‘Placebo 1’? I don’t think so.”

“Maybe she went to an herbalist,” Adrienne supposed.

“You think?”

She put the vial in her pocket and shrugged. She was thinking, Maybe I’ll get the pills analyzed… The blue bar completed its slow crawl across the bottom of the screen, and a list of insurance companies snapped onto the page in front of her. All in all, there were nine listings for companies whose names contained some combination of the words Mutual, General and Assurance. But there was no Mutual General Assurance Company, or anything like it, in New York State.

“Take a look,” she said, as Duran leaned over her shoulder and studied the screen. She scrolled down. “Worth calling them?”

He shook his head. “No. Different name, different address. There’s no point. If we had to, we could go to New York, but…”

“What’s on this tape, anyway?” she asked, tapping it with her fingernail.

“A client. Dutch guy.” As soon as he said it, his face turned ashen. “Oh, Jesus! What’s today?”

“Monday.”

He looked stricken. Turned on his heel. Turned back again. Ran his hand through his hair. “This is not good,” he told her.

“What isn’t?”

“I missed my appointment!” Duran glanced at the ceiling, and sighed.

“No kidding.”

He didn’t hear the sarcasm in her voice. He was beyond it. “Disappearing like this—I don’t know what he’ll do. The relationship between a client and his therapist… sometimes it’s the only relationship they trust! You break that trust and—”

“Earth to Duran?” Her fingers enclosed “Duran” in quotes. “You’re not a therapist, remember? In fact, you’re not even Duran. We don’t know who you are. You’re a—a ‘disturbed person’ with bogus credentials. This Dutch guy? Trust me: he’ll be okay without you!”

He looked at her for a long moment, seemingly confused, then flopped down on the couch in front of the television. “Y’know something?” he asked. “You can be a real bitch when you want to.”

The remark took her by surprise, and she started to laugh. He was right, of course.

Then he reactivated the sound on the TV, and disappeared behind a wall of chitchat. It was a talk show of some kind—Jenny Jones or Ricki Lake or Sally Jessy—Adrienne didn’t know the players. And she didn’t care. But it was interesting in its own way. A couple of dirt bags were sitting together on chairs, sharing a smirk of guilty pleasure. Their eyes shone as the women in the audience swayed and bounced, faces contorted, shouting, hooting, and rolling their eyes.

What had he called it? Adrienne wondered. What was the term Shaw used? A pseudotherapeutic conspiracy… Live, in your own living room.