“I think you know what you feel,” he says.
I’m incredibly numb. “I feel nothing right now.”
“You’re a narcissist,” Frederick reminds me. “It’s hard for you to believe you failed, in any way, and so you make yourself believe you succeeded.”
“I did succeed,” I say. “My company—”
“How is Rose?” Frederick asks.
I shut down again, my body unbending. I thought Rose could handle the sex tapes if we benefited from them, but throughout the years, I’ve seen how the mere mention of them weakens her resolve. I forgot that she’s not like me. “What I want doesn’t go without consequence. I couldn’t dissolve the sex tapes so I profited off of them in another way.”
“And so did Scott,” Frederick says. “He’s the only person that has ever duped you in your entire life, Connor, and now he’s back.”
“I’m rethinking these meetings, Rick. I don’t pay you to tell me things I already know.”
“You pay me to remind you that you’re not inhuman and that you have feelings.”
I rub my lips and look at Jane for a moment, and she presses a button beside a picture of a cow. Mooo! She lifts the book to her ear at the noise and it falls from her clutch, thudding to the cushion. Still, she smiles.
I want her innocence intact as long as it should be. The thought of Scott even nearing her boils my blood, and the thought of anyone threatening her wellbeing—it’s inconceivable.
“I can’t shout. I can’t scream,” I tell Frederick. “I can’t beat at my chest and expect Scott to vanish.”
Rose nearly lost her voice after yelling at Scott that night. She also spent an hour scrubbing the soles of her feet in the bathroom—from walking barefoot on the road. She only stopped when I drew a bath for her and poured her a glass of wine.
I have to play this smart.
I run my finger over a scratch on the leather armrest. “I love nearly every game I play, even the recent ones with Rose.” The Celebrity Crush articles have their allure, especially when we can control the setting and the place and time. “But Scott is like swatting at a mosquito. He’s an annoyance, brainless but unyielding, and I receive no satisfaction from this game—I hate every fucking part of it.”
“You could pay him more than GBA is willing to give him—”
“No,” I cut him off. “That’s not even an option. Whatever I do, there will be no benefit for Scott. When I win, I’m not letting him win too.”
I imagine Jane, five-years-old and meeting Scott Van Wright as he swings back around, collecting more money, blackmailing us for more and more.
“I have to detach him from my family.”
“Just take it slowly,” Frederick advises, scrutinizing my features the way I did to him earlier. “You’re a new father, the head of a giant corporation, not to mention dealing with Jonathan Hale, now Scott, and you’re already in bed with the media.”
“First-world problems,” I quip.
He hops over that. “How is your relationship with the media going for Jane’s sake, by the way?”
“It’s still too early to tell.” I think back at how no one asked me about Jane when I entered this building. “But when there are other relevant stories, the cameras usually stay on me. When we do nothing during the week, they fixate on the children, grappling for something.”
“It’s risky,” Frederick says.
My lips rise. “Everything is a risk.”
“So you’re going to poke the beast?” His voice is even-tempered which lets me believe that he thinks it’s a decent idea, otherwise he’d be chastising me like, are you sure about this, Connor?
Irritation still grips my voice. “It’s better to poke the beast and let it eat me than wait for it to eat my child.”
Off my annoyance, he switches topics. “Are you sleeping well?”
I glance at the textbooks on his desk again. “Five hours a night, the usual.” I can run off that easily. “How many hours does Daisy sleep?”
“About the same.” His face hardens when he realizes his slip. “No.” He points a finger at me and rises from his seat, heading to the desk.
“I won’t tell anyone what you tell me.”
He ignores me, cleaning the file folders off his desk and stacking them in black metal drawers.
“I could help you,” I offer. “She’s a complex case, and it might be in her benefit to have two minds on the project instead of one.”
Frederick stiffens.
I’m getting somewhere. “It’s not uncommon for colleagues to discuss a patient’s case.”
“You’re not my colleague,” Frederick retorts.
“Only because I find this whole field boring, and to be honest, I’m overqualified for your job.” And then I add, “I could’ve withheld what happened with Scott and offered you a deal, to trade that for information about Daisy, but I did the noble thing. And right now, you’re telling me the noble thing has no rewards.” Then maybe I should revert to immoral tactics.
Frederick hesitates for a second before he concedes. “I want to put her on medication…but I can’t pick the right one if I’m not absolutely positive of all her symptoms and what they’re pointing me to. She’s been given pills that only treat a portion of what’s wrong with her, and they exacerbate her other issues…” He rests both hands on his desk and shakes his head. “I can’t tell, without absolute certainty, if she’s manic depressive or not.” He can’t discern whether her highs are really highs.
“Being around her for years, I can tell you that her bursts of energy are fronts. It’s not real, Frederick. It’s a façade. She’s not bipolar.”
Frederick isn’t so sure.
I realize that he’s not far into her case yet. He’s stuck at the beginning. I rise, lifting Jane in my arms. “Don’t watch her bounce around on television,” I advise. “Don’t look at her smiling in magazines. Daisy would rather trick herself into believing she’s okay than ruin the rest of our time worrying that she’s not.”
“And how do you know this?” he asks while I head to the door.
“I’ve mastered the art of hiding emotions.” She’s good, but she’s not better than me.
13
CONNOR COBALT
A marble chess set rests on our bed between us. Charcoal and ivory kings, queens, rooks, bishops, knights, and pawns line each side in correct order, the pieces like battlements and soldiers in combat.
Playing with Rose always seems like warfare. We never bring out board games to pass time. We play with stakes, so the loss feels like a loss and the win feels like a win. We play to achieve something greater.
Tonight is no different. If our pieces are captured, we have to remove an article of clothing or tell a truth.
I plan to have her naked.
She plans to have me stripped bare in other ways.
Three pawns removed, and I’m shirtless and she’s spilled two useless truths about middle school dances. Obviously, neither of us is obtaining what we desire.
I press my fingers to my lips, watching her shift on the bed. She knots the strap of her black silk robe tighter around her waist, hiding white lace lingerie that she only wears when she wants to tease me.