“He was your counselor,” Annie remembered. “You used to go see him three times a week.”
“Yes, and every time I told him I thought I was ready to taper off, he’d tell me I wasn’t. He’d point out weaknesses in my behavior, tell me that he was worried about you and Cole and what would happen to you if I didn’t get myself under control. He told me that God was guiding him, and assured me that he’d stand right there beside me, holding my hand for as long as it took because God told him to do so. He said he had my back. When in truth he had his own. As long as I needed him, he was important.”
“Damn him.” The words were no less intense for their softness. Annie wanted to kill the man.
“I wish I could tell you that I caught on eventually, that I ended the sessions.”
“How could you? He was your minister. A man of God. Your counselor and confidant, and he was telling you that in his professional and spiritual opinion, you were sick.”
“I could have listened a little less to him and a little more to my own heart,” June said.
Annie couldn’t argue with that. And at the same time, she could understand how that hadn’t been possible, given the circumstances. June had not only been dealing with guilt. And confusion. She’d just lost her partner. The love of her life. In a very difficult way.
“So what happened?”
“Several of the ladies in our women’s circle began to get suspicious. Apparently Wayne had pulled the same thing on a mother who’d lost her child a few years before, and the poor thing ended up in a psychiatric ward. They started asking me about my sessions with him. Asked me if I’d tape one of them. I did.”
“And that was it?”
“Of course not,” June said, her hand shaking as she raised her cup to her lips. “It was much uglier and harder than that. We couldn’t use the tape to implicate him. He didn’t give me permission to tape the session, and I wasn’t acting on behalf of an officer of the law. What the tape did was allow my friends to point out to me what was happening. It took a while for me to really see and believe what was going on. And another several months before I could stand before a board and go head-to-head with him, confronting him with what he’d done.”
Annie was completely shocked. “You did that?”
Nodding, June didn’t look up. “Hard to believe, huh?”
Annie had never disliked herself as much as she did in that moment. All the recriminations she’d heaped on her sweet mother’s head. The blame for a life that wasn’t as she’d expected it to be. When all the while June had been fighting an unseen battle that could have robbed her of her very ability to function.
Fighting and winning.
For herself.
And her children.
“You never said anything.”
“Why would I? You and Cole had your own things to deal with. You didn’t need to know how badly I’d let myself down.”
Maybe not. Maybe at the time Annie had been so locked in her own grief that she wouldn’t have been able to accept her mother’s situation as she could now. She would probably have run scared, knowing that not only her father, but her mother, too, had deep emotional issues.
But then, who didn’t? Dazed, confused, Annie sat there, processing what she’d heard. Seeing her entire life change before her eyes as she realized that she’d created a reality in her thirteen-year-old mind, one that she carried with her still, and it didn’t even exist. There was no set expectation in society of what it took to be emotionally healthy. She’d only thought there was. And had spent her entire life trying to be that.
When, in truth, every single human being on the planet had emotional issues of some kind or other at some point in their lives. It was all part of the human experience.
Wasn’t it?
Or was she getting this wrong, too? Justifying action to fit into some logical place? Because of some issue of her own. Some need to have everything cleanly in a place, making sense. As if she could somehow keep control of life—of the potential for pain—if she could do so.
Annie’s thoughts flew all over the place, bewildering her. Was she having an epiphany? Finally coming fully to life? Or was she losing whatever hold she’d had on her mind? Was she finally losing it? Just as she’d always feared she would?
“All I ever wanted was to be a wife and mother and take care of your father and you kids,” June said. “He was a good man, Annie. A loving man. He was such a gifted artist. You used to love to watch him work, do his carving. Do you remember that?”
Annie couldn’t remember that at all. Could scarcely think of her father without seeing that bloodstain on the floor of the workroom out back.
“He was sick. He had a disorder that, today, they’ve been able to attribute to biological and physiological causes. Chromosomal imbalances, I think.”
He’d been manic depressive. Annie knew that much.
“Do you ever regret marrying him?” She yearned for the answer in ways she didn’t understand. “Or loving him?”