LISA

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I was in the kitchen cooking when she woke up.

Jennie had fallen asleep with wet hair, and it had dried with the side she'd slept on pressed flat to her face and the other side all curly and wild. It was a mess, yet to me she'd never looked more beautiful. I was so relieved she was okay.

I turned down the flame on the stove and wiped my hands on a dishtowel. "That was a good nap."

She walked over and peeked at what was cooking on the stove. "What are you making? It smells so good."

I lifted the lid off a pan. "Chicken piccata."

"It looks delicious, too. I didn't even realize I had the ingredients to make that."

I chuckled. "You didn't. I snuck out while you were snoring and picked up chicken, olive oil, and some spices. The only spices I could find in your cabinets were cinnamon and red pepper."

"Yeah. Rosé was the cook of the house. They were all hers. She wanted to leave them here, but I snuck them into a box when she wasn't paying attention. Figured they'd go to waste here."

I pulled her into my arms and brought her against my chest. "How do you feel?"

"I'm still tired. But better. How long was I asleep?"

I looked at my watch. "About six hours. It's almost four thirty."

"Oh. Wow."

"Are you hungry?"

"Yeah. Actually, I am."

I smiled. "Good. I'll finish up, and we can eat an early dinner."

Jennie went to wash up and came back out looking around the room. "Did you see my phone? I think it broke during the accident. I tried to fiddle with it in the emergency room and it wouldn't turn on, but I'm hoping maybe it will come back to life when I charge it."

I pointed with a fork to a bag on the counter. "I slipped it out of your bag while you were sleeping and picked you up a new one. It's in the box up there. They said they loaded everything from your old one, but you might want to check that because the sales clerk at Best Buy looked about fifteen, and the whole data transfer only took about five minutes."

"Oh, you didn't have to do that."

"I wanted to."

Jennie was quiet throughout dinner. She still seemed off to me, but I'd never been in a serious accident before and figured it was probably normal to be shaken up a bit. After we ate, she called Rosé to tell her what happened, and I could hear her freaking out through the phone.

Later, Jennie was still quiet.

"Are you sure you're feeling okay?" I asked.

She looked away and nodded. "Want to watch a movie?"

I smirked. "Disney? Sure."

Jennie forced a smile. "Not tonight." She sat down on the couch and started to scroll through Netflix, then Hulu, and finally HBO on Demand. Sighing, she extended the remote to me. "You pick something."

Second to porn, I preferred action movies. But I didn't think car chases and shit blowing up was the best thing to put on right now. "Do you like Will Smith?"

"Yeah."

"When in doubt, Will Smith." I pointed the remote to the TV and went back to Netflix. After a search by actor name, I said, "Pick one."

She shrugged. "Any is fine."

I didn't want to keep on bugging her, but she really seemed off—almost depressed. The Pursuit of Happyness was the first movie on the list, so I picked that, even though I'd already watched it. I lifted Jennie's feet onto my lap and guided her to lie back so I could give her a foot rub.

The movie was about a down-and-out dad who winds up homeless with his son while he takes a non-paying job in an attempt to make something of himself and better their future. It was a drama, based on a true story, and parts of it were sad. But at one point, I looked over and found tears streaming down Jennie's face. She hadn't even made a sound. I grabbed the remote and put the movie on hold.

"Hey." I scooped her up from the couch and cradled her in my arms. "What's going on? Are you okay?"

She nodded but kept looking down at her lap.

I gave her some time, but she never made eye contact or started to talk, so I put two fingers under her chin and guided her face up to look at me. What I saw caused an ache in my chest. Her eyes were filled with pain, her face completely distraught.

"Talk to me. What's going on? Are you in pain? Are you having flashbacks to the accident?"

She started to cry even harder. "I…I don't want to lose you."

I brushed hair from her face and slid my hands down to cup her cheeks. "Lose me? You're not going to lose me. Why would you think that?"

Jennie reached up and covered my hands at her cheeks with hers. "Lisa…I'm…"

"What?"

She shook her head and closed her eyes. "I'm…pregnant, Lisa."

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One minute I'm in her apartment, watching her sleep and thinking I should tell her I love her when she wakes up, and then the next I'm out the door like the fucking coward I am.

I didn't yell or argue. Maybe I was in a state of shock…I don't know. But I also couldn't console her or tell her everything was going to be okay. Because it wasn't. It wasn't fucking okay.

I waited until after Jennie calmed down, and then told her I needed to go. She wanted to know where I was going, but I had no idea. The truth was, I just needed to be anywhere but there.

I motioned to the bartender by holding up my empty glass and rattling around the ice that hadn't had time to melt.

"Another one already?"

I took out my billfold and peeled off three hundred-dollar bills. "The hundred should cover all my drinks. Other two are for you if my glass is never empty."

The bartender, who I'd started calling Joe—yet I wasn't sure if he had told me that was his name or I'd made it up in my head—refilled my glass. "You got it."

I sat at the bar and drank three more vodka tonics. I'd never been a big drinker, so four had me starting to see double—which was exactly the state I was going for. The dingy bar I'd wandered into a few blocks from Jennie's place had emptied out, except for an old guy parked at the other end of the bar. The bartender came over and took my glass, which was still about a quarter of the way full. He dumped out the ice and poured me a fresh one. Setting it in front of me, he leaned an elbow on the bar.

"For that kind of a tip, I also provide an ear to listen to the story about whatever went down that brought you here today."

I lifted the newly filled glass and some of it sloshed on the bar. "Maybe I'm just an alcoholic."

Joe smirked. "Nah. Your tolerance is shit."

"Maybe I'm just broke and down on my luck."

"Nah. Broke guys don't carry around a wad of hundreds and look like you do."

"And what exactly do I look like?"

Joe shrugged. "Want the truth?"

"Sure."

He looked over the bar and sized me up. "Clean pants, nice shoes, polo with that fancy whale embroidered on it, and a money clip. You look like a rich asshole who probably grew up with a silver spoon in her hand."

I burst into laughter that wasn't the funny kind. Silver spoon. That was exactly what Jennie had said in that very first email that started it all.

I drank more of my drink. "Maybe you're both right."

The bartender's brows drew together. Though he didn't give a shit enough to ask what the hell I was talking about. "So, not broke, not an alcoholic, that leaves the obvious—the reason half the guys come in here to get plastered. Trouble at home. Am I right?"

I grumbled. "Something like that."

"The trouble with trouble is that it starts out disguised as fun."

I'd never heard it put that way, but there was a lot of truth in that statement. "You're a wise man, Joe."

The bartender smiled. "Name's Ben. But for two hundred bucks, you can call me Shirley. I don't give a shit. I'm divorced twice, and my advice probably isn't worth shit. But here it is anyway. If she makes you smile before you have coffee in the morning and you don't have to knock back a few drinks to get in the mood when she's around, she's a keeper. Get some flowers from the twenty-four-hour bodega down the block, and go home and apologize. Doesn't matter who was right or wrong."

If only it were that simple. "You're right, Joe."

The bartender straightened up. "So you're heading home?"

"No. Your advice isn't worth shit."

..

Where the hell am I?

I lifted my head, and it felt like some of the skin on my cheek stayed on the thick plastic I'd been sleeping on. I rose up to an elbow and looked around. I was in some sort of a waiting room, and it looked industrial. But I had no fucking clue where I was or how the hell I'd gotten here.

"You're at Patton State Hospital," a deep voice said from nearby.

Patton. What the fuck was I doing anywhere near this damn place? I followed the direction of the sound and found a well-dressed man sitting a few chairs away. He closed what looked like a chart he'd been working on and folded his hands on his lap. "I'm Dr. Booth."

The name rang a bell, but it took me a second to figure out why over the pounding in my head. I sat up and realized for the first time that I'd been sprawled out over a few folding chairs with plastic-covered, cushioned bottoms.

My hand reached for the side of my head once I was upright. "Did I get hurt?"

"Not that I'm aware of, other than what I suspect might be a little alcohol poisoning from overconsumption."

Fuck. My head is really killing me. And what the hell was I doing at Patton? "Do you know how I got here?"

"The guard asked you that when you came in. You told him Uber."

I went to nod, but raising my head and lowering it hurt too fucking much. I racked my brain, trying to remember the events of last night. I remembered being at a bar, and I remembered some guy helping me to a car after he locked the door. Joe? Maybe his name was Joe. Yeah, that was it. He was the bartender, and I'd walked out with him at closing time. Damn…that means I was drinking until four in the morning. No wonder I don't remember shit.

"Did we meet earlier?" I asked Dr. Booth.

He smiled. "No. This is the first time we've met. You came in about five thirty this morning and asked to see one of my patients. All visits require the inmate's psychiatrist's approval. The guards knew you were drunk and turned you away. But they called me to let me know what had happened, and I asked them to let you sleep it off in the waiting room, at least until visiting hours start at noon. The hospital allows visitors twenty-four hours a day, but the correctional facility ward follows state prison protocol when it comes to letting people in."

"What time is it?"

He looked at his watch. "Ten fifteen."

I raked a hand through my hair. Even touching the strands hurt. "I take it you're Lily's doctor?"

He nodded. "I am. Lily tried to get you to come see her for the first four years of her admission here. You never would respond to any of my messages or her letters. So I was curious what made you come by today. But by the time I got here, you were out cold."

"You've been sitting there for four hours waiting for me to wake up?"

He smiled. "No. When I saw your condition, I made my morning rounds and told the guard to page me if you woke up. I came back after I finished to work on some of my charts." He pointed his eyes down to a stack of thick manila folders on the chair next to him.

"Why?"

"Why what? Why did I ask the guards to let you sleep it off, or why am I here working on my charts?"

I shook my head. "All of it."

"Well, like I said, I was curious about you. And Lily is still my patient. She's made great progress over the years, but I often learn things from family members that help me in treatment. When she was first admitted, she signed a release that all of her medical information could be discussed with you. Every year we go over her permissions on file. It's been seven years, and she still hasn't withdrawn permission for me to discuss her health with you. So I'm legally free to discuss her case. I thought it also might be helpful for me to understand why it was you were here to see her today."

"When she was first admitted? She wasn't admitted to the hospital, Doc. She was sentenced—to twenty-five damn years. And you people keep her here to do easy time. She deserves to be locked in a cell, just like all the other murderers."

"I see. Did you come today to speak to her?"

I cleared my throat. My mouth was so damn dry. "No. I have no desire to see her. Or help her. I don't know what the hell I was thinking last night, or this morning—whenever I showed up. But it was a mistake."

Dr. Booth examined my face and nodded. "I understand. But perhaps you and I could still talk." He stood. "How do you take your coffee? Let me at least give you some caffeine and Tylenol. It looks like you could use both."

The thought of standing made me feel nauseous, much less jumping in a cab and taking the hour-and-a-half ride back home. I rubbed the back of my neck. "Yeah. Alright. I could use some coffee before I get out of here. Black, please."

The doc disappeared and came back a few minutes later with two Styrofoam cups and a small packet of Tylenol.

"Thank you."

He took a seat across from me and stayed quiet, watching me.

"I don't normally do this. Haven't tied one on like that since college."

Dr. Booth nodded. "Did something happen that set you off? Drinking and showing up here, I mean?"

"Nothing that has to do with Lily." Or everything that has to do with my ex-wife.

"We can talk about whatever you like. It doesn't have to be about Lily."

I scoffed. "No, but I'm sure you'd psychoanalyze anything I say to relate it back to her. Isn't that what shrinks do? Find a cause for everything that happens so there's someone or something to blame other than their patient? A man murders another man while robbing him—his father molested him, so it's his father's fault. Not the crack he smoked an hour before because he's an addict. A woman kills her own child—she shouldn't be blamed because she's depressed. We're all fucking depressed at some point in our lives, Doc."

The doc sipped his coffee. "I wasn't planning on psychoanalyzing you. I figured if you were here, you could use someone to talk to. I'm not your doctor, but you're seems in need. That's all."

Well, now I felt like shit. I raked a hand through my hair. "Sorry."

"It's fine. Trust me, I don't get offended easily. Hazard of the career. Most people who show up at my door aren't there because they want to be. Either the court or their family forced their hand. It's not uncommon for me to be told to fuck off because I'm an asshole in the first fifteen minutes of a session."

I smiled. "I'm usually good at holding my tongue for the first half hour of a meeting."

Dr. Booth smiled back. "May I ask you a personal question?"

I shrugged. "Go for it. It doesn't mean I have to answer."

He shook his head. "No, it doesn't. Are you married?"

"No."

"In a relationship?"

I thought of Jennie. I was. Or am I? I don't fucking know. "I've been seeing someone, yes."

"Are you happy?"

Another loaded question I couldn't answer easily. "It's hard to be happy when you've lost a child. But, yeah…Jennie makes me happy." I shook my head. "For the first time in seven damn years."

Doc was quiet for a long time again. "Is it possible you came today because you want forgiveness so you can move on?"

I felt the veins in my neck pulse with anger. "Lily doesn't deserve forgiveness."

Dr. Booth caught my eyes. "I wasn't referring to Lily. Forgiveness is something you have to find within yourself. No one can give that to you. Yes, I believe your ex-wife suffers from bipolar disorder that caused her behavior to be manic, and that, coupled with severe postpartum depression, made her do something unthinkable, but you don't need to agree with me in order to find forgiveness. Forgiveness doesn't excuse Lily's behavior. Forgiveness allows that behavior to not destroy your heart anymore."

I tasted salt in the back of my mouth. I'd cried enough in the last seven years; I wasn't about to sit in the same building my ex-wife breathed in and shed any more tears. I cleared my throat, hoping to swallow my emotions.

"I know you mean well, Doc. And I appreciate it. I really do… But Lily doesn't deserve forgiveness." I shook my head. "I should really get going. Thanks for the coffee and Tylenol."

I stood and extended my hand to Dr. Booth. When he clasped mine, he again looked into my eyes. "I don't think you want to forgive Lily. I think you want to forgive yourself. You did nothing wrong, Lisa. Give yourself that forgiveness and move on. Sometimes people don't allow themselves to forgive because they're afraid they'll forget—forgive and forget. But you'll never forget Leilani. You just need to realize there's room in your heart for more than one person again."

"Tell her to stop writing the letters, Doc."

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