Lifelines: Kate's Story (46 page)

“What
did the fire department say? How did the fire start?”

“Arson.”

Fire
...

Rachel’s
nightmares.

No,
it couldn’t be.

But—

As
Kate buttered the toast, she framed her words carefully. “Tell me again exactly
what happened?”

Instead,
he pushed the soup aside. “There’s one thing I didn’t tell the authorities.”

Kate
folded her hands together and waited.

Mac
sat his bandaged forearm on the table, ran the fingers of the other hand
through his tousled hair. “When they questioned me about the fire ... I told them
Socrates woke me up, that we got out. Then later, when I thought about it ... I’d
been dreaming. Everything seemed tangled up with the dream ... I couldn’t get it
straight.”

She
captured his restless hand with both hers. “Mac—”

“The
fire was behind us and the door wouldn’t open. Dark, I couldn’t see anything,
just kept yanking on the knob. If I hadn’t realized the door was locked, we’d
still be in there.”

“You
must have locked it when you went to bed.”

“I
never do. With the outer gate locked, why would I bother?”

She
said, “That’s attempted murder.”

He
shook his head sharply. “That’s crazy. I was dreaming before the fire, and I
passed out when I got outside. I’m probably wrong about the door.” Mac reached
for his jacket where she’d hooked it on the clothes tree.

“Where
are you staying?”

“A
motel.”

They
stared at each other a moment too long.

He
said, “You regret our making love.”

“No
... yes. It’s complicated.”

“You
got me mixed up with David. I thought I could handle that. I planned to wear
you down with friendship, figured I had an ally in Socrates.”

Trapped
between honesty and ethics, she gave him silence.

Mac
said, “The truth is, it’s time I moved on.”

She
tilted her head back and wouldn’t allow tears. If she’d turned Rachel away
after that first session, she could have had Mac.

He
bent down to caress Socrates’ ears, then said, “Have a good life, Kate Taylor.
I’ll think of you.”

She
watched as his truck disappeared down the drive. From the rising cloud of dust,
she knew he’d turned left at the bottom, away from the house he built. She
listened until she could no longer hear his truck, then she went inside and sat
on the floor beside Socrates. She hugged him, to thank him for saving Mac from
the fire.

Someone
had cut open a padlock to get into the construction yard and commit arson. That
sounded personal to Kate. After all, if someone wanted to start a fire, why
pick a building surrounded by a ten-foot high security fence? And why lock the
door to Mac’s office?

She
stopped at Mac’s untouched soup and toast in the kitchen. She knew the brain
needed food, so she forced herself to eat the toast, then she opened the fridge
and drank several swallows of milk from the carton.

A
wave of cold swept through her body. Not from the cold milk, but because she
remembered the door to Mac’s office. She could see the dead bolt clearly. Not
the inside, with the knob Mac had found in the locked position. No, she
remembered the outside; because she’d stood outside while Mac talked to Denny
that morning.

If
someone locked that door, and it wasn’t Mac, they must have locked it from
outside. With a key.

Kate
put Socrates in the back seat for the drive into Madrona Bay. She parked in the
empty parking lot to Harkins and Taylor, and carried Socrates up the stairs
when he refused to walk up. When she and the dog were inside with the alarm
disarmed, she locked the door again.

A
dead bolt with a knob on the inside, and a key slot outside.

Who
had keys to Mac’s lock?

In
her office, Kate pulled out Rachel’s file. “I’m going to read it to you,” she
told Socrates. “Every word.”

She
began with Rachel’s first visit, and saw that she’d written
possible
narcissistic or borderline personality.
As she read, could see Rachel as
she’d been that day.

“I
wasn’t functional that day,” she told Socrates. Added to the impairment of her
own grief, Rachel’s abortion triggered Kate’s feelings of loss of David and her
own baby. The classic client who walked in and presented all her counselor’s
unresolved issues. Rachel mirrored the touch of narcissism in Evelyn, while her
casual abortion symbolized Kate’s moral responsibility for Michael’s death.

How
much can a counselor work through her own issues with a client, and when must
she decide this is not appropriate?

Each
session came sharply to mind as Kate read her notes aloud. Rachel asked for
strategies to get her husband back. Kate helped her with communication skills.
When it came to goal setting, Rachel refused to accept that she could not
control Richard’s actions, only her own. Throughout, Kate tried to penetrate
the defenses around Rachel’s feelings. In every session, she’d felt in danger
of losing control, yet she’d ignored the warnings. Always, she’d felt the
slippery nature of Rachel’s responses. As if the client presented an image of
herself, rather than the true self.

Talk
therapy is ineffective in narcissistic and borderline personality problems.

Rachel
wanted strategies to get Richard back without change or growth, and in helping
her develop them, Kate supported Rachel in her dysfunctional game. It was all
here in her notes, and she’d chosen to ignore it because she wanted to rescue
Rachel for her own selfish reasons. In fact, any unbiased counselor would
recognize that the chances of rescuing Rachel were remote.

Kate
should never have counseled Rachel Hardesty.

Socrates
tilted his head.

“I
know. There’s more at stake.”

She
turned to Rachel’s last session and read her notes: “Abreaction: client relived
the death of her father by fire. Client witnessed death, unable to save father.
Unresolved survivor guilt, post-traumatic stress, and obsessive fear of
abandonment.”

Burned
into Kate’s memory, Rachel’s image, both arms wrapped tightly as she remembered
: “
... woke up in the night ... choking ... smoke ... stumbled out of my room ... oh,
God, flames in the living room. My father ... my father ... I tried to go to him,
to the sofa where he ... tried to get to him and the fire burned and I heard him
scream and I tried ... the fire ... oh, God ... oh, God, I tried so hard I can still
hear him scream I’ll never forget. I was so alone, so completely alone ...
standing in the drive outside the house and the flames in the window and so
alone, everyone I ever loved left me.
”

Kate
lifted her arms and stared at her own trembling hands. Had Rachel told the
truth about her father’s death? Typically, narcissists scapegoat and lie.
Certainly she’d lied about her mother—first saying she’d fallen to her death,
then later that she died of pneumonia.

Was
Rachel a person who would rush into the fire to save someone she loved?

If
a crisis makes it impossible for a narcissist to sustain a self image as a
wonderful, lovable person, feelings of persecution often occur. Sometimes
violence results.

Rachel’s
voice, talking about Mac:
He deserves to burn ...

She
must eradicate any bias she had brought to Rachel in the past. She must see
clearly. Rachel had talked about her father ... forget her words, focus on the
body language, the voice. Look for familiar patterns.
My father owes me ...
promised me ... burned in the fire ... Richard promised to look after me.

Step
back from the words. Eyes, hands, voice. Worshipful daughter, enmeshed with
father after the early death of her mother, relationship contaminated by
adolescence.

What
would it take to make a teenage Rachel hate her father?

Somehow,
in Rachel’s mind, her father had betrayed her.
My father owes me ... promised
me ... burned in the fire ...

Richard
deserves to burn.

By
the rules of client confidentiality, Kate had no duty or right to speculate
about Rachel’s past crimes, unless directly questioned by a court. But if
Rachel had helped her father die, didn’t it make her present guilt more likely?

Guesses
aside, what did she
know
?

Be
objective, Kate. Don’t make a mistake.

The
law required a counselor to report in certain situations. She’d explained the
situations to Rachel, and the one that might apply here was the threat of grave
bodily harm or death to another person. Had Rachel threatened grave bodily
harm?

Kate
needed to talk to someone more clued-in than Socrates.

She
dialed Sarah’s number. Two rings ... three ... seven. No answer.

What
would Sarah say if you told her?

Kate,
let’s step back from your personal connection to this case. A client has spoken
of watching the fire that killed her father. Over a period of months she’s
alternated between expressions of extreme love and castigation of her husband.
She’s committed violence to his property. The last time you spoke to the
client, she said the words ‘he deserves to burn’ and subsequently the building
the client’s husband was sleeping in burned as a result of suspected arson.

If
you tell the police and she’s innocent, what’s the worst that will happen?
They’ll be suspicious, they’ll question her. If your client’s husband were a
child, would you believe you had enough cause to think the child was in danger?

Do
you believe your client may be planning an act of violence?

Yes,
whether right or wrong, she did believe.

Socrates
heaved himself to his feet and walked over to Kate. He leaned against her chair
and slid back to the floor. Kate dropped one hand to his head, and then she
picked up the phone and began to dial the police. When the officer answered,
she said, “I’m a licensed marriage and family therapist and I have reason to
believe one of my clients may be planning to commit a crime of violence. I need
to talk to an investigating officer.”

Reporting
Rachel couldn’t have taken any more than five minutes, but Kate felt exhausted
when she hung up the phone on the officer’s assurance that he would “look into
it.”

Hurry.
Rachel might try again ...

Be
rational, Kate. The police will talk to her soon, and they’ll talk to Mac. And
after action, narcissists tend to retreat to calculate the results of their
actions, to assess the health of the image of their false self.

So
she’s not going to do anything drastic for a while, is she?

“Let’s
go home, Socrates.”

Socrates
hefted himself to his feet; Kate felt as exhausted as the dog looked. She
wanted to reassure herself about Mac’s safety, but she had no business anywhere
near either Mac or Rachel. If Rachel was a danger, the police were the best
people to neutralize that danger.

She
needed to talk to someone of her own. She picked up the phone to call Jennifer,
just to hear her voice, but she hung up after she dialed the first four digits.
Jennifer would know something was wrong from Kate’s voice, and the only person
Kate could talk to about this would be another counselor who would also be
bound by confidentiality.

She
dialed her mother, which she knew made no sense.

“I
need to hear a voice,” she explained to Socrates, “and she’s ideal because she
certainly won’t notice my state of mind.”

The
phone rang several times. Was Evelyn asleep? Sometimes it took her a while to
get to the phone. Kate thought of hanging up, but knew the call would probably
have woken Evelyn already.

Fifteen
rings.

Evelyn
had a phone by the side of her bed. She often refused to use it, but surely ...

Nineteen
rings.

E
velyn’s
house stood in complete darkness. No lights in the windows, no porch light.
Kate told Socrates to wait in the car.

When
she knocked on the front door, no one answered. She knew her house key wouldn’t
work since Evelyn got the locks changed, but she tried it anyway.

No
good. She went back to the door and knocked again. No answer.

Kate
walked around the house, feeling her way because the street light didn’t
penetrate here at all. When she got to the back door, she found the screen door
locked. Next door, where the Callahans and their tenant Noel Wilson lived, the
windows were dark. Easter weekend. Louise and her husband had probably gone to
their married daughter in Portland.

Where
was Evelyn? What if she’d fallen and couldn’t get to the phone? She never would
wear her Main Street Messenger pendant. Kate circled the house again, checking
the windows. She couldn’t tell if any upper windows stood open, it was too dark
and the windows too high. The basement windows were a possibility, but she went
to each of them and found them locked. If she broke one to get in, she’d have
to crawl through a small hole seven feet above the basement floor. She’d
probably break a leg trying to check whether her mother had fallen.