Hemlock Bay
Page 7

Ted was a romantic, something weird for a surgeon to be. Of course she’d tried to kill herself. Again. No question. It was classic.
“Mrs. Frasier.”
Lily slowly turned her head at the sound of a rather high voice she imagined could whine when he didn’t get his way, a voice that was right now trying to sound soothing, all sorts of inviting, but not succeeding.
She said nothing, just looked at the overweight man—on the tall side, very well dressed in a dark, gray suit, with lots of curly black hair, a double chin, and fat, very white fingers—who walked into the room. He came to stand too close to the bed.
“Who are you?”
“I’m Dr. Rossetti. Dr. Larch told you I would be coming to see you?”
“You’re the psychiatrist?”
“Yes.”
“He told me, but I don’t want to see you. There is no reason.”
Denial, he thought, just splendid. He was bored with the stream of depressed patients who simply started crying and became quickly incoherent and self-pitying, their hands held out for pills to numb them. Although Tennyson had told him that Lily wasn’t like that, he hadn’t been convinced.
He said, all calm and smooth, “Evidently you do need me. You drove your car into a redwood.”
Had she? No, it just didn’t seem right. She said, “The road to Ferndale is very dangerous. Have you ever driven it at dusk, when it’s nearly dark?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t find you had to be very careful?”
“Of course. However, I never wrapped my car around a redwood. The Forestry Service is looking at the tree now, to see how badly it’s hurt.”
“Well, if I’m missing some bark, I’m sure it is, too. I would like you to leave now, Dr. Rossetti.”
Instead of leaving, he pulled a chair close to the bed and sat down. He crossed his legs. He weaved his plump, white fingers together. She hated his hands, soft, puffy hands, but she couldn’t stop looking at them.
“If you’ll give me just a minute, Mrs. Frasier. Do you mind if I call you Lily?”
“Yes, I mind. I don’t know you. Go away.”
He leaned toward her and tried to take her hand, but she pulled it away and stuck it beneath her covers.
“You really should cooperate with me, Lily—”
“My name is Mrs. Frasier.”
He frowned. Usually women—any and all women—liked to be called by their first name. It made them feel that he was more of a confidant, someone they could trust. It also made them more vulnerable, more open to him.
He said, “You tried to kill yourself the first time after the death of your child seven months ago.”
“She didn’t just die. A speeding car hit her and knocked her twenty feet into a ditch. Someone murdered her.”
“And you blamed yourself.”
“Are you a parent?”
“Yes.”
“Wouldn’t you blame yourself if your child died and you weren’t with her?”
“No, not if I wasn’t driving the car that hit her.”
“Would your wife blame herself?”
Elaine’s face passed before his mind’s eye, and he frowned. “Probably not. All she would do is cry. She is a very weak woman, very dependent. But that isn’t the point, Mrs. Frasier.” It wasn’t. He would be free of Elaine very soon now, thank God.
“What is the point?”
“You did blame yourself, blamed yourself so much you stuffed a bottle of sleeping pills down your throat. If your housekeeper hadn’t found you in time, you would have died.”
“That’s what I was told,” she said, and she swore in that moment that she could taste the same taste in her mouth now as she had then when she’d awakened in the hospital that first time when she’d been so bewildered, so weak she couldn’t even raise her hand.
“You don’t remember taking the pills?”
“No, not really.”
“And now you don’t remember driving your car into a redwood. Your speed, it was estimated by the sheriff, was about sixty miles per hour, maybe faster. You were very lucky, Mrs. Frasier. A guy just happened to come around a bend to see you drive into the tree, and called an ambulance.”
“Do you happen to know his name? I would like to thank him.”
“That isn’t what’s important here, Mrs. Frasier.”
“What is important here? Oh, yes, do you happen to have a first name?”
“My name is Russell. Dr. Russell Rossetti.”