Second Honeymoon

Chapter 42

“WELL, LOOK WHO it is,” said Dr. Kline as I stepped into his office in midtown Manhattan. “You’re alive.”

Not that he ever thought I was dead. Why would I be dead? This was his way of needling me for missing our previous session, not unlike the way my old high school football coach would announce, “Nice of you to join us, Mr. O’Hara!” if I was even a second or two late to practice.

The difference being that Kline wasn’t about to bark, “Now drop and give me twenty!” as a follow-up. At least I hoped that wouldn’t be the next thing out of his mouth.

“You spoke to Frank Walsh, right?” I asked, taking a seat across from him on “the couch.”

My boss at the Bureau was now doubling as my mother. I felt like a kid in kindergarten with a note pinned to his jacket. Dear Dr. Kline: Please excuse little Johnny from his last psychiatric appointment because he was trying to catch a bad guy in Turks and Caicos.

“Yes. Walsh filled me in on your involvement with Warner Breslow,” said Kline. “Then he told me to forget everything he told me.”

Typical Frank Walsh.

“The FBI isn’t officially involved in the case,” I explained. “That’s why he said that.”

“I understand, and no worries. This room is even better than Vegas. What happens here legally has to stay here.”

“With one notable exception,” I said.

Kline smiled. “You’re right, absolutely right. Unless you tell me you plan to kill somebody.”

This guy was the master of all segues.

“I’ll make it easy for you,” I said. “Frank was right. From the moment I took up the Breslow cause I haven’t thought once about Stephen McMillan. Not once. Honest.”

“That’s good,” he said.

It was good. It didn’t mean I didn’t still want to kill the bastard for what he did to my family. It only meant that I wasn’t thinking all day and night about how I’d do it.

Baby steps, O’Hara. Baby steps.

I noticed that, in contrast to our first session, Kline now had a notepad in his lap. He was jotting something down.

“Am I allowed to ask what you’re writing?”

“Sure,” he answered. “I was making a note to myself about something you just said, a certain word, actually.”

“Which one?”

“You referred to your involvement with the murder of Ethan Breslow and his new bride as a cause. I find that interesting.”

I wasn’t even aware I’d said it. “Is that some sort of Freudian slip?”

Kline chuckled. “Freud was a drunk and serial womanizer with mommy issues.”

Yeah, but how do you really feel about him, Doc?

“Okay, we’ll leave Sigmund out of it,” I said. “Still, what is it about my saying cause?”

“It points to your motivation,” he explained. “Why you do what you do for a living, and the role your profession plays in your personal life.”

Cue the skepticism. “All that from a single word?”

“Causes are personal, John. If you make every case personal, what’s going to happen when something truly is personal, like dealing with the man responsible for your wife’s death?”

“I end up here with you, that’s what happens,” I said, folding my arms. “I get where you’re going with this, but maybe that’s what makes me good at what I do. That I take it very personally.”

He leaned forward, staring straight into my eyes. “But you’re no good to anyone if you’re out of a job. Or worse, behind bars.”

Hmm.

I hate people who say “touché” when conceding a point, but if there was ever a moment when it was appropriate, this was it. Kline wasn’t really telling me anything that I didn’t already know deep down. He was just bringing it to the surface in a way that I never could or was willing to.

Suddenly, I wasn’t looking at Kline. I may have been staring right back at him, but it was my boys I was seeing instead. How much they truly needed me.

And how selfish I’d been.

Hadn’t they already been through enough? Was I that blind? That stupid?

I’d been so fixated on wanting revenge for their mother’s death that I’d neglected to celebrate her life—our life—with our sons. What a huge, giant, colossal mistake.

“Doc, do you mind if we cut this session short today?” I asked.

I expected him to be surprised, maybe even a little ticked off. After missing our last session, here I was trying to duck out early on this one. I’d barely sat down.

Instead, Kline simply smiled. He knew progress when he saw it. “Go do what you have to do,” he said.