Page 15 of Intersect

JC: Can you tell me who these people are?

QS: That’s Mommy and Daddy and me. And that’s Cocoa (dog).

JC: You didn’t draw Nick this time. How come?

QS: Nick can’t be part of my family. (Patient evidences notable sadness at this statement.)

JC: Why can’t Nick be a part of your family?

5-sec delay.

QS: Because Nick is going to make me do a bad thing.

JC: What kind of bad thing?

Patient hesitates again, is uncomfortable.

QS: I can’t tell you.

JC: Did Nick ask you not to tell?

QS: Nick doesn’t even know it’s going to happen.

JC: Can you tell me more about this bad thing he’s going to make you do?

Patient begins to cry.

QS: I can’t. But it’s very, very bad.

Ice slips down my throat, fills my chest. It’s impossible. I must have gotten something wrong. Nick would never, ever make me do something bad. Maybe I pictured sex and misinterpreted it. Except I told the doctor that Nick didn’t even know it was going to happen.

Beside me he is still reading avidly. I take in his beautiful, bright face. I must have gotten something wrong.

He looks up. “Anything there?” he asks.

I slide the papers back into the folder. “No. All garbage.”

* * *

We leave empty-handed. Perhaps in one of the hundred boxes in that storage unit there exists a scrap of paper or an old envelope with Sarah’s number on it, but we’re never going to find it.

I wish hadn’t gone, but Nick feels otherwise. He brings up the psychologist’s report again and again.

“You even described your wedding ring,” he says, glancing at me with those stunned eyes before they return to the road.

I hadn’t remembered the ring at all until now, but the moment he mentions it, I can see it clearly. “It was your grandmother’s,” I tell him. “Don’t ask me how I know that because I don’t have a clue. This oval diamond with tiny diamonds all around it.”

He frowns. “There’s no ring as far as I know.”

I grin at him. “Maybe the ring you gave me sucked so my imagination embellished things a little.”

He gives me one long glance before his eyes return to the road. “The ring won’t suck, I promise.” My heart quickens and I swallow, uncertain if I’m thrilled or panicked by how serious we’ve gotten already. I suspect it’s a little bit of both.

* * *

We arrive at the lake late in the afternoon. Nick’s still insisting we sleep in different rooms, and after what he told me I don’t have the heart to try to change his mind anymore. He shows me to the master bedroom so I can change into my suit—a red bikini, naturally. As I open my bag I notice a picture of Nick and Ryan as babies on a nightstand, and it makes my heart twist painfully. I miss Ryan and I barely remember him. How bad must it have been for Nick and his parents?

I change and head downstairs to find Nick standing just inside the pantry—and wearing nothing but swim trunks. My God. How much swimming does he do? Because I could swim twenty-four hours a day and not even approach a stomach like his. The brain tumor isn’t what’s going to get me in the end. It’s this, trying to behave when Nick is shirtless.