HER PERFECT SECRET a totally gripping psychological thriller

by T. J. Brearton

“No.”

  It sounds like a yes.

  “Mena, it’s okay. There’s been a lot going on. Maggie Lewis’s suicide, then everything that’s happened up here, with Sean . . . I think it’s best we talk. So there’s no more surprises.”

  “They sent over the sealed record for the Bishop case,” she blurts. “I think the clerk for Judge Meyers forgot you weren’t at your office. I . . . I have the records.”

  “Okay. That’s okay, Mena. Things are kind of . . . well, they’re pretty much over up here now. You can’t even believe the things that . . . I’ll have to explain later. It’s been a crazy weekend. Craziest of my life.”

  Mena sounds close to tears. “I know.”

  “You know?”

  “I figured it might be.”

  “Mena?”

  “I would never do anything like this. But when you called me a few days ago, asking about . . . you know . . . and your case notes, it brought some things back to me.”

  I sit up a little in the bed. I’m dimly aware the rain is streaking the dark windows of my room. That I can still smell smoke from the burning yurt — maybe my clothes are somewhere in the room? “Okay — what wouldn’t you do?”

  “I’d never go through your files. Your notes. But I just thought . . . Oh God . . .” She sobs, unable to finish.

  “Mena. It’s okay. Really. What about my notes?”

  “I read them.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  But it’s already ignited a memory. And the process of remembering feels a bit like the flames that threatened to consume me not hours ago. I’m hot, and I push down the sheet of the hospital bed.

  “Why would you do that?” I repeat to Mena, my mind racing. If I said or did anything wrong, it wouldn’t be in my case notes. Even though what I sent was a formal evaluation, a judge can subpoena case notes, or anything else.

  “Because I wanted to be sure,” Mena says, sounding like she already is.

  “Sure of what?”

  “That you lied in them.”

  “Mena . . .” I feel my insides turning cold. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

  Yes, you do.

  “Being in this office all these years, I know the good you’ve done, Dr. Lindman. You’re an incredible therapist. You truly care about people. And you’re good at what you do. So good that . . .”

  “Mena—”

  “The truth is I’ve always admired you. I know you think I’ve never aspired to more than this, but I wish I could do what you do. And so I listened in. I eavesdropped on your sessions with Tom Bishop. I’m not proud of it. But I know what you said to him. How you said it to him. Because, at first, it was just about getting him to doubt what he saw and heard. Getting him to doubt his own certainty — because his certainty was never really there in the first place. And then it was planting the seed that his mother did more than argue with his father. And that he — Tom — just didn’t want to believe that. But sometimes the truth was hard. So hard to bear.” Mena pauses to catch her breath. “And then he told the police exactly what you coached him to say.”

  I think it might be over, but Mena isn’t finished. She’s fully crying now. But I can understand her. I don’t want to, but I can.

  “I’ve always thought you did what you did to protect your family,” Mena says. “And I told myself I didn’t know what I heard. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it was some new technique you were using. I tried everything. And then you were seeing your own therapist. I thought it was to get through the stuff with Paul. But you were dealing with what you’d done. Weren’t you?”

  I don’t have an answer. I’m too stunned to speak.

  Mena stops talking, only sobbing. Then, tear-choked words: “I’d only been working for you for three years. I thought about leaving. But I stayed. I convinced myself it wasn’t my business, that I didn’t know everything. And then she was convicted. Laura Bishop. She pled guilty, which must’ve meant she did it. So I thought I must’ve really misheard things, really screwed up. And I let it go . . . Until you called me and you told me what was happening. Then I knew. I knew it was true!” Her voices rises at the end to a shrill pitch. Mena is hysterical.

  “Mena . . . Calm down.”

  It’s all coming out now. Yes, it’s finally coming out. Like a hatch underwater, it’s opening. The trapped air is rising to the surface.

  Too fast . . . too fast.

  But maybe it’s for the best.

  “Mena,” I say. “I’m sorry . . .”

  As she continues to sob, the door to my hospital room opens.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  Parker and Reynolds are back. Parker is the more normal-looking one, less soldierly anyway, but it’s hard to read even his expression. Perhaps he’s stoic like this when he’s about to arrest someone.

  “How are you feeling, Dr. Lindman?”

  “I’m okay. Hoping to get out of here soon.” An odd thing to say, considering. Maybe it’s best I don’t speak.

  Parker nods. As I watch, he pulls a small recording device from the phone. He puts it on the food table beside me.

  “We had another talk with Laura Bishop tonight,” he says.

  Reynolds adds, “She continues to have interesting things to say.”

  Parker asks, “Would you like to hear it?”

  I swallow over raw bones in my throat. My eyes are grainy, unblinking. “Okay,” I rasp.

  Parker hits play. Then he folds his arms and steps back. Reynolds keeps post at the door.

  Laura Bishop’s voice emanates from the small device. She sounds like I remember her, a kind of smoky, debutante air about her. Like some old movie starlet from the fifties. “About sixteen years ago, I had an affair with Paul Lindman,” she says. “Back then, my husband was kind of a socialite. So were the Lindmans. We’d make excuses to dress up and have parties and so would they. It seemed respectable at first. But there were drugs. There were people swapping spouses. The Lindmans weren’t into that — they weren’t swingers — but that didn’t stop Paul from seeking me out.”

  I close my eyes. I don’t want to go back there, to those days, but it’s like I’ve been found at last. I’ve been hiding out from the past, but now its bright lights are on me.

  “Paul found me in the city, where I work. He said he was interested in buying some art. He wanted some paintings for his office and the lobby of one of his buildings. So we started to meet. One of his buildings, one that his firm built, was a hotel. He showed me the penthouse suite. And that was it. We met there to ‘discuss art’ several times for over four months. Many times. Four months and two weeks, to be exact. And then I broke it off. Because Paul was getting weirdly possessive. He was jealous of David. I was still sleeping with my husband, and Paul knew it, and he hated it. And when I broke it off with Paul . . . Let’s just say he didn’t handle it well.”

  She pauses. I don’t dare look directly at Parker or Reynolds but see them peripherally, standing like statues.

  “I don’t believe he thought it through,” Laura says about Paul. “I don’t know how he imagined we could be together afterwards. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he just wanted to kill what he thought prevented us from being together. Because he went back to his life.”

  Her voice changes subtly in pitch. “Paul is good at hiding things,” she says. My skin tightens with panic. It feels like she’s speaking to me directly, knowing I’d hear this. “He’s hidden an entire part of himself from public view.”

  Then Laura’s voice changes again, as if she’s faced away from the recorder. “She’s the same way. Emily. They’re two peas in a pod. Because she knew. She knew about the affair, and if she didn’t know for sure it was me, she suspected. And that’s why, when the police called her to evaluate my son, she didn’t admit to knowing me, or knowing David. She didn’t inform you. Okay, she said she’d heard our names, it’s not a very big town. But that was it. She lied about her conflict of interest because she wanted to know what my son had to say. My son. A
nd when he described a man outside his window, sitting in a car, smoking, that’s when she knew. She knew it was Paul, and that she needed to steer my son away from that. Give him something else. Someone else. Me.”

  I can hardly breathe. The room seems to shrink around me, Parker and Reynolds sliding toward the bed. I can practically feel the cold steel of the handcuffs sliding over my wrists. Picture myself being walked out of the hospital and put into the back of a waiting police car.

  Parker ends the playback. He returns the recording device to his pocket. For a moment, he stares into the corner, as if marshaling the right words.

  You have the right to remain silent.

  He shakes his head, as if mournful. Then his eyes slide to mine. “She keeps going on for a while longer, but basically — that’s the gist. Laura Bishop claims that you brainwashed her son. That the whole thing — his statement to police that he saw his mother do it — it was all you. You kind of gave him the old Jedi mind trick.”

  I search Parker’s eyes. Is this a time to be joking?

  He looks back at me and then at Reynolds, by the door. Parker says to Reynolds, “Fucking ex-cons, right? Doesn’t matter if they’re out, they’re still working an angle. Every time.”

  When Parker faces me again, it takes me a moment to realize what I’m hearing: He doesn’t believe Laura Bishop.

  “As far as I’m concerned,” Parker says, “It’s just a matter of time before the truth comes out about what she did up there at the yurt. Just need to piece it all together. Then she’s going to go right back inside.”

  He shakes his head some more, as if he’s sorry. “It’s a shame, you know, what these institutions do to people; they don’t know how to function on the outside.”

  I swallow dryly. I try to nod. I try to look normal.

  Parker says, “Maybe when I retire, I’ll become a penologist. Try to get some reform going. Because right now, we’re just putting people back on the street who . . . Well, I’m bending your ear here.” He pats my leg beneath the sheet. “Dr. Lindman, I just thought you should be aware. This woman plans to sue you.”

  He shakes his head one last time. “What a world. People coming out of prison and getting into lawsuits. Going after law-abiding citizens. But listen, we’ve got her under wraps; she’s not going anywhere. You’re safe. And we’ll keep you posted. All right?”

  I can only stare at him dumbly.

  Parker then drifts toward the door. Reynolds opens it and leaves without looking back. Parker stops and turns back with some final words. “Oh, and we’re looking hard for your husband, ma’am. I wanted to ask you — does he have any woodsman skills? Survival skills? Knowing that might help us in our search. Lot of acres out there, lot of wild forest.”

  Paul? Survival skills? Maybe in some twisted way, yes. But not as a wilderness survivalist.

  Barely able to form the words, I say to Parker, “No, I don’t think so.”

  He gives the wall a rap with his knuckles; a superstitious gesture, perhaps. “All right, well. Rest up, Dr. Lindman. Take care.”

  The door closes, and I’m alone again in the quiet.

  Just me, and my thoughts.

  Just me, and the abyss.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  They don’t find Paul.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

  It’s mid-September. The first signs of autumn nibble the edges of summer. A cool breeze, a smattering of red and orange in the trees. Here and there: purple.

  I have not returned to Bronxville but have stayed holed up in the lake house. I’m waiting for my son to wake up. I’m waiting for the endless parade of cops and reporters to come to an end. I feel like it’s close.

  No, they never found Paul. They think he died in the forest. And they still don’t believe Laura Bishop, even though she’s following through with her threat and her lawyer just filed papers in court yesterday. She’s going to sue me. Psychological damages, years lost in prison, plus all the unrecoverable grief of missing her son’s childhood, and the stigma of being a felon. A murderer.

  You’d think she’d seek a new trial. An exoneration.

  My lawyer explained why not. “You’ve got to consider what that entails. There’s a higher bar for criminal cases than for civil suits. There’s no new physical evidence, for one thing. She’d have to have her son up there to recant. And who’s the one who brought the truth out of him? You are — the exact same therapist she’s claiming was criminally corrupt in your therapy fifteen years ago. And who knows if Michael would be even willing to testify, anyway? I have my doubts. You said he’s still with your daughter?”

  “Yes,” I say, and my gaze drifts to the lake. They’re not down there, of course. I’ve seen neither my daughter nor her fiancé for almost a month. I think Joni is trying to sort it all out. Now that the charade is over, and her part in this has helped Michael unveil the truth, she’s examining how she feels about me. Which she should.

  And how do I feel about me?

  Disgusted. Horrified.

  “Michael and Joni are still together,” I say to my lawyer. His name is John Blakely.

  “Well,” Blakely says, “from what I’m hearing, Michael is not on Laura’s side.”

  “Her side?”

  “I know, it’s a . . . touchy situation, Emily, and I don’t mean to . . . Look, at this point, there are sides. Once there’s a court case, it’s binary. Us versus them. So, I’m asking you — do you think he would testify? To say he was . . .”

  “Coerced by me? Manipulated? Would he say that a therapist, a professional, a woman who was supposed to be there to protect him, to help him, instead manipulated his mind in order to hide what her husband did?”

  My lawyer doesn’t respond. I’ve answered his question with a question. He’s talking about sides, because people have made up their minds. It’s right there on social media. People who believe Michael Rand and Laura Bishop are con artists who took advantage of a family, and people who think Michael is a victim. That Paul and I are the bad guys. But to what extent they think Paul is a murderer and I covered for him greatly varies.

  What do I care, anyway? I know what I did. And I know what Paul did, though I was, for a long time, repressing the very thought of it. I was in denial at the same time I was trying to work the situation, cover myself. To steer Michael toward thinking it was the cops who coerced him. Steer him toward seeing Doug Wiseman as the killer.

  All these years later, and I was still manipulating him.

  I am a horrible, subhuman person.

  “Well?” Blakely asks. “How much exposure do you have here? What about your case notes? Things like that?”

  My case notes . . .

  My case notes constitute a clever covering of my tracks. A subtle throwing of shade on the New York State Police. And they show certain truths: it was true Tom heard his parents arguing that night. And it was true that the police urged Tom to consider the possibility of his mother’s guilt. But these were facts I exploited. Facts that formed a hole in Laura Bishop’s innocence, one I kept widening until it gaped, until it was wide enough to push through the reality I chose.

  I chose to psychologically manipulate a young boy into believing his original assessment — seeing someone outside, hearing two men fighting — was just his way to protect his mother. That, in reality, he saw her do it. I took that emptiness he’d seen in her eyes and drew it out and enveloped him with it.

  It wasn’t hard. He was eight.

  No, I don’t regret the fifteen years that Laura Bishop spent in prison as an innocent woman, because I don’t consider her innocent. She was an adulteress. A would-be homewrecker. Because of her, I spent that same decade and a half in my own prison: the horrible lasting impression of what I did to her son in order to preserve my marriage, my family. To keep my husband from going to jail, I pushed Tom toward a truth favorable to me. Again, it wasn’t hard.

  But I shouldn’t have done it. Of course I shouldn’t have. I should’ve let Paul rot in state pri
son, instead. My family would have recovered. If anything, maybe Joni wouldn’t have had it so rough. And little Tom Bishop wouldn’t have grown up believing such a lie about his own mother.

  I abandoned him and my duty to protect him. That’s why Maggie Lewis’s death and her story affected me so deeply. That’s why I’ve spent the last fifteen years looking over my shoulder. Because, like Freud said, what we repress just comes out in worse ways.

  “Emily? You there?”

  “Don’t worry about my case notes,” I say.

  “What about Michael?”

  Blakely isn’t going to let the question go unanswered. Do I think Michael will tell on me, essentially? Throw me under the bus, like he should? If not to a jury, to reporters? In a tell-all memoir that makes the Oprah Book Club?

  I continue to stare out at the lake. Dark today, slate gray, with angles of choppy waves. I think of the love I witnessed between Michael and Joni. No doubt, Michael did some acting. But there were things he couldn’t fake. Like getting his own full picture of the truth.

  And his love for my daughter. He truly fell for Joni, even if he never intended it. I am convinced of that.

  “No,” I say. “I don’t think Michael will speak against me.”

  Blakely is dubious. “How can you be sure?”

  “You’re the one that just said you were sure.”

  “Well, I know she’s not going to seek a new trial for a number of reasons. Michael’s unwillingness to testify is possibly one of them. But it’s the one I’m least sure of.”

  “You can be sure of it.” My words convince even my own ears. I don’t have to explain to Blakely how I’m so certain; I don’t even know if I could explain. No one knows, but Michael and I, what it was like the three times we tracked into his past. Those feelings belong to us.

  “All right,” Blakely says. “Listen, you just keep doing what you’re doing. I’ve got things under control down here. The way this civil thing plays out — you’re never even going to have to see a courtroom. I’ll make sure of—”

  “How much is she asking? What’s she suing me for?”