The Good Listener

by B. M. Hardin

  He was all over the place, and I couldn’t keep up.

  Not that I was even trying to.

  He’d changed the subject, but my mind was still on my husband.

  I was sure that Joel wouldn’t have trusted Blake enough to reveal something like that to him so somehow Blake must have found out.

  That’s if he was telling the truth.

  But I was learning to listen to him on a level, even in a way that I didn’t even think was possible.

  It was almost as though I absorbed his words and with every statement he said, I picked it apart to read in between the lines.

  “Love makes me sick. I don’t love anything. Or anyone.”

  “There must be something or someone that you love.”

  “No. There isn’t.”

  “Well, maybe that’s the problem. You said you haven’t felt any real, genuine love in such a long time, if ever before. Maybe that is the key. Maybe that is how to fix you. I have a challenge for you. Instead of shutting out the possibility of loving someone else or being love, find it. Start with dating. Is there someone that you would consider dating?”

  “No. Do you really believe that love would save me?”

  “It’s a start.”

  He seemed to be giving it some thought.

  We chatted for a long while.

  He revealed more about his childhood and past feelings while with foster parents and group homes.

  Some of the things that he had been through were so disturbing that it was a challenge for me to hold back my tears.

  He’d had his toes burnt with lighters as a punishment and other horrible things done to him by pretty much everyone that has ever been in his life.

  It was just so sad.

  I could somewhat understand why he was the way that he was.

  I couldn’t imagine going through the things that he’d gone through.

  Of course, I’d had plenty of patients that had gone through horrible childhoods as well with drug addicts for parents, rapes and everything else in between.

  But for some reason, Blake’s situation really seemed to get to me.

  Blake also visited a few things concerning his biological mother and father.

  I assumed that once his mother started using drugs and became mentally questionable, his father bailed on them.

  The feelings of neglect were clear in his voice whenever he talked about his father, and there was nothing but pain present when he discussed his mother.

  He felt as though he hadn't been a good enough son. He questioned what he had done wrong to make them not love him or want him.

  And then in an instant, he went from being emotional to merely rejoicing their deaths.

  “Wherever they are, I hope they are being tortured just like I was,” he was smiling, but he fixed his face once he noticed my frown.

  “Joel talked about you on the phone one day to China. Why did he call you Little Yellow?”

  “That’s a little pet name that my family used to have for me. Joel says it when he’s trying to be funny.”

  “I never had a nickname. I guess that’s what happy, normal families do huh? Give nicknames?”

  “Not really. Not everyone has one.”

  “Then where did yours come from?”

  “My parents gave it to me. My entire family used to call my mother, Big Red. She’d carried it from a child because of her dirty red hair. My father used to make fun of her so one day she started calling him Big Blue, because of his eyes…and then some time or another they gave me Little Yellow, because of my skin.”

  “I guess I did have a nickname too; if you count bastard, or orphan, or maybe mutt; you know, things like that since I was called those things growing up more than my real name.”

  “What is your real name? So I can address you correctly.”

  “Calling me Blake is fine.”

  Blake talked literally for hours after that and by the time we concluded our conversation and looked around the park was pretty much deserted.

  “I have to get going. I’m sure that my husband is looking for me,” I said realizing that Joel had probably been home for a while, and I’d left my phone in the car.

  He was going to be livid!

  I started to walk away, but Blake stayed seated.

  He called my name just before I was out of hearing range.

  “Hannah?”

  “Yes, Blake.”

  “She was here. Today, at the park. She was here.”

  Who was here?

  “Who?”

  “Her.”

  He said, and he got up and headed towards the pond.

  What?

  So now he says something!

  I looked around and saw no one.

  He talked to me until the entire park was clear, just to reveal that part at the end.

  I should have known that he was up to something.

  An uneasy feeling came over me because if she was at the park that day, most likely she was a mother.

  More than likely she was there with her child, and he was planning on taking some innocent child’s mother away from them.

  Of course, I couldn’t remember anyone’s faces.

  I had been paying more attention to the children than the parents anyway.

  I wondered if there was some kind of surveillance of the park.

  It was a public place.

  There had to be some kind of footage being recorded.

  But even if so, how would I get it?

  What would I do with it?

  There wasn’t much that I would be able to do without involving the police, and I knew that wasn’t an option.

  I knew that Blake would run.

  He would kill, and he would run.

  So it was all on me.

  I was all on my own.

  I sat in my car for a while once I arrived home to think about my conversation with Blake.

  He’d given me so much information in one sitting, and I had to figure out what to do with it.

  Timidly, I entered the house, and I already knew that Joel was going to give me a piece of his mind.

  I’d had a few missed calls and texts from him once I was in the car, and I already knew that he was going to give me an ear full.

  “So nice of you to finally come home. Where were you?”

  I sat down my purse.

  He was eating pizza.

  “I was with a patient.”

  “No, you weren’t. I went by the office, and you had left for the day hours ago.”

  “We were at the park.”

  “The park?”

  “Yes. He didn’t show up for his appointment and on my way home, he called and asked if we could have our therapy session at the park.”

  “He? Blake?”

  “One of my patients Joel.”

  I sat on the couch.

  Joel threw down the slice of pizza that he was eating.

  “Well, one of your patients is going to cause you to lose your husband.”

  “Says the man who will barely even touch me. Tell me something. If you aren’t touching me, then who are you touching Joel? Who is she?”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. I wasn’t born yesterday. I know that you have been having an affair. So, who is she?”

  I wasn’t exactly sure if Blake really knew anything, but I was about to find out.

  I’d asked Joel the night before if there was someone else but with Blake bringing up the conversation, and then stating that people lie maybe he knew something that I didn’t know.

  I didn’t know how he knew it, but something told me that he knew something.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Have you been having an affair Joel?”

  “No Hannah, I have not.”

  Joel started to bite his lip…which he only did when he was lying.

  Oh no, so it was true?

  Blake had been telling the truth?

  I felt as though a hundred or so butterf
lies were playing hide and go seek in my belly.

  My heart started to beat faster and faster, but I knew that I had to keep pressing the issue.

  “I already know the truth, so if I were you, I would be honest. Right here. Right now. Tell me the truth Joel.”

  Please let this feeling be wrong this time.

  I was pushing for an answer that I wasn’t even sure that I wanted to hear.

  Joel opened his mouth, and I impatiently waited for what was about to come out of it.

  “I’m not having an affair, Hannah. And I never did. It was only one time.”

  I felt a lump in my throat.

  What?

  I felt so many different emotions all at once, and I didn’t know which of them to act on first.

  “Who?”

  Joel stood and looked at me with eyes full of regret as tears started to stream down my face.

  He took a deep breath and turned his back towards me.

  “Summer.”

  ~***~

  I was furious!

  Not only had Mrs. Whiteside called the office over ten times between her last visit and her death, but she’d also emailed my personal email, numerous times, but Summer took it upon herself to respond.

  But the sad part was that she pretended to be me.

  She’d been sending her emails from my email login in stating that I had filled her position and that I didn’t have any room to take her back as a patient.

  She told Mrs. Whiteside that I could refer her to one of my colleagues but that it was all in her mind, and she didn’t really need any help and that returning to therapy would be a waste of money and time.

  The one time that she’d emailed her from her own email was because she’d reached out to her first to tell her that her last check, a week before she left hadn't cleared, and Summer reached out to ask her the steps of getting it paid. Mrs. Whiteside told her that she could send another one, Summer told her that she would be on the lookout for it, and Mrs. Whiteside responded “Okay. Thank you.”

  But that was it.

  I couldn’t believe that Summer would do something like that.

  What right did she have to tell a patient of mine anything that I didn’t tell her to say to them?

  She lied to her and caused that woman to take her own life.

  What right did she have to do that?

  She wasn’t a psychologist.

  She was an assistant.

  And her job was to assist.

  Maybe that’s why Mrs. Whiteside called me private.

  Maybe she thought that I didn’t want to talk to her.

  Maybe she thought that I wouldn’t want to be bothered, or maybe she thought that Summer, who was pretending to be me, was right when she told her that she no longer needed therapy.

  That it was all in her mind.

  How could she do something like that?

  And on top of all of that, she’d had sex with my husband!

  That was an even bigger problem, and I was about to confront the situation head on.

  She was supposed to be my friend.

  “Get out of here now!”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me. Get your stuff, leave the key and get out of here Summer and don’t you ever come back!”

  Summer looked at me confused.

  Joel broke my heart when he confessed to sleeping with Summer.

  He said that it only happened once.

  He told me every detail, because I’d forced him to, but it only made the situation worse.

  Summer often ran errands for me, even if that meant that she had to go by my house. There had been plenty of times that I’d left something at home, and I would send her to go and get it.

  Joel explained that not too long ago, I’d sent Summer to get a flash drive from home while I was with a patient.

  He said that he had just started working for Blake, and he too had forgotten something at home, and he’d taken a quick break to come home to get it.

  He said that Summer was already there when he got there, and as he was coming in, she was about to go out, but she stopped at the sight of him.

  Joel stated that it happened so fast that it was all still a blur.

  But he swore that Summer had come on to him.

  He said that we’d been arguing about starting a family and adopting the baby and Summer knowing what was going on because I’d told her, mentioned the subject to him and started a conversation.

  He said the conversation started out innocently, and then somewhere along the lines Summer started to make comments on how I didn’t appreciate him and how I didn’t show him enough attention, and that was when everything started to head in the wrong direction.

  He proclaimed that it happened so fast that even he couldn’t believe that he’d done it.

  He said they both stared at each other after it was all over and done with and he said that Summer started to cry and tell him that it was a mistake. He said that she had been going through a lot and that she was sorry that she had taken things too far with him.

  They agreed to pretend as though the incident never happened and they planned to carry the secret to their graves.

  Not in this lifetime buddy!

  After ten years of marriage, Joel had broken our vows, and I wasn’t going to just overlook it.

  My early appointment looked on as Summer slowly stood up.

  “You slept with my husband! After all, that I have done for you. I gave you a job when no one else would. I befriended you. I trusted you and taught you everything that you know. For years you have worked for me, and I have been nothing but good to you, and I have been an even better friend. But you betrayed me. You’re nothing but the whore that everyone always said that you were.”

  Maybe I shouldn’t have said that in front of the patient but it was true.

  Every man that Summer had dated her over the last few years dated her until she slept with them and then they disappeared.

  I’d ran into one a time or two after they parted ways and inquired about their relationship.

  He confessed to only wanting one thing from her and revealed that she had a reputation of being fairly generous with her goodies.

  I never mentioned his remarks to her until now, and he had been absolutely right.

  She looked at me as though she couldn’t believe that, I’d just said that and I could tell that she wondered how I’d found out the truth.

  “And you told Mrs. Whiteside that I didn’t want to see her? Not once did you give me her messages and you erased my emails so that I wouldn’t see them. You had no right to do that Summer! It’s your fault that she is dead. Not mine!”

  She opened her mouth to speak, but I stopped her.

  “Get out! Now!” I screamed in her face and threw her purse at her chest.

  Summer glanced at me one last time and then she hurried out the door.

  I was in a rage so I closed my eyes and tried to pull myself together.

  “Give me a minute,” I nodded in my patient’s direction as I stormed inside my office.

  As I sat down in my chair, I saw the patient getting in her car from the window, and driving off.

  Good.

  I wasn’t in the mood to see her right now anyway.

  My advice probably wouldn’t be the best and that cheating husband that she was also dealing with too would have probably been getting divorce papers after the ear full that I would have given her.

  I took long, deep breaths and I tried to relax.

  I was shaking.

  My body twitched as though I was about to have a small seizure or some kind of panic attack.

  How could either of them do this to me?

  I looked towards the door as the tapping grew louder.

  I’d locked the door behind me, and I could hear one of my colleagues tapping on it, and urging me to open it so that we could talk.

  Joel was calling my phone over and over again, but I didn’t want to talk to him either.
>
  I wasn’t sure what I was going to do about him as of yet but the best thing for both of us at the moment was for me to stay far away from him.

  I didn’t want to see him.

  I didn’t want to talk to him.

  I just needed to think.

  I turned off my cell phone and headed towards the door.

  But just before turning the door knob, Blake crossed my mind.

  I guess the question was how did he know?

  How did he always seem to know everything?

  About everyone?

  All the time?

  I wasn’t sure.

  But I was going to make it my business to try to find out.

  ~***~

  I’d been waiting for my next session with Blake.

  “I want to say, thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For telling me.”

  “Telling you what?”

  “About my husband.”

  “What about him?”

  “You implied that he had an affair and---,”

  “No, I didn’t. I simply said that people lie. I never said that he was having an affair.”

  “But he was. Well, I guess it was something like that.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “I don’t know how you knew, but thanks.”

  He still didn’t say anything.

  I already had a new assistant, a male one, and though I was sure that I wouldn’t have to worry about anything of that nature, if I decided to keep my husband, I’d already made up my mind that I would keep our relationship strictly professional.