Page 38 of A Mother’s Love

Halley had been reading the morning paper, and saw that two more of the French president’s would-be assassins had been found, and killed in a deadly gun battle with the police.

The remaining two suspects were on the run, still at large.

Halley found herself crying as she read the story and didn’t know why.

She was crying for the president, the dead men, their mothers, and all the children in the world who had suffered as she had and she didn’t know.

And in the end, she was crying for herself, and the child she had been who had been so mercilessly beaten and abused, so frightened every moment of her life for six years, and then neglected and abused in other ways for another eight years until her father died, and after that, she was alone.

She was crying for all the loveless years, until her twins were old enough to love her, and later Robert.

Locke had been in her life too briefly and inconsistently to give her comfort.

She had lived for twenty-four years without a gentle touch or a kind word.

It killed some people and might have killed her.

But by some miracle, it hadn’t. She didn’t know why it hadn’t killed her body or her soul.

She didn’t think she was stronger than anyone else, or braver, or more clever.

Some part of her simply refused to be broken, like some people in concentration camps.

Some died and others didn’t. There had been studies comparing the survivors of severe child abuse to the survivors of concentration camps, and there were notable similarities, and comparable aftereffects, some of which Halley had experienced in her youth, and recognized the signs of now. It was familiar to her.

She had never let her children know the horror of it. It was too ugly for them to know.

Dr. Julian Thacker was a small wizened older man, in his sixties when Halley met him.

At first she thought him cold, but Halley realized he wasn’t one day when she saw that he had tears running down his face as she told of a particularly horrific episode with her mother that had required fourteen stitches in her arm.

For Halley it was the shedding of memories that had lain dormant for years, the way it was for the concentration camp survivors coming back from the camps and chronicling what the Germans had done.

It was digging the bullets and shrapnel out of her soul, after a war, and not letting it fester.

The brutally painful sessions had freed her in the end, more than ever, but she also knew that she was the survivor of a special kind of war, and some days, due to weather, or something someone did or said, the scars would ache for a moment, and then settle down again.

When she finished the year of therapy, they were scars, no longer wounds.

The wounds had healed. And an important part of healing was not seeing herself as ugly because of them, but as a beautiful person who had been injured, as if a mine explosion, or an erupting volcano, or an avalanche had buried her through no fault of her own.

Fate had caused her to be born in an enemy camp.

It wasn’t something that she had caused or deserved.

All her life until then she had tried to figure out what she’d done to provoke it.

She hadn’t. She had done nothing to provoke it, nor to deserve it, and once she fully understood that, for the most part she was healed of the aftereffects.

And no one who truly loved her would ever find her ugly because of it, no matter how many stitches she had had or how many wounds had been inflicted on her.

She had never tested out that theory, and had never told her daughters what she had experienced.

She didn’t want them to know. She thought they were too young and it was too gruesome to tell.

She had told Robert all of it, and he had only loved her more.

And she had mentioned it casually to Bart.

She didn’t know yet if she would tell him or not.

She didn’t know if he would stay in her life long enough to really love her. It was too soon to say.

Julian Thacker was a traditional psychiatrist who had a few unorthodox theories of his own, but his style of confrontational therapy had worked for Halley. She had faced all the painful events in her life squarely to rid her of the post-traumatic stress symptoms.

She waited until it was eight a.m . in New York, which was his call hour.

He didn’t seem surprised to hear from Halley, as though they’d spoken the day before, when it had been two years.

Halley knew she could say anything to him.

Nothing shocked him. He had helped her to be proud of being a survivor, not ashamed.

“Where are you?” Dr. Thacker asked.

“I’m in Paris,” Halley said, and there was obviously more to say, or she wouldn’t be calling.

“Are you alone?”

“Yes, sort of. I came alone, but I met someone here.”

“Is there another man in your life at the moment?”

“No. I haven’t dated anyone since Robert. I’m just starting now. The nightmares are back,” Halley said with a sigh.

“Do you think it’s because of the new man? Are they the same nightmares as before?” Dr. Thacker went straight to the heart of the matter. He always did. And she was scrupulously honest with him, and in her life. The honesty was an important part of the healing.

“It’s not him,” Halley said quickly. “And the nightmares are similar. My mother tries to kill me, and succeeds in the end.”

“And your father?”

“I think he’s gone.”

“Did something happen to revive the trauma?”

“Something stupid,” Halley said. “My purse was stolen the day after I got here. It’s an expensive bag I loved, but so what?

It’s just a bag. It got stolen with everything in it, money, passport, keys, credit cards, personal stuff.

The thief has been calling me wanting to sell me the bag for an extortionate amount, trying to blackmail me, and he says he’s going to kill me.

He keeps saying he controls me, and he will kill me if I don’t do what he says. I feel helpless again.”

“Ah, so your mother’s back,” the therapist said, and Halley was startled. She hadn’t made the association. “Do you believe him, that he’ll kill you?”

Halley thought for a minute. “Yes. I guess I do. I know I don’t deserve it, but I think he might try.”

“You’re not five anymore, Halley. Have you told the police?”

“Yes, they’ve been terrific. They know who he is. They’re trying to find him, and the bag. And the man I met here has been wonderful too.”

“So you’re not fighting the forces of evil alone this time. You couldn’t stop Robert’s death. But the police can stop the thief.”

“He keeps calling me and threatening me,” Halley said in a frightened voice. The fear made her feel weak and defenseless, as much as the threats.

“My guess is that they’ll protect you, and ultimately they’ll catch him.

Your mother can’t come back. She’s been dead for forty-two years.

Dead people don’t come back. She’s not a ghost. She was a very sick, disturbed woman who died, who didn’t love you, and it was never your fault.

” It felt good to be reminded of it. “The thief is powerless. You don’t have to give him any power. He’s not your mother.”

“He makes me feel the way she used to. Helpless.”

“There is nothing helpless about you. You’re a strong woman.

That’s your old PTSD talking. It’s a flare-up, like a broken arm or a knee that aches before it rains.

It’s raining in your world right now. I doubt that the police will let him hurt you.

And you can protect yourself. Are you being careful? ”

“I am.”

“Remember, he’s not a ghost and he’s not Sabine. The threat he poses is real, but there are people in your world to protect you now.” Suddenly Halley wondered if she had made the association because her mother was French. She mentioned it to the doctor who thought it was an interesting detail.

“It’s possible. I think it’s a flare-up. I’m not dismissing it. Abuse will always remind you of her, like a familiar song, and stealing your bag is a major violation, or it feels that way, even to people who’ve never been abused. What he did is very personal and shocking for anyone, not just you.”

“I feel stupid being so upset about it,” Halley admitted.

“A), it would upset anyone, b), the bag is incredibly valuable, which is also upsetting, it’s a real loss, and c), the thief has been stalking you and threatening to kill you.

I don’t think ‘stupid’ applies here, not even remotely.

” Halley smiled at what Dr. Thacker said and felt better.

“Feel free to call me whenever you need to, Halley,” he said, more warmly than usual.

It had been a good session. “And we can get together if you like when you get back. I hope you’ll feel better by then.

Try to enjoy your stay in the meantime. Try not to obsess about the threats.

And realize that he’s real and not a ghost from your past.”

They signed off then, and Halley sat thinking about what the doctor had said.

It always helped to talk to him, to clear things in her head.

She was still mulling it over when Major Leopold called her, to apologize again for her being detained the night before, and tell her that he and the agent from the FBI were meeting later that afternoon and he’d like her to join them.

She agreed immediately and called Bart to tell him about it.

“Do you want to come?” she asked him.

“I’d like to very much,” he said. “Do you mind?”

“Not at all, I’d like you to.”

“How do you feel today?”