Second Honeymoon Part 28

"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 b.a.s.t.a.r.d 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 "touche" 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.

Chapter 43

EDWARD BARLISS, DIRECTOR of Camp Wilderlocke, looked at me as if I were from Mars. No, worse. He looked at me as if I were the parent from h.e.l.l.

After a three-hour drive straight from Manhattan, I'd walked unannounced into his small, pine-scented office on the camp's fifty-acre complex in Great Barrington, Ma.s.sachusetts. Did I mention the unannounced part?

"Mr. O'Hara, what are you doing here?" he asked.

"I'm here to see my kids."

"Family visiting day isn't until next week, though."

I was well aware of this. I was also well aware that I was breaking the rules at Camp Wilderlocke, and that Edward Barliss and his fellow "Wilderlockians" took their rules very seriously. In addition to not being permitted to use electronic gadgets-a ban I wholly supported-the kids weren't allowed to call home until they were ten days into their four-week session. That was a rule I begrudgingly supported.

"I know it's not visiting day, and I'm sorry," I said. "But this couldn't wait. I need to see them."

"Is it some kind of family emergency? Has someone died?" he asked.

"No, no one has died."

"But it is an emergency?"

"Yes, you could say that."

"Is it health-related?"

He stared at me, waiting for my answer. I stared right back at him, a vision in a red plaid shirt and hiking shorts, wondering how long this little game of twenty questions was going to continue. To glance around his tidy office-the neatly stacked files, the pushpins all aligned perfectly on the bulletin board-was to know immediately that Barliss was a man who prided himself on being organized, on top of things. As an uninvited guest, I was about as welcome as a bedbug in one of his cabins.

Wait until you hear the rest, buddy. Brace yourself, okay?

If he didn't like my being there to see Max and John Jr., he really wasn't going to like what I had planned for them.

Screw beating around the bush. I blurted it out.

"You want to do what?" he asked. It was complete disbelief. As though I'd just told a kid there was no Santa Claus, Easter bunny, or tooth fairy while eating a piece of his Halloween candy.

"Think of it as a brief field trip," I explained. "I promise to have them back in a couple of hours."

"Mr. O'Hara, I'm afraid-"