when she’d been at Simon’s place for dinner, he had shared with Nina the diary Emma kept, detailing her profound depression. The entries described a private pain that had haunted her for years: her exhaustion, her overwhelming sadness, her inability to connect or to care.
Nina had read only a couple pages before Simon grew anxious, but it was enough to get a clear picture. Simon had found the diary while packing up Emma’s belongings, and he blamed himself for not knowing the dire extent of his wife’s suffering. In error, he had believed that love and Prozac would be enough to pull her out of the darkness.
On top of the hurt and guilt Simon still felt, he was trying to rebuild his life, trying to reach Maggie, stay connected to Connor, do his job, adjust to a new house, a new neighborhood—poor guy had had nearly as many upheavals as Nina. And she’d just added one more to the mix with this job of hers.
“Maybe he needs therapy,” Dr. Wilcox suggested. “I could certainly give you some referrals if that’s of interest.”
“That would be great,” Nina said. “I’ll talk it over with him.”
But Nina had no intention of talking it over, because Simon had no idea she was seeing a therapist. She didn’t want him to think she wasn’t perfectly happy with him.
Telling Simon the truth about Dr. Wilcox might open up a number of issues, but lying to him took a different sort of toll. She’d already made up several reasons to keep him in the dark about her therapist. One time, Nina had almost arrived home from a session, but had to turn around and go to the market because that had been the reason she’d given for coming home late.
In truth, a part of Nina was still with Glen. She thought of him constantly. If he were alive, why had he abandoned his family? Nina was well aware men do have midlife affairs, but they generally don’t run away, or strip the family of all security. Did she have a part to play in this? Or did it have something to do with why he got fired from the bank? She had no doubt that, alive or dead, Glen had taken these and other secrets with him, wherever he’d gone.
Simon made her happy, made it possible to love again, but below the surface Nina’s heartache lingered. The slightest reminders of Glen—a movie on cable they had watched together, a photograph from a family trip, even something as mundane as seeing his brand of coffee on a supermarket shelf—could bring on the waterworks.
There was much to resolve, which reminded Nina to move on with the session so she could move past Glen and get on with her new life.
“I should talk about Teresa,” she said.
CHAPTER 19
Dr. Wilcox turned a page in her notebook, flipping back to refresh her memory.
“Right,” she said. “The other woman.”
“I mean, I was dealing with a lot back then,” Nina said. “Glen missing, losing his job, the lies, and the affair on top of it all. It was too much for me to process. But I was worried, you know?”
“About becoming a Dateline special.”
“That’s right,” Nina said. “I knew the police were going to investigate the lead, but I didn’t know when. And I was also thinking about the children—What would happen if word got back to them about their dad’s affair before I knew the whole story?”
Dr. Wilcox nodded with understanding.
“So I thought I needed to get some answers for myself. I didn’t want to wait around for someone else, and I was tired of feeling like a victim. I needed to do something, take some action of my own. In the back of my mind I was hoping that it was much ado about nothing.”
“So what did you do?”
“I went looking for Teresa,” Nina said, making it sound like the only logical choice. “I had to learn everything I could about the girl with strawberry hair, even if I got to her before the police did.”
Nina did not know if Dr. Wilcox had ever been to Carson, if she was at all familiar with the town of eight thousand residents. It was typical of New Hampshire in that it was old (founded in the 1700s), steeped in history, and lacking in diversity. To the east lay Bear Brook State Park, and off to the west rambled the Connecticut River, the longest in New England. Main Street in Carson followed the rise of