The Invisible Husband of Frick Island - Colleen Oakley Page 0,76
there for her when she did. To comfort her and support her through it.
And then once she was facing reality, he could tell her about the podcast and how many other people it could help. And maybe, just maybe, she’d understand.
Or maybe not.
But it was the best chance he had.
Reinvigorated, he sat up and tugged out his cell phone to call the therapist. If he was going to help Piper, he needed to know how. And quickly.
He only had three weeks to do it.
* * *
—
“I don’t think I can do this anymore,” Piper whispered into the clutched phone Friday morning, her heart thudding in her chest.
“What? What do you mean? We’re so close,” said the man on the other end of the line.
“I know, but when people find out . . .” She couldn’t even finish the thought. She’d been up half the night, thinking about it. Worrying over how mad people were going to be. She remembered the way her mom was treated, after sending her proposal to the Army Corps—the way the townspeople gave her the cold shoulder, glared at her on the street, made her feel as unwelcome as Piper had felt when they first moved there. The islanders didn’t take kindly to betrayal. And what she was doing? It was definitely a betrayal. She couldn’t even fathom how she had agreed to it. There were reasons, she knew. Good reasons. But she couldn’t remember any of them just now.
“Listen . . . don’t make any rash decisions,” he said. “Meet me tomorrow. The usual spot. I’ll pick you up. Let’s talk it out.”
“OK,” Piper said after a long silence. “I’ll be there.”
* * *
—
On the ferry Saturday morning, Anders both dreaded and eagerly anticipated what he thought would likely be one of his last weekends on the island. Janet Keene hadn’t been overly helpful in her advice on how to treat someone with delusional disorder. “It’s really hard to generalize a treatment plan, as it needs to be tailored to the specific needs of the patient. These conditions are very difficult to treat, and may need a mix of antipsychotic medications as well as supportive therapy.” Lacking access to antipsychotics, Anders pressed her on the details of supportive therapy. “After building a rapport—which can take weeks, even months—I’d ask questions that gently start challenging the nature of their belief. For instance, using the Elvis example again, I might ask what it was like singing ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ for the first time or if they remember where they were when they sang it. When they have trouble answering specifics, it can help them start to question their problematic belief.”
So that was Anders’s plan—to gently ask questions that Piper might have a hard time answering. He wasn’t quite sure what that looked like, but he hoped it would come to him.
By the time he finally got to Mrs. Olecki’s Saturday morning (he had wanted to go over on Friday and have as much time as possible with Piper, but after Greta’s threat of firing, he knew he had to wait), he was a speedball of nervous energy. He rushed in the front door of the bed-and-breakfast, only to find it completely empty. No guests. No Mrs. Olecki. No Harold. He ran through to the back porch and up the stairs to Piper’s carriage house. He rapped briskly on the door.
No answer.
He was about to knock again, when a voice from below called his name.
Anders looked to find Harold’s head poking out of the shed door. “Something on fire?”
“No, sorry,” Anders said. “Was just looking for Piper.”
“I noticed.”
“It’s just that she’s always here around this time. We usually . . . hang out.”
“I noticed that, too.”
Anders paused then, trying to understand the underlying meaning of Harold’s words—or if there was an underlying meaning. He ran his palm over his cowlick. Finally, he said, “Well, do you know where she is?”
“Nope. Haven’t seen her all morning, come to think of it.”
“Oh.”
Anders slowly took the steps back down, thinking of where in town he might begin his search for Piper.
“Hey, do you mind giving me a hand?” Harold said.
Anders hesitated, glancing at his escape route up the alley between the houses where he could be on his way to find Piper. Then he looked at Harold, who had been nothing but kind to him, and he dropped his head a bit. “Of course. What do you need?”
Anders spent the entire afternoon prying the rusted-to-the-frames screens from the bed-and-breakfast’s windows and