She shifted in her seat. “But once in a while, you get a patient where the physical aspects of her health run second to her emotional and psychological presentation. That was Lucy. She was my enigma, the riddle I couldn’t solve. I loved having her come in, but not for the checkups and blood tests and culture smears. I looked forward to trying to dissipate the smoke screen. I wanted her to trust me enough to tell me what she was shielding.”

“And did you?”

“Never to my satisfaction.”

“What did you suspect?”

“Abuse. Not physical. Not while she was with me, anyhow. This was deep-seated and soulful. What most people might have seen as snobbishness or aloofness, I sensed was the result of trauma, probably dating back to childhood.”

“She told you this?”

“Not in so many words. She slipped occasionally and gave me enough to believe I was right.”

“How about her husband?” Joe asked, his interest growing. “Was there any mention of abuse from him?”

“Only indirectly. It was a battle royal for me to get her to drop the cigarettes. The drinking and junk food were two goals too far. And honestly, the reason I didn’t push too hard was I think she used them to blunt the pain. None of this is uncommon, but I was nevertheless fascinated by her, I think in part because of her intelligence. I sensed that despite her situation, she might have been willing and able to help herself.”

“The situation being Lemuel,” Joe suggested.

“I thought so. It’s commonplace for someone with an abusive upbringing to end up in a similar place as an adult. It sounds self-destructive, and that can be the end result, but it’s much more complicated than that. It often boils down to their choosing companions whose behavior mirrors all they’ve ever known. It sounds perverse, but it ends up becoming almost a comfort zone for them.”

“Beating substituting for love?” Joe asked.

“Simply put, yes. But the beating need not be physical. My feeling was that Lemuel fit that category—the hyper-controller. Her options, as she saw them, may have been to adapt or die.”

“He told my colleagues that they’d stopped having sex,” Joe said. “He used that to rationalize his going to strip clubs.”

Glowa gave that a moment’s consideration before saying, “Could be. But if I’m correct about the marriage’s dynamics, he would have been the one to cut off intimacy. If she’d tried it unilaterally, he would have simply raped her.”

Given his own suspicions, Joe kept his next question straightforward and neutral. “Why did he break off relations, assuming he did?”

“Specifically? I wouldn’t be able to say. More broadly, sex is frequently a tool of power, whether administered or withheld. It could even be that he did both to her, at different times.”

“They did have kids together.”

“I heard that,” Glowa acknowledged. “Boy and a girl. Estranged, from what I gathered. That, too, would fit what we’re talking about.”