“I’m glad you came,” he said. He was actually touched, deeply so. He pulled her toward him and kissed her and said he loved her for doing this, for driving two hundred–plus miles just to be with him. She basked in that for a moment, a twinkle of pride in her eyes, which ruined it a little for Darren. He knew Lisa well enough to sense when she was keeping score, savoring a victory. She had now made the greater show of devotion and had gained the upper hand somehow. And with that leverage, she posed a question that carried the dead weight of a declaration. The drive, the lingerie, her legs wrapped around his waist minutes ago—it all seemed a setup now, a dollop of honey before the bitter medicine went down. “We’re not keeping secrets anymore, right?” she said, turning to look into his eyes. A worm of dread writhed in his insides. His first thought was Randie. Did she think something had happened between them? They’d been over that, hadn’t they? Or was it Lisa who had something to confess? Darren came up on his elbows and then sat up completely, his damp back against the headboard. The heat in the room had cooled, so it felt clammy in here now. The moisture in the air had exhumed some long-buried scent from the room’s carpeting. It was cloying, like rotting fruit.

“What’s really going on with you and Bell?” Lisa said finally.

Darren felt relief at first. But it lasted about as long as it took Lisa to sit up in bed and say, “Clayton says you’ve been giving her money?”

“Why have you been talking to Clayton about my relationship with my mother?” He now felt the scoreboard flip in his favor, as he could avoid telling Lisa the truth about the missing gun and his mother’s blackmail if he focused on her transgression: talking about him to his uncle Clayton behind his back. This had come up no less than fifteen times in just four sessions with Dr. Long, and Lisa had acknowledged that this made Darren feel like she and Clayton were ganging up on him—over his choices about law school, the Rangers, and, especially, his relationship with Bell. Clayton wanted Darren to cut his mother out of his life. Lisa was breaking a rule they’d negotiated in the safe space of the therapist’s office.

“I’m not sure that’s the important thing here,” Lisa said coolly.

“I’m not sure that it isn’t.”