I flipped through the rest quickly. I didn’t have time to read much, but the gist of it was clear: my sister was launching a legal case stating that I was too unstable to parent my own child.

Dr. Haven’s office was in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and I’d chosen her partly because my father didn’t believe “real” therapists existed beyond Manhattan’s borders. She had written extensively about guided mental imagery therapy—also known as Katathym imaginative therapy—which intrigued me because my own memories were knotted up in terror. As a child, I’d had endless nightmares about tigers pulling me apart as their claws turned to knives. There were long, blank spaces from my childhood when I remembered nothing, bookended by indelible images.

As a teenager, I’d found drugs and cutting my own skin effective ways to push back the memories that haunted me. I’d started seeing Dr. Haven a couple of years earlier, though the pandemic had disrupted that. But that day, I needed a different kind of help.

“I’m sorry I only have a half hour,” she said when I walked in. “But we can—”

“My wife is dead, and my sister is attempting to steal my son,” I said.

The room was quiet for a moment except for the ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner.

“I’m not saying you don’t need therapy,” Dr. Haven answered. “But you need to be in a lawyer’s office right now.”

I was too agitated to sit, so I paced across the well-worn wool rug.

“I came to you because I realized that my family has lied to me about . . . a lot of things,” I said.

“What you’ve described to me is like a hall of mirrors. Your family made you feel like you couldn’t trust anyone. Even yourself.”

“They’re going to do the same thing to Teddy if they get the chance,” I said. “That’s why I wanted custody if Caroline and I divorced. But I think my sister is intending to blackmail me.”

“Did you talk to her?”

“No. I wasn’t supposed to see the documents I saw. It was putting me on notice about her legal maneuvering.”

“Why would she want custody of your son?”

“She doesn’t,” I said. “She wants control of the family business.”

“But you told me she already runs the business.”

“She does the work, but it’s still my father’s. He’s very—” It was on the tip of my tongue to say old fashioned, but I knew that was a euphemism. “He’s sexist. He wants an heir. That’s why he gave me his name and begged my wife and me to use the same name for our son. When Teddy was born, my father said that one day, my son would inherit everything. He wasn’t joking; he meant it. Juliet is well aware. This is her power play.”