“She would blackmail you? However many details you’re comfortable sharing, you know you can speak confidentially here.”

“Yes.” I’d told Dr. Haven a great deal, more than I’d ever revealed to anyone else. But I’d never mentioned Mirelle in any of our sessions. Perhaps it was time. “You know that I was a drug addict. I met a woman when I was in my second year of school in Berlin. We fell in love. She was the first person who seemed to understand me, to understand what I needed . . .” I gulped for air. “We were only together for three months, but it was the happiest, most carefree time of my life.”

“What happened?”

“We got married in a small church in the French countryside near Colmar,” I said. “Technically, it wasn’t a legal marriage—I didn’t know until later that you needed to have a civil ceremony in France to be married.” My father had pointed that out to me months after Mirelle’s death, after I’d gone through rehab. The way he’d relayed that information implied that it wasn’t supposed to matter that Mirelle was dead. She hadn’t really been my wife, after all. “A few days later, I woke up, and Mirelle was dead. She had been stabbed. There was blood everywhere.”

Dr. Haven stared at me, her expression rapt. “What happened then?”

“I called my father. He was away on a trip, but he sent . . .” I closed my eyes. Who had he sent besides Juliet? I couldn’t remember. It couldn’t have just been her, I thought. But that was stupid and sexist; Juliet was as physically strong as I was. “My sister got me onto a plane and took me to rehab. My father eventually showed up there. I was in the facility for close to a year.”

“What about your wife?”

I appreciated her referring to Mirelle that way. “My father told me he’d taken care of everything. He told me to forget it, to pretend it never happened. Juliet wouldn’t even talk to me for years after that. She started calling me ‘lady-killer.’ She still does, as a matter of fact. But now she’s trying to use it to take custody of Teddy.”

Dr. Haven steepled her fingers. “How much do you remember of that night?”

“I just told you.”

“No, you explained what your father and sister told you,” she pointed out. “What do you actually remember?”

There were only two moments that I was certain of. One was surfacing from an opioid haze in my apartment and seeing Mirelle on the floor next to me, her eyes open, her chest and neck covered in blood. The second was being on a private plane with Juliet. You ruined my week in Paris, you stupid piece of shit, she’d said. I wish you were dead.

“I was a mess,” I said softly. “I don’t know what I did.”