Patricia had a small water feature, a fountain that gurgled over smooth rocks. I stared at it long enough that my heart rate slowed to normal. The truth—and I’d really never dwelled on it—was that yes, I had been scared. I’d been terrified. But my father eventually apologized. And it seemed like one of those things that should be forgiven. My father, powerful, under constant pressure, was a person, and people make mistakes. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. My tennis coach had that on a bumper sticker. It sounded, at the time, wise and true. Now it sounded wildly off the mark.

Patricia redirected my attention to the particular closet I found myself in last night.

It was dark, I was sad, and there, among the skirts that no longer fit and the special occasion dresses I no longer wore, even the dust bunnies around my shoes looked vicious. “The closet in my current apartment has a curtain. I sat in there and pulled it shut.”

And what was I thinking about?

“My life not being where I want it, or where I expected it to be.” I paused, reflected on the images from last night. “With work, especially. Miles unilaterally decided that I shouldn’t be at the office. Which is really hard, because I want to be there. I need to be there.”

For the money?

“Yes, but no. My father, he did good, but he also screwed things up so monumentally. Work was my only way of righting the scales. With time, perhaps I might’ve been able to do enough good to balance his bad. And now that chance is slipping away.”

Patricia was curious. She asked what my mother said the night my father tore my closet door off its hinges.

I’d wanted Cricket spitting mad; I’d felt it a requirement of motherhood that she defend me. But it wasn’t in her nature, and when she didn’t, I understood. My closet door was evidence of what happened when one took a stand against Gregory Richardson. “She said I should’ve come down for dinner. And the next day, a stranger came and took the broken door out of my room. Cricket never replaced it, and we never spoke of it again. Maybe Cricket didn’t want to replace it, probably because then she’d have to reckon with this awful thing my father did. Or maybe she left it off because she wanted to remind me.”

Of what?

I glanced at the mantel clock, placed discreetly on the bookshelf behind her; I couldn’t forget that I was paying for her to listen. Without a salary, it might be another four months before I saw her again. But we were over time, and I didn’t want her next client to be delayed. “It reminded me,” I said, “of how little power I actually had.”