Berman shrugged, a gesture she hadn’t seen him use before, and the newness, the unpredictability of it alarmed her. In an unfamiliarly stern tone of voice, he said, “Maybe you’d like to say something unpredictable yourself.”

“Me?”

“Yes, Jane, you.”

“Such as what?”

“It’s up to you. But if you’re looking for a suggestion, you might start by telling me what happened in New Hampshire.”

Had he ever, in all the years she’d been coming to see him, called her by her first name before? She thought not. In phone messages, he called her Ms. Cody and in person, he avoided her name altogether. “I thought I just told you what happened.”

There was something hard and determined in Berman’s eyes. Apparently she’d insulted him with her earlier rant and now he was getting back at her. “I know you think you did,” he said.

His head came over again and his dark, small eyes narrowed and he unclasped his fingers and put his hands somewhere in the direction of his hips and she saw the whole situation very clearly: he knew exactly what had happened in New Hampshire. He’d probably known what had been going through her mind from the moment she mentioned having coffee with Dale, had probably known it had been drinks that first time, not coffee at all. So in addition to the humiliation of him knowing that she’d been carrying on a heavy flirtation with her ex-husband and had had a—what would you call it? A fully clothed orgasmic encounter?—he knew she’d been avoiding full disclosure. He was now in a position to sit in judgment on two counts. And, on top of it all, she was paying him for this.

They were back to their staring contest. She commanded herself not to blink. “I did tell you what happened.”

“Good,” he said.

She experienced a moment of triumph and then, somewhere deep inside her, heard a door slam shut. She glanced over at the digital clock beside Berman, the clock with the vast, bright numerals, just so no one could mistake the time and squeeze another sixty seconds out of his day. She had another six minutes to fill. It was like being trapped in a vault with a time-release lock. She hated most sessions with Berman these days, but these early morning sessions were the worst. What a way to begin the day. She should try yoga or meditation, something where you didn’t have to pay for the privilege of providing all the entertainment yourself. “So as soon as we got back from New Hampshire,” she said, “Sarah came over to the house to tell us that her heat wasn’t working. As if we didn’t know it had been in the eighties all weekend.”