Then a little light blinked by the receptionist’s window, and the door opened. A man walked out quickly, without looking around, tunnel-visioning his way across the room to the opposite door. He opened it and was gone.

“Kacy?” A woman leaned through the still-open door. She was older than me, maybe ten years or so, wearing the kind of professional outfit I knew well. Black trousers, silk blouse, slim blazer. Her hair was a sleek bob, shining in a brown as neutral as her waiting room.

Dread pooled in my gut. This was it, the moment before she knew my pathetic story, the gap when I might still be anything—a woman who suspected her husband of cheating, a recovering drug addict, a high-powered professional with a bone-deep sense of ennui.

I am strong. I speak out. And then with a rush of heat, I added, I bust shit up.

I rose to my feet, and she held the door wider. “Come on back.”

The first session had gone as well as it could have; at least, that’s what I told myself. After warming up by answering some questions about my medication, my eating and sleep, I’d plunged into the story of me and Aimee, the same one I’d been running over and over in my head for six months. How I’d thought we were friends, what the first signs of betrayal were, how stupid I felt, how I couldn’t trust my own judgment, so maybe everything that happened really was my fault. Sometimes in the rush of my words, I almost expected her to sympathize with me, or at least acknowledge how terrible Aimee was and how much I’d suffered. But all Dr. Lindsey did was make mild noises that encouraged me to keep on talking.

The time was up before I knew it.

She shut her notebook, and we looked at each other. Was she going to make a pronouncement? In my professional opinion, you are a whiny, screwed-up excuse for a human being and you should get the fuck over it.

But what she actually said was, “Let’s set a weekly appointment, if that works for you?”

When I nodded, she stood up and opened the door to the hallway. “Sharon at the front desk will get you scheduled.”

On the way home, I ran errand after errand—picking up new towels and blackout curtains, stopping by a plant nursery for some mint to place by the back door, and wandering through the largest grocery store I’d ever seen. But there was only so long I could stall. I didn’t have anywhere else to be, and the empty house was waiting. After my emotional purge in the therapist’s office, I felt hollowed out, laid bare. And it wasn’t only my own ghosts waiting there anymore.