Hemlock Bay

Frasier.”
    He frowned. Usually women—any and all women—liked to be called by their first name. It made them feel that he was more of a confidant, someone they could trust. It also made them more vulnerable, more open to him.
    He said, “You tried to kill yourself the first time after the death of your child seven months ago.”
    “She didn’t just die. A speeding car hit her and knocked her twenty feet into a ditch. Someone murdered her.”
    “And you blamed yourself.”
    “Are you a parent?”
    “Yes.”
    “Wouldn’t you blame yourself if your child died and you weren’t with her?”
    “No, not if I wasn’t driving the car that hit her.”
    “Would your wife blame herself?”
    Elaine’s face passed before his mind’s eye, and he frowned. “Probably not. All she would do is cry. She is a very weak woman, very dependent. But that isn’t the point, Mrs. Frasier.” It wasn’t. He would be free of Elaine very soon now, thank God.
    “What is the point?”
    “You did blame yourself, blamed yourself so much you stuffed a bottle of sleeping pills down your throat. If your housekeeper hadn’t found you in time, you would have died.”
    “That’s what I was told,” she said, and she swore in that moment that she could taste the same taste in her mouth now as she had then when she’d awakened in the hospital that first time when she’d been so bewildered, so weak she couldn’t even raise her hand.
    “You don’t remember taking the pills?”
    “No, not really.”
    “And now you don’t remember driving your car into a redwood. Your speed, it was estimated by the sheriff, was about sixty miles per hour, maybe faster. You were very lucky, Mrs. Frasier. A guy just happened to come around a bend to see you drive into the tree, and called an ambulance.”
    “Do you happen to know his name? I would like to thank him.”
    “That isn’t what’s important here, Mrs. Frasier.”
    “What is important here? Oh, yes, do you happen to have a first name?”
    “My name is Russell. Dr. Russell Rossetti.”
    “Nice alliteration, Russell.”
    “It would be better if you called me Dr. Rossetti,” he said. She saw those plump, white fingers twisting, and she knew he was angry. He thought she was out of line. She was, but she just didn’t care. She was tired, so very tired, and she just wanted to close her eyes and let the morphine mask the pain for a while longer.
    “Go away, Dr. Rossetti.”
    He didn’t move for some time.
    Lily turned her head away and sought oblivion. She didn’t even hear when he finally left the room. She did, however, hear the door close.
    When Dr. Larch walked in five minutes later, his very high forehead flushed, she managed to cock an eye open and say, “Dr. Rossetti is a patronizing ass. He has fat hands. Please, I don’t want to see him again.”
    “He doesn’t think you’re in very good shape.”
    “On the contrary, I’m in splendid shape, something I can’t say about him. He needs to go to the gym very badly.”
    Dr. Larch laughed, couldn’t help himself. “He also said your defensiveness and your rudeness to him were sure signs that you’re highly overwrought and in desperate need of help.”
    “Yeah, right. I’m so overwrought—what with all this painkiller—that I’m ready to nap.”
    “Ah, your husband is here to see you.”
    She didn’t want to see Tennyson. His voice, so resonant, so confident—it was too much like Dr. Rossetti’s voice, as if they’d taken the same Voice Lessons 101 course in shrink school. If she never saw another one of them again, she could leave this earth a happy woman.
    She looked past Dr. Larch to see her husband of eleven months standing in the doorway, looking rather pale, his thick eyebrows drawn together, his arms crossed over his chest. Such a nice-looking man he was, all big and solid, his hair light and wavy, lots of hair, not bald like Dr. Larch. He wore aviator glasses, which looked really cool, and now she watched him push them back up, an endearing habit—at least that’s what she’d thought when she’d first met him.
    “Lily?”
    “Yes,” she said and wished he’d stay in the doorway. Dr. Larch straightened and turned to him. “Dr. Frasier, as I told you, your wife will be fine, once she recovers from the surgery. However, she does need to rest. I suggest that you visit for only a few minutes.”
    “I am very tired, Tennyson,” she said and hated the small shudder in her voice. “Perhaps we could