Chapter 6: The Session Notes
Dr.
Sandra Okafor still practiced out of the same office in Wicker Park—a second-floor walk-up above a dry cleaner, with a waiting room that smelled like cedar and old paperbacks.
She met me on Thursday morning without Lily, who was with Mara.
I hadn't seen Dr.
Okafor in nearly two years.
She looked the same: calm, unhurried, with the particular quality of attention that had made me trust her the first time.
"I read Carol Voss's letter last night," she said, once we were seated.
"I want to hear it from you directly.
What do you need?"
"A voluntary statement confirming the nature of our sessions and your clinical impression of me as a parent."
"That I can provide." She folded her hands.
"I want you to know that nothing in my notes will help Douglas Hale.
My clinical record describes a woman in a psychologically @busive environment who was managing that environment with a high degree of self-awareness and protective instinct toward her child." She paused.
"I also want you to know that I was concerned when you stopped coming."
I looked at her.
"I thought about calling," she said.
"I didn't, because you weren't in acute crisis and I didn't want to overstep.
But I thought about it."
"Diane started tracking how long I was away from the apartment."
Dr.
Okafor was quiet for a moment.
"Did she know you were coming here?"
"No.
I told her I was running errands."
"And when you stopped?"
"She never asked.
I think she assumed she'd won." I paused.
"She was wrong about what winning looked like."
Dr.
Okafor looked at me for a long moment.
Then she reached for her notepad.
"Tell me what's happened since you left," she said.
"All of it.
I want to understand the full picture before I write anything."
---
I told her everything.
The exhibit folder.
Carol's office.
Ruth and the USB drives.
The restraining order.
Hale's counter-petition.
The subpoena.
Diane's voicemail.
Dr.
Okafor wrote steadily and asked three questions.
The first was about Lily's current behavior—the night waking, the flinching, the way she pressed her face into my neck.
"She's showing signs of acute stress response," Dr.
Okafor said.
"That's consistent with a traumatic incident.
I'd like to refer her to a colleague of mine—a child psychologist named Dr.
Reeves.
Her evaluation would be independent of your case, but if her findings are what I expect them to be, they become relevant evidence."
"How soon can she see Lily?"
"I'll call today.
Probably next week."
The second question was about Jason.
"Do you believe he knew what his mother was doing to Lily before last Saturday?"
I thought about that carefully.
"I believe he saw things and chose not to name them," I said.
"I don't think he directed it.
I think he was raised in a house where Diane's behavior was the weather—something you didn't question, just endured."
"Does that change how you feel about him?"
"It changes how I understand him.
It doesn't change what I need to protect Lily from."
Dr.
Okafor nodded and wrote something.
The third question was the one I hadn't expected.
"Emily," she said, setting her pen down.
"How are you?"
The room was very quiet.
"I'm functioning," I said.
"That's not what I asked."
I looked at the window.
Outside, a delivery truck was double-parked on the street below, its hazard lights blinking orange in the gray morning.
"I'm angry," I said.
"I'm tired.
I'm frightened in a way I can't always locate—like the fear is somewhere underneath the functioning and I can't get to it directly." I paused.
"And I'm more certain than I have ever been about anything in my life."
"Certain of what?"
"That I will not stop."
Dr.
Okafor picked up her pen again.
"That," she said quietly, "is exactly what I'm going to write."
---
Her statement arrived at Carol's office by four o'clock that afternoon.
Carol read it and called me immediately.
"She describes you as one of the most psychologically intact individuals she has worked with under sustained @buse conditions," Carol said.
"She uses the phrase 'exceptional protective instinct' twice.
She also notes that your decision to document rather than react immediately was consistent with someone who understood the long-term stakes for her child." A pause.
"Hale's subpoena just handed us a character witness."
"What about the motion to exclude the video?"
"Hearing is set for two weeks from Tuesday.
I've been preparing the brief all day." Another pause, and then something shifted slightly in Carol's voice.
"Emily.
There's something else."
I waited.
"Peter Colm called me this afternoon.
Off the record."
"What did he say?"
"He said Jason wants to talk to you.
Not through attorneys.
He said Jason has something to tell you that he should have told you a long time ago, and that if you're willing to hear it, it might change the shape of the hearing."
I sat with that for a moment.
"What does Colm think he's doing?" I asked.
"Colm sounded tired," Carol said.
"I don't think this was his idea."
"Do you think it's a tactic?"
"It might be.
It might also be exactly what it sounds like." A pause.
"I can't tell you what to do here.
But if you do meet him, I want it recorded, I want it in a public place, and I want Lily nowhere near it."
I thought about Jason's face in the elevator gap.
The last frame of the video.
"Set it up," I said.
"Somewhere public.
Tuesday morning."
Carol was quiet for a beat.
"Are you sure?"
"No," I said.
"But I want to hear what he thinks he should have told me a long time ago."
I ended the call and sat in Mara's kitchen until the light changed.
Mara came in at six and found me at the table with my hands around a cold cup of tea.
She sat down across from me without saying anything.
"He wants to meet," I said.
"Jason?"
"Yes."
Mara looked at me.
She had been looking at me like this for three years—with a careful, held-back expression that I now understood had been worry she hadn't known how to name.
"What are you going to do?" she said.
"I'm going to go," I said.
"And I'm going to bring a recorder."
May you like
Mara reached across the table and put her hand over mine.
"Good," she said.
