"A little bit during the day," she said. "A lot when I'm falling off to sleep."
She seemed reticent to say more, so I chose provocative words. "What comes to mind while you're lying in bed?" I asked softly.
Her face flushed. "I have these dreams. They're different from the ones where I'm hurting myself. Very different."
"How so?" I said.
"I'm hurting… him," she said.
That didn't surprise me. The longer Lilly stayed away from her habit, the more she thought about the inappropriate relationship that had sparked it, the angrier she was likely to get. I wanted her to know that she didn't need to be ashamed of that anger, that she could talk openly about it-to me or her new therapist (my old one) Ted James. "How are you hurting him?" I asked her.
"It's awful," she said.
"They're just feelings," I said. "The only person you've really hurt is yourself."
She looked down at her leg for several seconds. "In the dreams, I'm in bed," she said, tentatively. "Grandpa comes into my room to kiss me good night." She looked back at me.
"And then?" I said, keeping my voice even.
"I pretend I'm asleep, but I'm not. He comes closer and closer. It feels like he's taking forever to get to me. Finally, I see his shadow on the wall. I watch it as he leans over to kiss me. And just as his lips are about to touch my forehead, I turn over and…" She closed her eyes.
"And…" I said, encouraging her.
She kept her eyes closed. "I have a knife."
"What happens?" I asked.
She looked directly at me again. "I cut his throat." She looked horrified.
"And then?" I said.
"Then he just stares at me with this terrible confusion in his eyes. Like he has no idea why I did it. And that's the worst part. That look on his face. It's even worse than picturing what I did to him-you know, the way his neck bleeds. I can't get his expression out of my head."
"Make sure she can keep it out of reality" the voice at the back of my mind said.
"You don't feel the impulse to strike out at your grandfather that way right now, do you?" I asked. "While you're awake?"
She looked at me as if I had two heads. "My God, no. I don't ever want to hurt him."
"I didn't think you did," I said.
Lilly's nightmare was transparent. Her grandfather had strung her along, seducing her for years. He had come closer and closer, without ever laying a hand on her. To an adolescent girl's unconscious mind, it must have seemed that he was taking forever to claim her. But such a girl's rage at being manipulated would grow in tandem with her erotic impulses, hence the fantasy of killing her grandfather as she lay in bed, just as his lips are about to touch her. Even the grandfather's confusion seemed on the mark. He may never have consciously intended to harm Lilly, acting automatically on his own bent emotional reflexes-his shadow -born of who knows what childhood trauma.
Something Ted James had told me years before came back to me. He'd been trying to help me let go of my anger toward my father, which I was never fully able to do. "Eventually," James had said, "you'll realize there's no one to blame and no one to hate. Your father was a victim, just like you."
I looked at Lilly. "Maybe the reason your grandfather looks confused," I said, "is because he never understood why your relationship turned toxic-the dynamics that drove it in a destructive direction. Maybe he didn't understand it any better than you did."
"In other words," she said, "he didn't mean to screw me up?"
"Maybe not," I said.
She seemed to be grappling with that notion.
"Do you say anything to him when he's looking at you with that confusion in his eyes?" I asked. "After you've cut him?"
"No," she said. "That's when I wake up."
"What would you say to him?" I asked.
She shook her head. "I don't know."
"Think about it," I said.
She smiled, then squinted past me, presumably imagining the situation. After a few moments, she looked back at me. "Sleep tight. Don't let the bedbugs bite," she said. She laughed.
I let myself laugh with her, to drain the tension from the moment. Were she a long-term patient of mine, her words and the tone of voice in which she had delivered them-combining innocence, rage, and something vaguely sensual-would have been a perfect launching pad for a longer flight over the terrain of her trauma. That was a very good sign indeed. "You're going to be okay," I said.
"Think so?" she said.
"I know so." I extended my hand. She took it. "Good luck," I said. "I'll be thinking about you."
Billy was scheduled to be released later that day, but the gears of the legal system always grind. He wasn't released that day, or the next. He and I joked about him being set free on Independence Day, but that didn't happen, either. It took ten days for the relevant paperwork to flow between the D.A.'s office and the jail. Finally, on July 10, I went to the Suffolk County House of Corrections and watched him walk through the two sets of sliding steel doors that pretend to separate good from evil. He glanced back just once as he half-jogged to me. "I can't believe I'm out of there," he said. "Thank you."
"If you really want to thank me," I said, "you'll worry with me."
"Worry about what?" he said.
"About yourself. The stealing, hurting animals, setting fires-it can't go on."
"That's past history," he said. "I'm not gonna screw up."
"Past is future, as long as you run from it," I said. "Losing your parents, leaving Russia, living with Darwin-I promise you every shortcut you take to avoid facing those things leads back here. I've seen it happen. Dozens of times. Kids with hearts every bit as good as yours."
He glowed with that last phrase. "Will you help me?" he said.
"I will if you want me to," I said.
"I really do," he said.
Treating a sociopath is much harder than treating someone with depression, or even psychosis. The trouble is that sociopaths don't think they're sick. Everyone else is the problem. If the world would just get off their backs, cough up what they've got coming to them, everything would be fine. "We'll give it a try," I said.
He held out his hand. We shook on it. "So where are we going?" he said.
The way Billy asked that question made it plain he remembered my promise that I'd consider letting him live with me. I remembered, too. It was easy to deliver on it, at least temporarily, because I had been staying with Julia and Garret at Julia's mother's West Tisbury house on Martha's Vineyard. Julia had been released from Mass General just three days before and was still feeling unsteady, physically and emotionally. "We're going to your grandmother's house on Martha's Vineyard," I said. "I've been staying in the guest cottage while things come back together."
"So we get to hang out, like you said," he said.
"Sure looks that way."
"Will Garret be there?" Billy asked.
"He's moved most of his things in," I said.
Billy nodded over his shoulder. "I have better memories of the House of Corrections than Darwin's house," he said. "At least everyone agrees this is a prison. You kind of know what to expect."
Garret testified before the grand jury two days later. Carl Rossetti was there, as was District Attorney Tom Harrigan.
Rossetti told me the scene was heart-rending. Garret had been a mess, trembling and sweating, needing much more reassurance than he had at Boston Police headquarters. Still, by the end of his testimony, he had nailed Darwin Bishop's coffin shut with an eyewitness account that put the plastic sealant in Bishop's hand and the bottle of nortriptyline in his desk. That complemented the fingerprint evidence perfectly. An indictment of Darwin Bishop for murder in the first degree, with extreme atrocity and cruelty (a special add-on in the Massachusetts courts), along with two counts of attempted murder (Tess and Julia) was issued within an hour of Garret stepping down from the witness stand.
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