her, to buying her a puppy. Someone finally referred her to Heather Davison, a child therapist who’d had some success dealing with mute children. Heather felt like her last hope, but she’d been disappointed when she met her. The therapist didn’t look more than thirty, and her style of speech was more like that of a teenager than a therapist. She wore jeans and a T-shirt, and her long blond hair was tied up in a ponytail. Emma took to her instantly, though, and that was what counted. And Laura liked what Heather had said to Emma at the start of this session.
“Your daddy’s death was nobody’s fault,” she’d said. “A sickness in his mind caused him to kill himself. You don’t have that sickness, though. Your mom doesn’t have it, either. Most people don’t have it.”
Now Heather looked at her watch and stood up. Obviously the session was over, and the miracle Laura had hoped for had not occurred. Emma had not made a sound during the half hour with the therapist.
Laura met Heather and Emma in the hall outside the play therapy room, and Emma immediately wrapped her arms around Laura’s legs. To say that Emma had grown clingy over the last couple of months would be an understatement.
“Hi, sweetie!” Laura said to her. “Did you have fun?” Emma nodded.
Heather led them back to the reception area. “Emma,” she said, “I want to talk to your Mom for a little while in the other room. You can play here.” She pointed to a colorful play area that had attracted Emma the minute they’d walked into the waiting room forty minutes earlier. “Mrs. Quinn will keep an eye on you from her desk.”
Emma whimpered her protest and clung more tightly to Laura.
Laura leaned over. “I’ll just be in the next room, and we’ll only be a few minutes.” She walked Emma over to the toys and spent a few minutes getting her involved with the crayons and a coloring book.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” she said. “You stay here and play.” She heard the firmness in her voice, employed more for Heather’s sake than for her daughter’s. What she really wanted to do was hold Emma on her lap and rock her, telling her everything would be all right. Her separation anxiety was nearly as strong as Emma’s.
Heather guided Laura into her office, which was next to the play therapy room. The office had comfortable, adult-size chairs, and Laura sank into one of them.
“I’m afraid she’s never going to speak again,” she said.
“Oh, I think she will,” Heather said. “Her lack of communication makes it harder to know what’s bugging her, of course, but the truth is, children her age need to play it out—act it out—rather than talk it out. So, I’ll work with her in play therapy and we’ll see where it goes.”
“I just don’t know how she feels about anything anymore,” Laura said.
“I know,” Heather said. “Loss is so hard for little kids.You have friends in your world, but she just had you and her dad. She’s lost fifty percent of her support system. And if Dad can die, so can Mom. Already, I can tell she’s feeling terribly abandoned.”
“Abandoned? By Ray—her father?”
“I think abandoned in general,” Heather said slowly. “I think it might predate her dad’s death.”
“But I almost always had her with me when I traveled,” Laura protested. “I’d have to leave her with sitters during the day, of course….” And during many nights as well. She shut her eyes. “She always seemed happy and well-adjusted. She’d love to stay with the sitters. In Brazil, her sitter had a daughter Emma’s age. They had a great time together. Emma was outgoing and talkative. I know that must be hard to believe—”
“No, it’s not hard,” Heather said. “And it’s very encouraging. If she was a strong, well-adjusted little girl once, then she has resources inside her to help her through this time. The prognosis is very good.”
Laura nodded, trying hard to believe what Heather was saying.
“But I have to say that it’s unusual for a selectively mute child to be mute with everyone,” Heather continued. “Ordinarily, they’ll be mute at school or out in the world in general, but not at home with family. Emma’s case is distinctive in that she doesn’t talk to anyone, not even you.”
Laura looked down at her lap, where her hands were knotted together. She must have failed Emma somehow that she didn’t even feel safe talking to her own mother.
“You told me she was home when your husband killed himself,” Heather said quickly, obviously aware that Laura was sinking into guilt. “That alone’s enough of a trauma to bring about this sort of regression, so don’t go laying the blame on yourself.”
Laura pursed her lips. “If you say so,” she said.
“The other thing I picked up on is her negative feelings toward men.”
“Really?”
“Did you see when I asked her which face looked most like a man’s face? She picked the angry face.”
“Well, I know she’s always favored women. But I didn’t think she had…negative feelings about men.”
Heather shifted in her seat, ponytail bouncing, and Laura thought she knew why Emma liked the therapist: Heather probably reminded her of her Barbie dolls.
“You haven’t told me much about Emma’s relationship with her dad,” Heather said. “With Ray.”
Laura wondered where to begin. “Emma was not Ray’s natural child,” she said.
“Oh.” Heather jotted something down on her notepad.
“No. I had a brief relationship with another man and Emma was conceived. It was a shock to me, the pregnancy. I wasn’t—” she tried to find the words “—I wasn’t the brief relationship type. Or even the long-and-enduring relationship type.” She smiled at Heather. “I’m an astronomer. That is—was—my life. I never felt I had the time for relationships. And I was thirty-four. Old enough to know better. But anyway, I was pregnant.” She had the feeling she was giving Heather far more information than had been requested. “Ray and I were close friends, but nothing more than that. Yet he was always a very caring person. He was much older than me, and he was sort of part father, part brother, part friend. I was very upset about the pregnancy. I’d never thought I’d have children, but I knew I didn’t want an abortion. Still, I wasn’t married. So Ray offered to marry me. I accepted. I loved him very much. But we never had what you’d think of as a typical marriage. We were more friends than lovers.” She and Ray had made love perhaps twenty times in the six years of their marriage. She had wanted more, but Ray’s antidepressant medication killed any libido he might have possessed, and she was careful never to press him or make him feel inadequate. He was a good husband and he treated Emma as though she were his own, and Laura could usually make herself be satisfied with that.
“What was his relationship like with Emma?” Heather asked, and Laura remembered that was the original question.
“Well, there was never any doubt that he was her father. He was a wonderful father to her.”
“Give me some examples.”
“Well, he’d read her stories
