“He’s saying you had sex with him? What... Why would he...?” Liam sat very still and stared at the floor. If I knew him the way I thought I did, he was thinking about how to handle this. “Did...?” Liam started again, but he didn’t get out another word before I exploded in defense.
“No! My God, are you kidding? Of course I didn’t. Jesus Christ! Of course I—Why is he doing this?” Tears were falling now. I couldn’t think; I just seethed with anger.
“Faith. Can you think of anything at all that he could have misinterpreted as...” Liam started to ask, and I cut his question off again.
“If I were able to discuss his diagnosis with you, you’d know that it is not surprising that he may misinterpret a lot of things, but I am telling you—nothing ever happened. I shouldn’t have to tell you that. I have no idea why he’d do this!”
I stood and breathed, trying to stop my shaking. What I was ethically bound not to tell even Liam was that Carter struggled with paranoid delusions. One of which was erotomania, where one believes that a person, usually of higher social standing, is in love with him or her, contrary to evidence otherwise. He hadn’t been in my care for almost a year. His parents were active in his therapy. He’d been doing really well last I’d heard. What would ever cause him to make an allegation like this, I could not imagine.
“You believe me, right?” I gave Liam a steely look.
“Why would he say it?” He was still looking at the floor. His head was in his hands, then he rubbed his temples and ran his hands through his hair nervously.
“Oh my God. Are you asking me that? I ask if you believe me, and that’s your response?” I was fuming.
“No. Of course. Of course I believe you. I’m sorry.” He sat back against the sofa arm and looked far away, already contemplating the mess this would be for both of our careers, I was sure, because that’s all I could think of.
“I don’t know why he’d say it!” I practically screamed. “I have no fucking clue why the fuck he would do this!”
“This is a mess,” Liam said quietly. I started to cry, silently, and sat opposite him in an armchair.
Only an hour before, Liam had been so excited because we’d just booked tickets to visit Santiago, Chile, in May. The region was on his lengthy list of food destinations around the world where we needed to travel together, and while we’d crossed off many places, there were still a few must-sees, and Santiago was top of the list. He was scrolling through his iPad, verbally planning out our trip while I made eggs in the kitchen.
“We have to visit Barrio Lastarria first. We’ll have coffee and breakfast at Colmado, order a cappuccino and a pincho de tortilla and eat in the courtyard. The weather will be perfect in May,” he’d said. I’d covered the mist of sizzling bacon grease before it could pop out of the pan and burn my arm, and kissed him, pot holders on both hands, agreeing with his plan. Now, everything would change.
Liam went quietly into the kitchen and poured more coffee. He leaned against the counter and looked out the window.
“I’ll call Paula,” I said, looking for my phone. “See if she can start on damage control.”
“Don’t you think you should call Ralph first?” he said, without looking away from whatever he was mindlessly fixated on outside the window—a squirrel balancing on the fence, it looked like.
“You think I need a lawyer?” I stopped cold. “He said he’s not pressing charges,” I said, and Liam turned to me with a flushed face.
“Um...okay,” he said, in a sarcastic way that was uncharacteristic.
“What?” I asked.
“The way you say that... I don’t know.” He stopped.
“What?” I snapped.
“Like you’re relieved he’s not pressing charges,” he continued.
“Of course I am!” I was flustered, shocked. I didn’t know what he was getting at.
“It’s just a weird thing to say. It sounds like you have a reason to be relieved he’s not pressing charges. I mean I’d expect you to say that you plan to press charges against him...for defamation of character or something. It just sounded... I don’t know. Grateful.”
“Oh my God.” I sat down, a sob rising in my throat, but I swallowed it down and let anger lead. “You’re doubting me.”
“No,” he said, trying to stay calm. I could tell by the controlled and forced way he was speaking.
“I’m sorry...” I said, now scrolling through my phone, looking for Paula’s number. “If I haven’t been falsely accused of a... I don’t know, felony probably! In front of the entire country, and so I’m not sure of the etiquette.”
“I just mean...” He still had that overly controlled tone that was beginning to piss me off. “That I can’t imagine it matters whether the kid pursues action or not. The whole country knows now. I’m sure they’ll investigate. Right? I mean...” He stopped. I put my phone down, not having thought of this in the five minutes I’d had to absorb the news. New panic began surfacing.
“Who’s ‘they’?” I asked him.
“I don’t know. The state? I don’t know.”
My heart was racing. They couldn’t convict me if I was innocent, right? I was trying to sort it out. I could take a polygraph, I thought. I realized this was something I’d learned from police dramas and was probably not regular practice.
But it was just the word of an unstable kid. I tried to think of anything that I may have said or done to cause this. No. He misinterpreted damn near everything. That was part of his diagnosis. I hated that I was doubting myself. Could I have brushed against his knee when leaning over to hand him a tissue? I’d hugged him once, but it was at his last session when I wouldn’t be seeing him again, and his mother was standing right there. I’d hugged her too, in fact.
Then it hit me. Three years ago, when he’d started with me, he was seventeen. He’d lunged at me and tried to kiss me in one of our sessions, but I’d pushed him away in time. He had cried, apologized. We were working through his unhealthy sexual urges, so I made a careful record of the incident, and was firm with him about how inappropriate his behavior was, and if it happened again, I’d have to refer him elsewhere. He didn’t have any more outbursts or make any advances after that. That must have been what he was talking about. He must have been jumbling his memories of it. Even under the circumstances, I couldn’t explain this to Liam because of confidentiality purposes, but it must have been something to do with that. My phone rang. It was Paula.
“Hello,” I answered.
“A heads-up about this would have been nice, Faith,” she said, without even saying hello.