Page 1 of Sunkissed Memories
Chapter One
The office located off Independence Lane in the Old Historic District of Nantucket Island was the stuff of Ada’s professional dreams. Walking in that Monday morning in late April, she let herself appreciate the fine details: the lush plants, the soft yellow walls, the mahogany desks, and the ornate furniture. She’d selected every painting and hung the curtains herself. Therapy was about so much more than what was said in a space; the space was important, too. She wanted her patients to feel warm, open, and safe. She wanted them to step inside, take a seat, and find the courage to mend their broken hearts.
Ada’s secretary arrived a few minutes after Ada did. Natalie was in her mid-thirties, with dark red hair cut in a pixie and thick glasses. Natalie tapped on Ada’s office doorway and said a chipper, “Good morning!” before asking if Ada needed anything before her first client. But Ada wasn’t the type of boss to require silly tasks of her secretary. She needed Natalie to keep the books and manage her schedule, ensuring people were sent in and out safely and on time.
“How was your weekend, Natalie?” Ada asked instead, eyeing the waiting room to make sure her nine o’clock wasn’t here yet.
Natalie gushed. “We’ve had such gorgeous days! Hank, the kids, and I went for a long walk and a beach picnic. You know, Ben’s grown like a weed the past few months, but I didn’t fully realize how drastically he needed new pants till we took a family photo.” Natalie pulled out her phone to show the picture, which featured her ten-year-old son, Ben, in a pair of pants that hung several inches above his shoes.
Ada chuckled. “I remember those days.”
Natalie winced and pocketed her phone. “How’s Hannah doing? More tennis last weekend?”
“There’s always more tennis!” Ada said. “Another match tonight, in fact. I have to leave at six on the dot.”
As if on cue, the door to the office opened to bring in Ada’s first patient of the morning: a woman she’d never met before, maybe around Ada’s age or a little bit older. Late forties, perhaps. A brand-new patient with brand-new problems that Ada was eager to investigate. In Ada’s opinion, life was far too difficult to be carried alone.
The woman’s name was Katrina Petri. After she sat on the soft armchair opposite Ada’s stiffer one, she crossed her ankles delicately and spread her hands across her lap. She wore a dark blue dress, and her blond hair cascaded beautifully to her shoulders. But there was a touch of sorrow behind her eyes, one that, Ada guessed, she tried to hide from most people in her life.
“Hi, Katrina,” Ada said. “My name is Ada Bushner, and as you might have read on my website, I’m a therapist with a master’s degree from Boston University. In my mind, the work we’ll do here together is founded in the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy tradition. Perhaps it’s obvious, but everything we say here will remain completely confidential.” She paused, wondering if she was doing her typical spiel too quickly. “Do you have any questions for me?”
Katrina bit her lower lip and glanced out the window, where a shining April morning beckoned. “I don’t think so,” she said. “Oh, wait. This is a tiny, tiny island. What do we do if we run into one another?”
Ada smiled. She’d gotten this question before. “I’m sure we will run into each other! And I see no reason we can’t talk to one another and say hello. If you feel comfortable with that.”
Katrina let her dark eyelashes fall to her cheeks. Ada reminded herself to keep her breathing stable, to stay conscious and alert in front of her new patient. Katrina needed to feel that Ada was right there with her every step of the way for the next sixty minutes.
“Thank you,” Katrina said, curling her hands into fists. “I mean, I’ve never reached out to a professional before. I always thought I could handle this myself.”
“Going to therapy is a normal and very worthwhile thing,” Ada said. “I myself have visited a therapist several times throughout my life, even before I went to school for it myself.”
Katrina scrutinized Ada, as though trying to figure out what had driven Ada into therapy. Ada kept her face even. Her past wasn’t Katrina’s to dissect.
“Do you want to start by telling me a little bit about yourself?” Ada asked.
Katrina flared her nostrils, still refusing to look at Ada. Finally, she said, “I know I’m supposed to talk about how miserable I am.”
Ada laughed gently. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. You can talk about the first thing that comes to mind.”
“Okay.” Katrina tucked a curl behind her ear. “I mean, I think I met someone. And I can’t stop thinking about him.” She was quiet again, as though needing Ada to validate what she’d said.
“That’s exciting, and probably sort of scary,” Ada offered to urge her along.
Katrina nodded furiously. “He’s so handsome, and charming, and genuinely fun. I can’t remember ever feeling this way about someone. And I’m all twisted up about it because my husband died last year. It was a sudden car accident. We were out of town, and he’d taken a cab to meet a friend. I was still at the hotel. After I found out he had died, I didn’t leave the hotel for many days. I just got room service and considered what it would be like to move somewhere else and build a different life.”
“That’s terrible, Katrina. I’m sorry.” Ada had met with all kinds of widows and widowers through the years, people darkened with grief and angry that the future they’d planned for had been taken away.
“But after he died, I found out something,” Katrina went on, her voice gritty. “He had someone else. For years, he’d been dating someone else. And I was his little, foolish wife, cooking him dinners, doing his laundry, and asking him if he’d slept all right during the night. I still can’t believe it. For more than twenty years, I thought I was in one kind of marriage, and now that he’s gone, I found out I was in an entirely different one.”
Ada’s heart pumped faster and faster. Sometimes when patients dropped bombs like this, a part of her brain felt scrambled as she searched for the right thing to say. “That is tremendously unfair, Katrina.”
But before Ada had a chance to say something more, Katrina broke into a wild grin. “But the thing is, right now, I don’t care about him! He’s dead and gone, and his girlfriend’s probably moved on with some other handsome man—maybe another woman’s husband, who knows? But why can’t I move on, as well? And now, I’ve met this marvelous, handsome, charming man, and I’m asking myself, why can’t I have a new story?”
“There’s no reason you can’t embrace a new story,” Ada said. “But I imagine you want to organize these emotions and make sense of them. I imagine—”
Katrina cut her off. “I do. I mean, I don’t want to bring any of the old sorrow into the new romance. I want to get my husband’s memory out of my system. I want to heal quickly and move forward. I guess that’s why I’m here.”
“Grief doesn’t have a typical timeline,” Ada said. “One minute, people think they’re fine and ready to move forward, and the next, grief can take over again. Have you found that to be the case for you?”
