Loving Yasmine

Loving Yasmine - Chapter 3

"You're rather quiet tonight, Robert. You usually have a lot to say after visiting your sister."

Robert pulled his gaze from the tree branches bobbing in the wind outside the window and brought it back inside his therapist's Dorchester office.

Dr. Doris West, a stout woman with an ultra-pale complexion, a rectangular face, and a square, somewhat masculine-looking chin, stared at him from a white wicker chair. Her hair was a cobweb of silvery gold that made her look much older than her fifty-something years. Robert supposed taking on the burdens of the constant stream of broken patients who flocked to her door had robbed her of her youthfulness.

She adjusted the spectacles on her high-bridged nose, brushed back thin bangs of hair from her forehead, and squinted her hazel eyes at him. "What was different this time, Robert?" she asked in a voice, soft and prodding like an adult would use on a distracted child.

"Weddings make me sentimental."

She chuckled softly and shifted on the chair. "They have that effect on me, too."

Robert leaned back into the sofa and studied the labyrinth of deep wrinkles that had taken up permanent residence on her face. He'd started seeing Dr. West four years ago, a year after he'd first discovered that Timmy Gleason, the man who'd raised him and Michelle, was not their biological father, but a homeless imposter who'd stabbed their real father, Dwight Carter, to death in a back ally in Richmond, Virginia, where his family had once lived.

Robert was a malleable four-year-old when the murder occurred, so it was easy for him to believe the fabricated story his mother had drilled into his head the night she'd returned to their Church Hill apartment with a strange man—a man he clearly knew wasn't his father, but whom he'd accepted as such from that night forward.

Through hypnosis, Dr. West had taken him back to his pre-Timmy Gleason years and helped him awaken the memories that had been suppressed for decades. Before long, his personal memory tract began to come back into focus, and he could hear and see his real father—and recall the woody smell of Old Spice tainted with the smell of motor oil on his skin. He'd begun recalling specific events, pleasant time spent with his parents, laughing and playing together as a family. One recurring memory was sitting on his mother's lap at the kitchen table while his father fixed their toaster oven, tinkered with the handle of their fridge, or fixed the hinges on a drawer that had fallen apart. Robert loved to burrow his nose against her neck and breathe in her cocoa butter and lavender scent. They used to be happy. So happy...

Robert smiled as he remembered visiting the garage where his father worked as a mechanic. He used to look forward to hanging out with his dad on weekends while his mother worked as a waitress in a local diner.

"I would never want to be a mechanic," Robert had said to his father, who'd been working under the hood of an old pickup truck.

"Why?"

"Because my hands would get greasy and dirty and Mommy would have to clean under my nails with a toothpick, like she cleans yours. That would hurt."

His father had chuckled. "As long as your work is honest and you enjoy it, it doesn't matter what you do, my son. I love working on old engines because I love the sound of them roaring back to life. It gives me satisfaction that I brought something back from the dead. What do you want to do when you grow up, my little Robert?"

"I don't know, Daddy. Maybe I'll be a fireman."

"Why a fireman?"

"'Cause I like big red trucks."

His father had dropped his greasy rag on the engine and straightened up like a giant. "No, Robert," he'd said, wagging a finger at him. "You should always know why you want to do something. If you know why you want to do something, you'll feel fulfilled as you do it. If you're not certain why you're doing it, it won't bring you satisfaction."