Cook the Books

been suffering from smoke inhalation when the alarm finally had sounded. In either case, I was immensely relieved that nothing worse had happened.
    “So, Kyle wanted me?” Ade squirmed uncomfortably and pulled Patrick closer. “And he started the fire believing that Owen was inside?”
    “Yes. It seems that Kyle imagined that with Owen out of the way, you could be together. He took all of the things you’d been saying about Owen’s job and terrible pay and wanting a better place to live, and twisted them in his mind. He developed the idea that he was exactly what you were really looking for and that he’d get rid of Owen for you so you two could, I don’t know, run off into the sunset together.”
    Ade shut her eyes and shivered. Patrick let out a small squawk, as if he were in tune with his mother’s emotions. “Sick man.” She gently stroked the baby’s back.
    “He thought that you were out that night and that Owen was home because that’s what I’d told him when he called me earlier in the day. He broke the glass in the door by the fire escape and started the fire using charcoal and lighter fluid that he tossed inside and on the fire escape itself.”
    “God, and then he watched the fire from the backyard?” She pulled Patrick in even tighter.
    “I know. But I guess he wanted to watch. Some fire-setters do.”
    “Do you think Kyle had been waiting for an opportunity to kill Owen?”
    “I’m not sure. I don’t even think that his fixation on you had all that much to do with you. I think that it was all about his crazy father. He set the fire at Digger’s the night before Hank Boucher was going to meet Digger for the first time and hear what an utter failure his son had been in culinary school. The night of your fire—”
    “Don’t call it my fire,” Ade said. “It’s Kyle’s fire.”
    “Sorry, the night Kyle set your place on fire, he’d just been dealt another rejection from his father, and I think that it triggered another desperate and pathological reaction. Kyle was determined to create the ideal-looking family that he thought he should have—the beautiful wife and the cookbook accomplishment—and when Hank didn’t invite his own son to this prestigious dinner, it set him off. His fire-setting was more about his anger and his fear of his father than anything else.”
    I immediately thought of Danny, my client, and realized how deep his rage must be at his own awful father. I would have to insist that Danny make some changes; I didn’t know whether it would be possible to get his father to come to a session. If not, my client would still have to disengage from his father and deal with the damage that had been done. I had only a month left with Danny until my six-week winter break, so I made a mental note to meet with my supervisor and come up with a solid plan for continued treatment with one of the senior therapists. And then there was Alison and her fantasies about leaving her boyfriend for an idealized man who was never going to love her.
    As the parallels between my clients and Kyle became obvious, it dawned on me that I’d left my client notes on the coffee table when Kyle had been at my place. What’s more, when I’d moved my notes out of the way, he’d joked about my not wanting him to read my diary. He’d read about Alison, client A, who was desperately in love with an older man and wanted to leave her current partner for this new, suave, charming man. Kyle must have thought that my notes about A were about Adrianna and about her infatuation with him! God, this should teach me to keep my notes hidden!
    The first thing that I’d done after coming home from the hospital was to pack up all of the cookbook materials and mail them to Hank Boucher. I wanted nothing to do with that man ever again. I’d turned off the ringer on the phone, and I’d refused to turn on the television or the computer or to look at a newspaper, since I knew that the headlines would be riddled with the story of famous chef Hank Boucher’s murderous son. Today, I wanted to focus solely on my friends.
    “Look, Ade, you can all stay here for as long as you like. I can go crash at my parents’ house in Newton for a while. It’s not a problem.”
    “Absolutely not. We’re not about to kick you out of your own home, Chloe,” she protested.
    “You’re not kicking me out. I’m volunteering. In fact, I’m insisting. I’ll be perfectly fine at my parents’ place.”
    Ade brightened.