We Called It Therapy After Dark novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Signed on Stage
Anja signs her divorce papers on her husband's live stage and walks out; her grandmother calls to say the notebooks under the bed are gone.
Kasper said my name into the microphone, and six hundred people turned around to look at me.
I was in the front row of a downtown theater, in the green dress Siri had picked out.
The ticket had come by courier that morning, with a note in her handwriting.
"He wants to thank you on air. Wear the green one. Love you."
I had worked twelve hours at the hospital and slept two.
I came anyway.
Siri had been my best friend since we were eighteen.
In the lobby she had hugged me hard and pressed a warm coffee into my hand, exactly how I take it.
"Did you bring your notebook?" she asked.
"It's in my bag. Why?"
"Kasper likes seeing you with it. Sit in the front, okay? He'll find you."
Kasper had always liked my notebooks.
He read them over my shoulder at the kitchen table and called them cute.
I did not weigh that.
I sat in the front.
The stage had a long walnut desk, two microphones and a banner that said THERAPY AFTER DARK, EPISODE 500.
Kasper sat behind the left microphone in his navy blazer.
Siri sat behind the right one.
I had never heard a full episode of his show.
I work nights and sleep while he records, and for four years that had suited both of us.
"My wife, everybody," Kasper said. "Anja Dahlquist. She doesn't sleep, so I made sure the rest of you could."
The audience clapped, and a few people stood up.
I lifted my hand, because I did not know where else to put it.
"Tonight we do what we always do," Kasper said. "We listen. Siri, play the tape."
The speakers crackled.
Then I heard my own voice, thin and fast, from a month ago.
"I can't breathe. A kid died on my shift and I keep seeing his shoes. Please don't tell Kasper. He'll think something is wrong with me."
Nobody in the theater moved.
I had called Siri at four in the morning from my car.
I had cried so hard I could not finish the sentence.
The tape clicked off.
"That's my wife," Kasper said softly. "Six years of 'I'm fine.' Isn't that what we all say?"
A woman behind me made a small sound of sympathy.
Somebody else laughed.
Siri put her hand on his arm.
"I loved Anja," Kasper said. "I'm still trying to. But I have to stop lying, and I'm doing it where you can hear me."
He took Siri's hand.
"Siri and I are together. We're eleven weeks pregnant."
Siri stood up with one hand low on her stomach, and her eyes were wet.
The theater came apart in applause.
Two women near me held their phones up, filming.
A man in a courier's jacket crouched beside my seat, holding a manila envelope and a blue pen.
"Mrs. Lindahl? Mr. Lindahl asked that you sign tonight. The yellow tabs."
I did not take the envelope.
I looked at Siri.
She looked at the floor of the stage.
The courier, the green dress, the front row and the hug had all been arranged, and I had walked into every one of them.
I took the envelope and opened it.
It was a petition to dissolve the marriage, with six yellow tabs.
Kasper's signature was already on every one.
The audience was still clapping when I stood up.
I went up the steps at the side of the stage.
A stagehand put his hand out and then let it drop.
Kasper stopped smiling.
"Anja, sit down. We're live."
"I know," I said. "That's why I came up."
I laid the papers on his walnut desk, between the water pitcher and the microphone.
I signed six times.
My hand shook once, on the fourth tab, and then it did not.
So I signed.
I capped the pen and set it down on his desk.
"The house is my grandmother's," I said into his microphone. "She'll have your things in the driveway by Sunday."
Somebody in the balcony whooped.
Somebody else gasped.
Kasper's mouth opened and nothing came out of it, which was a first.
I looked at Siri.
"The green dress was a nice touch," I said.
She flinched.
I walked down the steps and up the aisle, and six hundred people watched me leave.
I did not hurry.
In the parking lot the wind off the lake went straight through the thin dress.
I got into my car and put both hands on the wheel.
They were shaking now.
My phone buzzed with a text from Roan, the doctor I work nights with.
"Someone in the break room has the stream up. The dock is open when you're ready. No questions."
Before I could answer, the phone rang. It was my grandmother.
"Anja." Ebba's voice was low and flat, the voice she used on boys who ran in her library. "Where are you?"
"In the car. I signed the papers, Gram. I'll tell you everything. I'm coming home."
"Don't come yet. Listen to me."
I heard her breathe.
"I got back from bridge early. Kasper's car was in my driveway at four o'clock, and it was gone by the time I had my coat off."
"He has a key."
"He went up to your room, honey, and I went up after him. The shoebox under your bed is empty."
The shoebox held eleven spiral notebooks, every one I had filled since my mother died.
"The notebooks are gone," Ebba said. "All of them. And he took nothing else."
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