Good as Gone: A dark and gripping thriller with a shocking twist. Amy Gentry

move her bundled feet gently off my lap, slip the remote from under her arm, and mute the television just as some stockbroker in a natty suit looks up, realizes it’s five minutes until midnight, and tears out of his office to propose to the actress on the other side of the movie. Tom is in the kitchen, putting the breakfast dishes away before he goes upstairs to work.

      The thought of Tom’s presence in Julie’s room is not the only reason I don’t want to go back to bed. The tiredness nags at me, but something else does too.

      “I have to pick up some papers from my office,” I say. “I hate to leave just now, but she’ll sleep for a while.” I glance at Julie. “And I need to get it over with so I can start working on grades.” Tom doesn’t need to know that I’ve successfully lobbied the chair of my department to let me turn in final grades at the end of the summer. It’s amazing how sensitive department heads are to my particular brand of family emergency — the kind that involves knives and young daughters and the national news.

      Tom looks at me mutely from the kitchen, and I admit to myself that I’d feel better if I knew how long I’ve been living in a house with a loaded gun. “Will you be around in case she wakes up?” I ask instead.

      “Of course,” he says. “Is she —”

      “I told you, she’s fine,” I snap. Then soften. “I just don’t want her to wake up all alone.”

      He nods.

      On the phone with Carol Morse in the car, I must sound a little off, although I feel my request to see her is perfectly reasonable. After all, she’s invited me to make an appointment with her before. “Do you want to come in with Julie this afternoon?” she asks.

      I know Julie won’t be coming this afternoon — she’ll be sleeping. But I can tell Carol about that when I see her.

      “No, I thought this time I would just — I want to see you by myself.”

      “All right,” she says, and then, “I have a cancellation this morning at eleven. Can you make that?”

      It’s probably her lunch break. Maybe I sound worse than I think I do.

      I kill an hour at the paperback bookstore next to her office, thumbing through romances and mysteries. When I walk in, I’m somewhat surprised to find her younger than I remembered, no older than me, and wearing chino capris. For some reason, this bothers me.

      “Come in, come in,” she says and gestures me over to a sofa with a woven blanket draped over one arm. I notice a box of tissues sitting on the side table by a lamp with an artfully lumpy ceramic base, and I wonder if Julie ever cries here. Carol Morse closes the door and sits opposite me in a low-backed chair.

      “Thanks for fitting me in,” I say, suddenly nervous. “I hope this is — it’s a little strange. It’s about Julie.”

      “How is Julie?” she asks with an appropriate degree of concern.

      “Fine. Well, not fine,” I say. “She’s sick today, so she won’t be coming in.” Carol just looks at me, but for some reason I don’t want to tell her about the hospital. Right now it’s the only secret Julie and I share; perhaps I’m afraid to find out Carol already knows. I continue, probing to see whether she’ll volunteer the information on her own. “I was sort of hoping you could help me out with Julie a little. I feel like — I feel like she’s keeping things from me. And I know you can’t talk about what she says to you, but I have some things to tell you that might change your mind on that.”

      “On patient confidentiality? That’s impossible.”

      “Even for a parent?”

      “Especially for a parent.” She looks at me levelly. “Anna, are you aware that your daughter hasn’t come to her sessions for the past two weeks?”

      After a stunned pause, I manage to say, “Carol, how could I be aware of that, since nobody bothered to tell me?” She stays silent for long enough that I become uncomfortably conscious of my hostile tone. “I mean, no, no, I had no idea. She’s been saying she’s coming here, I just assumed — I mean, wouldn’t you think we would want to know that?”