"Tell me about yourself," he said.
No preamble. No setup. She had come to find him in the operations room about something household-related, a practical question about the week's schedule, and he had answered it and then set his pen down and looked at her and said it. Direct. Unhurried. As though he had been waiting to say it and had decided that now was when.
She blinked. She was not a person who blinked at unexpected things. She had trained herself out of the involuntary tells years ago, in the early years of her practice when she had understood that a therapist's face needed to remain available rather than reactive. She blinked. She covered it by looking at the window.
"You have a file on me," she said. "You had a file on me before you walked into my office. You know more about me than most people who have known me for years."
