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throat and escaped from her mouth as a sob. When she heard that sob, followed by its twin, and then by another and another, she was surprised—What the heck are you crying for in the middle of the day? she scolded herself—but unable to stop. She felt grief move within her like a barefoot woman flitting through a dark house.
    So much pain. So many secrets. She felt burdened by the weight of other people’s secrets, their grief, their trust, their blinking anticipation, their eager faces, the hunger with which they looked at her, expecting answers, expecting cures, expecting miracles. And until this moment, she had always felt capable of meeting their expectations, had believed in her ability to help them part the cornstalks of their confusion, sift through the hard pellets of their grief, and arrive at a new understanding. Until now she had believed in the power of logic, of rational thinking, of cognition, of self-awareness. But not right now. Not as she sat with her head on the kitchen table, hearing herself sob and unable to stop. Right now each human heart felt remote as a coral reef, and every person so mysterious, so unknowable, so incomprehensible, that she wondered how she’d ever do her job again.
    Is this what burnout feels like? she asked herself, and before she could answer, an image flashed before her eyes: of her father sitting across from her at dinner and talking to her husband. Sudhir was explaining a mathematical concept, doing his best to explain it in layman’s terms, and Wallace was doing his damnedest to follow. They were all doing this for her sake, Maggie knew, but still she was irritated at Sudhir for trying so hard. Just then Wallace’s eyes wandered to her face and he gave her the faintest smile, just enough to let her know that he sensed her irritation, that he knew she was as trapped in her seat as he was. No one else caught that exchange, but it flustered her because it told her two paradoxical things: one, that this was all a performance, that Wallace was simply a guest in her house who would soon be on his way; and two, nobody would ever know her as well as her father did. In one look, Wallace conveyed to her both his hold over her and his disinterest in her.
    So it’s not burnout, Maggie told herself. It was that she was rattled by her father’s visit, and telling Sudhir what had happened when she was ten had made her realize that the memory, which she’d assumed was defanged and toothless, still had a bite left in it. That’s all. Rose’s confession today had just put her over the edge.
    In fact, the shaking had stopped a few minutes later, and she saw her other two clients that day without any further problems. But two weeks later, it happened again. Then nothing for a few months, and then the shaking came back. Sometimes the most mundane of confidences could bring it on. When Maggie sheepishly mentioned to Sophie her suspicion that building the home office had somehow knocked down the metaphoric wall between work and home life, Sophie pooh-poohed the idea. Plenty of therapists work from home, she declared. That’s superstition.
    So Maggie let it go. Accepted the shaking as an occupational hazard. Worked around it. Managed to control it so it wasn’t easily apparent to anyone else. Sure enough, she hadn’t experienced it in almost six months. Until now. Her encounter with the Indian woman had set it off. She knew what it was, too: Something about how bereft, how existentially lonely, Lakshmi looked had found an echo within her. And when she’d mentioned the bit about her mother being sick . . .
    She walked to her office, glad that it was late in the evening and most of her colleagues had gone home. She opened her office door unsteadily and sat down on the desk chair. She sighed. A martini. That’s what she needed. A martini and Peter Weiss were just what the doctor had ordered.

5
    T ODAY IS M ONDAY and the husband has day