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fides were there to reassure his clients. There was a Bachelor’s degree from Brown, and a doctoral degree in Clinical Psychology from the University of Wisconsin. Flanking the diplomas were certificates from the American Board of Psychological Hypnosis and the Society of Cognitive Therapists.
    “Why don’t you make yourself comfortable?” Duran asked, as he sat down behind the desk. “I want to take a look at my notes—and we can start the tape.”
    “Do we
have
to tape?” Nico complained, tipping off her shoes as she flopped down on the couch.
    “Yeah,” Duran said with a chuckle. “We have to. We really do.” Inserting a cassette in the tape recorder, he hit the
Record
button and, turning to his computer, began to type. “It’s not my idea, y’know—it’s the insurance company’s.”
    “
I’m
not going to sue you, Doc.”
    “Riii-ight,” Duran replied. “That’s what they all say.”
    *    *    *
    He had her in a light trance, reclining on her back with her limbs slack, eyes shut, expression neutral. Duran took her through the usual imagery-progression, his deep and soothing voice guiding her into and through an imaginary landscape.
    “You’re on a soft, dirt path beside a cool stream, and you pause for a bit to listen to the water splashing over the rocks,” he said. “You see a leaf, caught on the surface of the water—it’s like a tiny ship—and you follow its progress as it sails downstream, caught for an instant against a rock, and then spinning free into the current. You watch it until it disappears around a bend and then look at the water—its miraculous texture, so smooth and silky as it rolls over the pebbles of the streambed.”
    Nico frowned momentarily as he led her away from the stream, and winced slightly as she followed his instruction to crouch and duck under some “spiky” branches. Her brow furrowed with effort as she made her way through the “dense” vegetation. And then her faint and blissful smile returned as she crossed a meadow on a path that was “soft and spongy” under her feet.
    “There’s a light breeze on your cheeks. It lifts your hair and bends the grass …”
    As she was told, she opened a small white gate and walked down several flights of lichen-covered steps, descending through a dappled shade to a secluded pool. There, she sat on a fallen trunk of a moss-encrusted oak, watching the sunlight “sift through the trees and dance on the water.” Nico’s left hand rolled over the side of the couch, trailing against the rug, dipping into the cool water.
    She was in her “safe place,” where nothing and no one could hurt her. Duran watched her chest rise and fall as he began to regress her. “Let’s go back,” he said. “To when you were a girl.”
    “I
am
a girl.”
    “A
little
girl. Twelve … eleven … ten. Do you remember?”
    She shifted uncomfortably on the couch, and nodded. Duran was a few feet away, leaning forward in a wing chair, amazed at the way her face had changed, the wised-up and guarded neutrality giving way to a look of sweet and energetic innocence. She was a child again, and even her voice was childlike.
    “Where are we?” he asked.
    “South Carolina.”
    “At your foster parents’?”
    “Umm-hmmm. In our house. It’s a big white house, way out in the boonies.”
    “Tell me about it.”
    “You
know.”
    “Tell me again.”
    Her brow furrowed. “It has columns. Big old white columns. Like rich people. Only the paint’s all peeling and you can see they’re not really solid—just slats of wood, glued together. And now they’re coming apart. So maybe—maybe it’s going to fall down.”
    “What is?” Duran asked.
    “The porch.”
    “Okay … what else?”
    “Trees.”
    “What trees?”
    “There are
trees.
Live oaks. The house is at the end of a little road—”
    “A long driveway,” he corrected.
    “‘A long driveway,’ with life oaks on both sides.”
    “Live
oaks,” he