Chapter 1

        Sometimes I’m not sure that Jacob ever existed. That afternoon, when he rang the doorbell and I opened it to find him standing there holding my cat, was the beginning. Zola was yowling and screeching. I remember looking at the stranger and seeing blood streaming down his arm. I saw that it was coming from a gash on Zola’s leg. Then, just like that, the world tilted on its axis and my fate was sealed.
        Even now, when I least expect it, I’m struck by a stab of memory so sharp that I stop in my tracks and see him standing there with Zola in his arms. Not a ghost but flesh and blood. I get a shiver down my spine even thinking about it.
        I have lots of other moments like this and it’s not as if he left yesterday. Late in the afternoon is another bad time. I turn on the light and suddenly I can see him sitting in the easy chair. For months after, I left his jacket hanging from one side just the way he always did. In those days, it drove me crazy. Now, I like to turn my head and breathe in his smell—his mixture of pipe tobacco and the mothball that he always kept in the pocket. Images of Jacob from the past and images of Jacob from my imagination fuse together in a kaleidoscope of changing patterns. I twist the cylinder and Jacob’s face falls away and I see my own. But sometimes it’s Alma’s face which appears. Then it’s both Jacob and Alma.
        I was always surprised by Alma’s comments about Jacob. She saw things in him that I had missed. It makes me wonder what had given me a blind spot. Why hadn’t I seen it coming? I certainly hadn’t. It was a complete surprise when I woke up one morning and he simply wasn’t there any more.  I realize that when you live with somebody every day, you take them for granted and struggle to make the adjustment it takes to ignore the things they do that drive you wild. I did this for Jacob.
        Then, Alma came into his life, or rather, he came into her life, or we all entered into a life together. It didn’t last long. In short order, the tensions became unbearable. It’s as if all three of us were suddenly dropped into a pool of  blackness and our relationships became clotted with deceit and rivalry. The unaccounted for disappearances, the phone calls whispered in the hallway, the far away looks were the start of it. It didn’t take long for me to see that Jacob and Alma were as thick as thieves. 

        How did Dr Kurtz ever get her hooks into me? I must have been feeling sorry for myself, or very lonely, or struggling with guilt, or all of the above. Right from the beginning there was something hypnotic about my sessions with Dr K even though I loathed the intrusion into my privacy, especially this Freudian thing she had about dreams. She wanted me to