‘Yes,’ Stern said.
‘I was about as mad as I could get,’ I said, ‘but that was almost too much for me. Still, she shouldn’t have sent Baby away. It took a couple of hours for her to get straightened out enough so she could use the phone, but we had Baby back before lunch time.’ I laughed.
‘What’s funny?’
‘She never seemed able to rightly remember what had happened to her. About three weeks later I heard her talking to Miriam about it. She said it was the house settling suddenly. She said it was a good thing she’d sent Baby out for that medical check-up—the poor little thing might have been hurt. She really believed it, I think.’
‘She probably did. That’s fairly common. We don’t believe anything we don’t want to believe.’
‘How much of this do you believe?’ I asked him suddenly.
‘I told you before—it doesn’t matter. I don’t want to believe or disbelieve it.’
‘You haven’t asked me how much of it I believe.’
‘I don’t have to. You’ll make up your own mind about that.’
‘Are you a good psychotherapist?’