As I approached my office, I stared at the new brass plate: “Dr. Ellen J. Haskell, Clinical Psychologist,” a kind gift from my mother. After unlocking the outer door, I climbed upstairs, feeling that the foggy weather was being ushered in with me, perhaps because my mood was as heavy as the air outside. It was on a day such as this, six months ago in the spring, as the dogwoods were blossoming, when my confidence as a psychotherapist was severely shaken.

Lucas Constantinou was a gifted classical guitarist, tall, slender, and strong, with virile dark looks. He had begun counseling after falling down a flight of icy steps and breaking his right wrist and four fingers. Despite surgeries, he would never regain the dexterity needed to play the guitar at a professional level, thus ending his promising career. Lucas had been in therapy with me for three months with little improvement in his depression.

Regardless of my efforts to maintain an appropriate distance, I was attracted to Lucas, miserably so. I had planned to refer him to another therapist when the unthinkable occurred. Promptly at ten, I opened the door and there he was, smiling, but with tears in his eyes.

He rose to his feet. “I’m sorry, Ellen.”

“Lucas, what’s wrong?”

Just as I asked the question, I smelled it—gasoline—and saw the gallon container behind his chair. Before I could say a word, Lucas flicked a cigarette lighter into flame, and with it, himself. He shrieked in agony and fell to the floor.

“No!” I screamed. “No!”

Horrified, I rushed into my office, pulled the rug from under a table, ran back, and smothered his writhing body, smelling his charred flesh and the stench of gasoline and hearing his heart-rending cries. By the time NYFD and an ambulance came, a janitor had extinguished the flames, but when the medics removed the rug from Lucas’ face, I fainted.

Lucas survived and was transported home to Voulos. My left hand was singed and required treatment, but the real wound was inside, a guilt and torment only partly relieved by my therapist’s efforts. Hordes of questions kept assailing me: why did Lucas try to kill himself? Why select such a horrific method and why do it in my presence? To prove how desperately he hated his life? To die near someone who cared about him? Or was he angry about something I’d said? No matter how I analyzed his intentions, I felt responsible and believed my attraction had blinded me, that I’d been negligent.

I took a hiatus, but in August, I left Manhattan for Princeton, hoping a new location would end the frequent flashbacks and offer a fresh start, yet I worried my failure and the visions of Lucas were too deeply imprinted to heal so soon. Through my father, a professor emeritus at the university, I signed a two-year office lease beginning September 1992 and was now living in my parents’ secluded house on ten acres of forest while they were on Corfu for an extended stay. I started my new practice and all was fine until a series of phone hang-ups were recorded on my answering machine. No messages, just breathing. And then strange presents appeared on my office steps and car. Was one of my clients attracted to me or more disturbed than I realized? Was I missing clues like I had with Lucas?

The Psychologist’s Shadow
Genre: Suspense
Release: November 2023
Format: Print, Digital
Purchase Link

In October 1992, Dr. Ellen Haskell begins a new therapy practice in Princeton after a tragic error with a former client. Demoralized by her failure, Ellen strives to restore her emotional and professional confidence. Her parents have departed for Greece, leaving Ellen alone in their secluded country house. As her clients are introduced through their individual sessions, Ellen becomes unnerved when she receives hang-up phone calls and a series of bizarre gifts from an anonymous admirer—first at her office and then at home. As the obsessive lover increasingly invades her life, Ellen’s anxiety crescendos and she begins to fear the stalker’s behavior will escalate into violence.

The Psychologist’s Shadow is a simmering literary suspense and a portrait of a compassionate, introspective therapist who finds herself in a dangerous struggle. As tension accumulates, the reader gains insights during sessions and through the stalker’s journal entries, which serve as discordant counterpoints. Who is the shadow lover? An acquaintance, a shopkeeper, an old boyfriend, or a client?

About the author
Laury A. Egan is the author of eleven novels: The Firefly; Once, Upon an Island; Wave in D Minor; Turnabout; Doublecrossed; The Swimmer; The Ungodly Hour; A Bittersweet Tale; Fabulous! An Opera Buffa; The Outcast Oracle; and Jenny Kidd; and a collection, Fog and Other Stories. Four poetry volumes have been published: Snow, Shadows, a Stranger; Beneath the Lion’s Paw; The Sea & Beyond; and Presence & Absence. She lives on the northern coast of New Jersey. Visit her website at lauryaegan.com.