“Sounds preposterous.”

“Of course. What made it worse was my parents had no way to defend themselves. Any attempt they made to refute his claims only served to reinforce his conviction that they were guilty as charged. Marty told him abusers always deny what they’ve done. He moved out of the house, cutting off all contact, which was actually a relief. Then she talked him into collaborating on a book and that’s what blew the lid off.

“When Mom and Dad got wind of it, they hired an attorney and sued the crap out of her for slander and defamation. The night before they were set to go to trial, they reached a settlement. I don’t know the terms because they signed a confidentiality agreement. Whatever it was, my parents were never able to collect a cent. Marty filed for bankruptcy and that’s the last anybody ever heard from her. For all we know, she’s still in private practice only somewhere else.”

“I don’t get it. Why would she do such a thing?”

“Because she could. She saw it as part of her job. In her eyes, she did no wrong. When they took her pretrial deposition, do you know what she said? That even if his story wasn’t true, she was there to validate his feelings. If he was convinced he was abused as a child, then she would support him in his beliefs. In other words, if you think you were abused, you were, and that’s all it takes.”

“Without proof?”

“She didn’t need proof. She said if that was ‘his truth,’ he could depend on her to keep the faith.”

“Did the family doctor who referred him know what she was up to?”

“In his deposition he admitted he’d never met her. She’d been recommended by another doctor whose opinion he respected. In a way, it was beside the point. You don’t need a doctor’s referral to see a therapist. Just look in the yellow pages and pick anyone you like. Some of them even have little boxes advertising their specialties. Self-esteem issues, crisis counseling, anger management, stress, panic attacks. The list goes on and on. Who among us hasn’t experienced the occasional rage or anxiety?”

“How do you know which therapists are legitimate?”

“I have no idea. I’ve never been in therapy. I’m sure most of them are honest and capable. Some might even be skilled, but sexual abuse is like a siren call. There’s a ton of money to be made.”

“That’s a bit cynical, isn’t it?”

“Not as cynical as you might think. Suppose you go into therapy because your relationships aren’t working out the way you’d hoped. Turns out that’s a symptom of early childhood abuse. Write me a check and come back next week. You don’t remember what was done? That’s called being ‘in denial.’ You’ve repressed the memory because it was all so traumatic and you don’t want to believe something so horrible would happen at the hands of those you love. Pay me for this session and let’s meet again next week so we can get to the root of it. In effect, my parents paid Marty Osborne six thousand dollars to drive a stake into their hearts.”

“They must have been distraught.”

“They were devastated, and I don’t think they ever really got over it. I can barely deal with it myself and I wasn’t one of the accused. After the case was settled, my parents swore they’d put it behind them. They shut the door on the whole ugly episode. They were desperate to believe Michael loved them and everything was okay. Here’s how ‘okay’ it was. A couple of years afterward, my mother died in a drowning accident, and my father dropped dead six months later of an aneurysm. He never got around to changing his will, so after what Michael put us through, he inherited an equal share of their estate.”

“That’s a tough pill to swallow.”

“What choice did I have? I’ve made my peace with it. The money was theirs and they could do with it as they pleased. Maybe that was always my father’s intent, to look after him.”

I could see where she was going. “So you think Michael’s memory of the two guys digging is just more of the same.”

“Basically,” she said. “How did he come up with this story in the first place? Doesn’t that sound suspect to you?”

“I’ll admit I was skeptical at first,” I said. “He says he read a reference to Mary Claire in the paper and it triggered his memory of the whole event.”

“That was years ago. What makes him so sure?”

“He said he saw them on his sixth birthday, July 21, and that’s how he made the association. Your mother left him at Billie Kirkendall’s while she ran errands. He was wandering around the property when he saw them.”