Joel Franks and the treatment planning team had felt from day two of the admission that I should be putting some increased pressure on Merritt to start talking. As was common in this milieu, they were tempted to use privileges on the unit as bait. She could do this if she talked; she could do that if she talked. Or we could threaten her with a transfer to the state hospital at Fort Logan and use that as an incentive.

With another kid, I might have signed on. With Merritt, I wasn’t sold.

Merritt’s silence had never felt like a behavioral issue to me. In fact, other than the consideration that she hadn’t spoken a word since her arrival, she was a model of decorum on the unit; this wasn’t some kid zipping it up in order to be defiant. And as paradoxical as it sounded, her silence had never really felt like a control issue to me, either.

I had already decided by then that her silence was tactical. I hadn’t concluded exactly what the battle was, or what the tactic was supposed to accomplish. But there was a method to the silence. And the method, I had been assuming, had to do with Dead Ed, the gun, and the bloody clothes that Merritt had stuffed under her bed. Now I was adding two additional motivations and complications: Merritt’s stepfather, John Trent, and her best friend, Madison Monroe.

If I was being totally honest with myself, I would have admitted, however, that even before this day, I had grown frustrated with the lack of progress and with the fact that Merritt was more patient about our standoff than I was. I consoled myself with the reality that at least I was being more patient than just about everyone else who was involved in the case: the treatment team, Joel Franks, Cozy Maitlin, Merritt’s parents, MedExcel, and the Boulder Police Department.

I said, “You chose a different chair today?”

If she wasn’t going to talk, she couldn’t much object to my little confrontation, and I supposed I could be as trivial as I wanted to be. So far, I’d done serious soliloquies on Madison’s reaction to our meeting at Starbucks, reasoned explanations of Merritt’s incredible legal troubles, poignant presentations on the sorrow surrounding her sister’s illness, and provocative commentary on the state of women’s basketball in America.

A petulant diatribe about what chair she sat in didn’t seem too far out of line.

Her eyes were warm. Her lips formed the words, “Thank you.”

It struck me that she was entirely too comfortable sitting with me in silence, day in, day out.

I said, “You’re welcome. I assume you’re talking about my breaking every rule in the book to allow you to go visit your sister?”

She nodded.

“It appeared that it made a remarkable difference for Chaney, your being there.”

She tightened her jaw and widened her eyes. I thought she was trying not to cry.

On another day, in another mood, with another agenda, I might have exploited her vulnerability in an effort to weaken her resistance. But not this day. I was planning a more direct approach.

I said, “You’re in a tough battle, aren’t you?”

Instantly, her expression turned as bland as oatmeal. But I thought I detected a flash of curiosity in her eyes.

“This fight you’re in, it’s tough. You’re alone and you don’t have many weapons on your side. Silence feels like all you have going for you. But from where I sit, it doesn’t look like much leverage anymore. The other side has all the big guns. You have silence. That’s nothing.”

Finally, after examining my words from every possible direction, looking for subtext, she nodded suspiciously.

“The other side? Your opponent? They’re not playing fair anymore. Do you know that?”

She shook her head.

“They’ve started taking prisoners and they’re spying on the good guys.”

She shrugged, too quickly. I was sure her pulse was quickening. I was circling close to something.

“I don’t know what you think. Maybe you think you have them outfoxed. You don’t. They know about your stepfather’s visit. The police know he was there.”

Merritt looked away and pulled her long legs up to her chest and rested her heels on the lip of the chair. Her torso was almost totally screened from my view. Finally she peeked at me from around her right knee.

“And Madison? Your friend? She has a boyfriend named Brad somebody? A frat boy? They screwed up big time. Broke into Dr. Robilio’s mountain home and stole his RV. Half the cops in the state are looking for them right now. They’re armed and the cops know they’re armed.”

Merritt looked enraged. She stood and spun toward the door. The act was cat quick, and startled me.

In a tone that I knew was too parental the moment the words escaped my lips, I said, “We’re not done here. You’re not going back to the unit just because I’ve succeeded in making you uncomfortable. This isn’t about retreating from me anymore. Though I admit you’re good at that.”

She stopped. Her back puffed out and I could see the definition of her musculature as she inhaled.

I adjusted my voice. “This isn’t about retreating, Merritt. It’s about surrendering.”

She faced me.

“Please have a seat. It’s time for you to hold up the white flag. It’s time for you to surrender. Let me help you do that. Let me help you surrender.”

I thought she looked like a caged animal. Not like Emily in her dog run. Emily always wanted the gate to open. Merritt preferred the cage. She was a fearful animal. She was fearful that the cage would be opened. And that she would no longer be safe.

She sat. Folded her arms across her chest. I noticed that she was wearing her CHURCH GIRL T-shirt again.

“Merritt?” I said. “Look at me, please.”

Petulantly, she did. In that instant, with that expression, I was reminded that there was still plenty of adolescent residing in this remarkable girl.

“One more thing you should know. The police have your fingernail. The red one. The one you broke when you were at his house.”

This time she couldn’t stop the tears.

A good five minutes later, her eyes were dry and she was staring at me with a mixture of indignation and surprise. I imagined it was the look she would flash at a referee who had just fouled her out of a game on a questionable call. My ambush, I was afraid, had failed. She wasn’t going to talk.

Her shoulders dropped. She swallowed. Before my eyes, her resolve crumbled into pieces, and she said, “Okay, I think I’m ready to talk.”

The sound of Merritt’s voice should have shocked me, but it didn’t. I’d imagined her voice before, of course, but I’d imagined it wrong. I’d anticipated an edge to it, a snarliness, but her voice was soft and tentative and was graced with the soft curves of a young girl’s melody. I’d imagined, too, the poignancy of her first words to me, and I’d imagined that wrong as well. She was matter-of-fact about beginning to speak, almost as though talking was something she had been doing her entire life.

I said, “Great.”

She said, “I guess.”

“Hi,” I said. It was probably clinically ill advised to smile, but I couldn’t help myself.

She smiled back. My indiscretion, I decided, had been worth it.

The times I don’t know what to say in psychotherapy are easily as numerous as the times I think I do. Most of the time, I think, my patient and I are better off when I admit that I’m at a loss for words. I said, “I’ve already talked too much, Merritt. I don’t know what to say now. I think now that you’ve decided to speak that it’s up to you to decide what happens next.”

She smiled again, the rueful smile I’d already witnessed where the corners of her mouth actually turned down a little. She held up her left hand and spread her fingers. She said, “The police know I broke my nail?”

“I don’t know what they suspect. I know that they recovered the broken part.”