Years ago, I consulted with a local psychic who told me there’d be “problems with an inheritance.” I had no idea what he was talking about and tossed the comment off as random. Little did I know, my ex husband, an eccentric Czech photographer who lived in London, was worth a small fortune. So when he died, I learned that the psychic’s prediction would come true. Because that’s when our family was introduced to a hostile Russian woman named Vera who would harass our family for years.

About twenty years ago, my husband and I began attending art auctions. We didn’t know anyone and were never included in the post-auction lunch outings, so it was odd when we attracted the attention of a woman who always asked if she could join us for coffee or a meal. In the beginning we were baffled as to why this vague and whispery woman would’ve latched onto us, two unknowns. But we also wondered if she wasn’t aware of a certain hidden fact about us, one that we wanted to keep secret. We’ll never know for sure, because she mysteriously disappeared without a trace.

For the first time in many months, my house was calm and peaceful. We’d just given up a rambunctious puppy and were down to one dog, my cute little twenty pound Labradoodle, Vincent. But I was still itching to replace my precious Lucille whom I’d lost to cancer the previous summer. So, despite the many obstacles, including a scammer who ghosted me and my subsequent revenge plot against her, my quest to find a new dog continued.

Not every dog is that special one who connects to your soul like my big sweet Newfoundland, Lucille, did. She was the gentle creature who’d taken me through the death of my sister, family problems, surgeries, the isolation of Covid. For me, her departure was one of the great tragedies of my life. And so, as soon as she was gone, I set out to find another dog. As it turned out, I should have waited.

The first time I met Jinny, I couldn’t stand her. She was the gushy, chatty girlfriend of my son, Julian, and she walked around radiating almost unbearable positive energy despite the fact that, at 32 years old, she was terminally ill. It was almost too late before I began to see her in a different light.

I’m not schizophrenic, but sometimes I hear voices. They’re not loud, but they’re assertive and are really part of a tide of knowingness that I’ve experienced at different times in my life. So when I woke to a voice that told me I was to spend my next birthday in Santa Fe taking Ayahuasca, I wasn’t surprised.

“Suspended” is a fictional story about a New York family — husband, wife and college-aged son — who’ve become disconnected from one another and lost their sense of purpose until a beautiful young woman who claims she’s a hands-on-healer enters their lives and shakes everything up.

I had just moved back to New York City and was staying with my parents temporarily while waiting for my own apartment to be ready. I was also desperately looking for a job. Eventually I had the luck of meeting a very unusual woman who was looking for a ghost writer.

“Marrying Up” is a fictional story set in 1950s Manhattan revolving around Frances Riley, a difficult and ruthlessly ambitious young woman who moved from one social class to another—Irish immigrant off the boat to high WASP— when she married into the aristocratic Woolsey family.

I was disappointed to learn that I’d need a science credit to earn my degree at Boston University, but the lady in the registrar’s office assured me that I’d be in for a big surprise if I enrolled in a specific Geology class. I had no idea what she meant until a week later, when I met my professor.

In the three years I lived in my Cambridge apartment, I don’t think I ever lost my fascination with the Hogans who lived directly across from me. The only time they ever seemed to leave their house was at night; during the day, the house was silent, unreadable. I’m certain they were vampires.

After life on Fayerweather Street, I got a job writing newsletters at a commodities firm in downtown Boston. I didn’t know a single thing about commodities or futures but quickly became an “expert” in the eyes of the shady salesmen. In truth, my ignorance in finance wasn’t the only thing I was hiding back then. There was also my growing addiction to alcohol and the forbidden love affair with a fellow group therapy patient.

After my divorce, I took a job teaching poetry to inmates in the Massachusetts prison system. By then, my daughter and I had moved into a large, creaky house in Cambridge with two other single moms and their children. Looking back, I can honestly say that life in that big house could seem as dark and dangerous as the rigors and uncertainties of life in prison.

I never stopped to think what married life would be like with Werner Forman. I really didn’t know my partner very well, and from the beginning I could sense that things were going to grow stranger and more confusing with each day. 

I married well known Czech photographer, Werner Forman, on a dark rainy day at a registry office in London, largely because my mother, who had a crush on him, insisted. Her feelings for Werner, her desire to keep him in the family, were what led to his proposal of marriage and everything that followed.

In the late sixties, a photographer showed up at our family home to photograph my parents’ art collection. From the balcony of our living room, I saw a slim, graceful man dancing around an art piece, his thick hair winged out from his head in chaotic waves. I hadn’t yet seen the man’s face, but already I was in love.

The summer I was fifteen, I fell in love for the first time. The bliss of that experience was short lived and what followed was a dreary emotional desert that left me wondering what was the point of living when we are all just going to die.

In 1963, when she was twenty years old, my sister had an abortion.

Mystery Selves is a morality tale about loss of innocence and what happens if the thing you dread most should befall you.