The door slams and a deep, thick voice startles me.

“Oh, Christ! Are you still on that?” A tall man with cruel eyes looks at me. Gatsby gathers himself so quickly I start to doubt whether what I just experienced actually occurred.

“It’s nice to see you again, father.” Gatsby walks over to him and shakes his hand as if they are strangers. I’ve seen Gatsby give warmer handshakes to his business enemies.

“I see that you’re still dwelling on the past, Gatsby.” The man laughs and smiles at me.

“I’m Dr. William H. Wild.” He extends his hand to me and gives me a firm handshake. “You must be Annabelle York.”

I nod.

“Very pretty, as always,” Dr. Wild says to Gatsby. “Some things don’t change, I see.”

Gatsby doesn’t say a word. He hides behind a blanket of coldness, which I fear I will not be able to penetrate again.

“You see, Annabelle, when Gatsby was young, Mrs. Wild and I got him a nanny from Mexico. Isabel was a nice older woman who took care of him well. Her problem was that she didn’t know how to set up boundaries. She didn’t know how to create distance.”

“And distance is the most important thing in the Wild family,” Gatsby explains sarcastically.

“Yes, it is. Distance creates decorum, a state of politeness,” Dr. Wild says.

“Without decorum, we are without civilization. And without civilization we are beasts,” Gatsby adds sarcastically.

“Yes, you are right,” Dr. Wild nods. He is deliberately ignoring Gatsby’s anger.

“Well, when Mrs. Wild and I found out that Isabel let Gatsby call her Abuelita, we couldn’t just let that slide.”

“So what did you do, father?” Gatsby narrows his eyes, challenging his father.

“We sent her back to Mexico, of course,” Dr. Wild says without a tinge of remorse.

“Why?” I gasp. “Just because of a word?”

“Words are very important. Words are thoughts. I couldn’t have my son thinking or believing that this peasant woman from some god-forsaken village in northern Mexico was his grandmother.”

“No, no, no.” Gatsby shakes his head. “You couldn’t have me loving her as my grandmother. You couldn’t stand the fact that I loved her more than I loved any of you. Especially you.”

“Oh, please.” Dr. Wild waves his hand as if what Gatsby said was beneath his consideration. “I don’t care about love. Love is just an invented sentimentality. It means nothing.”

I stare at Dr. Wild, dumbfounded. It’s as if he’s from some other world. I have never seen a man like this, and I didn’t know that people like him even existed. The coldness emanating from him could freeze over hell.

No wonder Gatsby has so many issues expressing his feelings. The one person whom he loved and cared for was taken away from him. I look at Gatsby. I yearn to see the vulnerability that he shared with me earlier, but it’s too dangerous now. Dr. Wild is here, and he’s remorseless and cruel. He has absolutely no feelings. He doesn’t even believe in love!

“But of course, I’m not here to talk about Isabel, am I, Gatsby? There’s no secret intervention that you’ve set up for me with some half-witted shrink who’s supposed to bring me to my senses. Oh, you should’ve been there, Annabelle. It was quite a sight. Gatsby actually thought that this shrink, with some community college degree, would make me admit that I was sorry about sending Isabel away. That I understood how much I hurt my son. He thought he would make me admit to all the other supposedly un-fatherly and insensitive things that I’ve done.”

Dr. Wild tilts his head back and laughs. But neither Gatsby nor I find any of it funny. I can’t stand it any longer. Dr. Wild’s mocking him, and Gatsby is just standing there like a stone. Taking it. All of it.

“Oh you should’ve seen this ludicrous display, Annabelle,” Dr. Wild laughs and put his arm around my shoulder. I hate how familiar he is allowing himself to be with me. We have just met, and he is using me for approval!

“He couldn’t even get any of his siblings to come.”

“Why?” I whisper, clearing my throat.

“Ha,” he laughs, sending shivers up my spine. “Because they all knew better than to show up. Isn’t that right, Gatsby?”

Gatsby ignores him, continuing to stare into space. The expression on his face is entirely blank. As if he has checked out of this conversation long ago.

“Only O showed up,” Gatsby finally says. “She was always braver than my brothers.”

“Braver? Oh, please.” Dr. Wild waves his hand mockingly. He’s still holding me by the shoulder, and I finally pry free.

“Maybe he was just trying to show you how he felt.” I jump to Gatsby’s defense. “Isabel took care of Gatsby for a long time—”

“Yes, ten years.” Dr. Wild narrows his eyes. All of his hatred and contempt now focused on me. Bring it on, asshole!

“She broke the rules. Actually, both of them broke the rules. Gatsby was thirteen at this point. Old enough to make his own decisions. Old enough to live with the consequences of those decisions.”

I turn to Gatsby. I feel like he’s actually turning into stone now, as if he’s calcifying. I have to look closely just to see that he’s still breathing.

“So you just sent her away after ten years?” I shake my head. “Why?”

“He didn’t just send her away, Annabelle,” Gatsby finally says. “He put her on a plane and sent her away while I was gone for a weekend. And he refused to tell me where he had sent her. I didn’t even get the chance to say good-bye.”

“So you don’t know what happened to her?” I whisper.

He shakes his head. His eyes are dry, but I feel like I’m about to burst into tears.

“Isabel lived with us for ten years. She had family in East Los Angeles. But she’s not there.”

“Really?” Dr. Wild chuckles to himself. “I thought she would’ve made her way back eventually.”

“She was an old woman. You broke her heart.”

“Oh, please, don’t be so dramatic, Gatsby.”

Gatsby turns to me. “I could never find her. I talked to every one of her family members in East LA, and none of them know what happened to her. When I was in college, I even went down to Copper Canyon area, where her family hails from. But none of them know what happened to her. Where did she go, father?”

“I don’t know.”

“A seventy-year-old Mexican woman doesn’t just vanish from the face of the earth unless she vanished off the face of the earth.”

Finally, something gets a rise out of Dr. Wild. His eyes narrow and his lips purse. He looks as if he has just seen a ghost.

“I will never stop looking for her, father,” Gatsby says quietly. “And I will get to the bottom of this.”

Dr. Wild meets Gatsby’s gaze and takes a step forward. “Is that a threat, son?”

“Just a statement of fact.”

From the way that Gatsby is staring at his father, I can tell that there is more to this story than what’s been said. Does Gatsby think that Dr. Wild has done something bad to Isabel? Why would he? I have no idea. All I know is that after being in the same room with Dr. Wild for a few minutes, I know that he’s a man capable of pretty much anything.

“Okay then.” Dr. Wild claps his hands, flashing a big white smile. “So why am I here again, Gatsby? Don’t we have something more important to discuss than your supposed childhood traumas and grievances.”

“Yes, in fact, we do.” Gatsby turns to him, challenging him with his gaze. “Your son, Atticus, is committing fraud. Has committed fraud.”