Page 1 of For Her Own Good

Prologue

Fifteen Years Ago

Lowry

Could’ve called an ambulance.Probably should’ve. Couldn’t bring myself to, and now I regret it. My hands are shaking so hard the steering wheel feels as though it’s going to vibrate right off the drive shaft and I’m going to go careening into one of the perfectly groomed trees that line this far-too-long driveway. Starla and her rich friends. Though this boy, I can’t call him a friend of hers. He never would have let her do this if he were a true friend. Fucking teenagers, thinking they know better than everyone else.

I’m even angrier at Starla, because of all people, she should know better. But the anger is a handful of dust scattered over a mountain of panic, concern, dread, and guilt. She’s got to be okay. Even this shit-for-brains man-child should know enough to call 911 if she were truly in danger. But then again, look at me, screeching to a halt in front of this house. If you can call it that. More like some kind of monstrosity. I grew up in Scotland, I know from castles, and this isn’t one. It’s trying so very hard, though.

I don’t bother parking in any semblance of order, just vault up the few stairs before I pound on the door, ring the doorbell. Is it loud enough? Is there a humanly possible way in which I could be louder? My assault on the house echoes. The enormous door is locked and it feels too long until I hear the fall of footsteps. Long enough that I begin to consider breaking a window.

Finally, the door’s pulled open and I nearly bowl over the person who answers it. He’s a child. Tall and built like an athlete, but not a man yet. I wouldn’t trust him with the keys to my car, never mind…

“Where is she?”

“She’s in my bathroom. What the hell is wrong with her, anyway?”

If I didn’t need his help finding Starla, I’d do him physical harm. What’swrongwith her? Nothing he didn’t encourage, nothing that couldn’t have been prevented.

I get why Starla is angry and resentful. I get why she’d rebel like this. What I absolutely don’t understand is how anyone who claims to love her could let it get this far.

I talked to her a month ago, when she skipped her appointment. She never skips her appointments. Because she’s too smart, she’s worked too hard, she’s too mature—

But there’s the rub. No matter how grown-up she may seem, she’s not an adult. Which I am having to remind myself of with greater and greater frequency, to the extent that it’s almost a chant in my head during our sessions.

She’s a child, she’s your patient, she needs your help.

Perhaps this will serve as the mallet to the brain I clearly need to banish any other kinds of thoughts about Starla Patrick from my mind. She still has some of that wild optimism and recklessness that teenagers do, and perhaps that’s enough to quell my wildly inappropriate thoughts about my turned-eighteen-two-months-ago patient.

Or not.

“I feel good,” she said when I called after she didn’t show.

“You feel good because you’ve been doing what you’re supposed to do. You don’t feel as good as you did a week ago, do you?”

“I feel fine.”

Lies. I could hear it in her voice. She’s always been shite at lying to me. So I tried to coax her, talk her out of doing something at best ill-advised and at worst flat-out dangerous.

“Come into the office and we can talk about this. I don’t want to see this get out of hand. You’ve got everything under control.”

“I know I do! So maybe I’m fine now, maybe I don’t need your help anymore.”

Rage. Embarrassment. Indignation. These are the things that had colored her voice, and I pinched the bridge of my nose, held my breath, sent up prayers to long-forgotten saints that I would be able to fix this before…before…

Then panic gripped me hard, because I couldn’t stop myself from thinking the unthinkable, the thing that makes my stomach riot.

I’ve lost patients before. Not as many as my colleagues battling in the ER, or the ones fighting the good fight in cancer wards. But I’ve failed them all the same, and they’ve ended up just as dead; lives taken by diseases that forced their hands. I cannot,will not,lose Starla. Period, end of story.

Sheer terror scrambled my brain, though, and I said the absolute last thing I should’ve.

“Was this Milo’s idea?”

“No!”

Then she hung up on me. Turned off her phone altogether because no matter how many times I tried calling, the hospital tried calling, her father tried calling, it always went straight to voicemail. I resorted to having my admin call local hospitals and police stations to see if she’d shown up there. Her father went looking for her as well, but the thing about rich kids is that they have too many resources at their disposal and are well-practiced at going to ground for some fucking privacy.

Here we are a month later because it finally occurred to Milo that Starla is in factnotfine, that she does actually need help, and no matter what he thought he could offer her, it wasn’t enough to keep her demons at bay. She’s probably scared him to death, and I hope he’s taking some of the blame on himself because she never would’ve been able to hide away for so long if she hadn’t had someone to help her. Worse, someone whispering bullshit into her head. Someone probably making her feel ashamed for the things she needs in order to be a functional human being. I loathe this boy.

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