Page 3 of For Her Own Good

I climb out of the car, grabbing my briefcase from the floor, and she calls after me, “As long as you agree to take care of yourself. Not just everyone else, but actually yourself.”

Ducking into the doorframe, I give her a half smile, because we both know I’ll be fine-ish. After all, if I don’t put my oxygen mask on first, how can I help anyone else’s with theirs? I could examinethatlogic more closely but I’d rather not, so instead, I’ll deflect.

“What are you, a doctor or something?”

“No, I was just married to one. But really, be careful, okay? I know you don’t think you’re going to Boston for her—”

“Because I’m not.”

“Mm-hmm. You could’ve gotten a job anywhere and that’s the one you took? The exact same place you left fifteen years ago? You don’t fool me, Lowry Harrison Campbell.”

Nor do I fool myself. Maeve and I both know about the impromptu trip I took a few months ago. And who I definitely did not take it for. It’s just that I always like to make a trip to Boston in August, sure. When the humidity is so thick you feel as though you’re swimming through the city instead of walking through it. The oppressive heat that makes a person break into a sweat as soon as they step outside, plus the bugs? Yes, it is chef-kiss perfection, precisely what I enjoy.Sure you do, Campbell.You wouldn’t believe that steaming heap of bullshit from any of your patients either.

“Never could.”

We exchange wan smiles, years of being friends, lovers, spouses, and then friends again between us. Why could things not have worked out with Maeve? She’s intelligent, lovely with her sharply bobbed deep auburn hair and dark brown eyes, and I like her very much. And yet. We turned out to be pieces of a puzzle who fit together, just not the way we’d hoped.

Without another word, I close the car door and take my carry-on from Denny who’s retrieved it from the boot. Everything else has been shipped ahead to the apartment I’ve rented sight-unseen, so I’m traveling light.

“You look after her as much as she’ll let you, aye?”

“Always.”

I shake his hand, and then it’s time to make my way through the bustling airport to head back to Boston. A city I fled fifteen ago and at the time, never thought I’d go back to. But there’s been a hole in my heart since then, and I’m hoping it will be filled by going back to this old New England city. If you can call itold, at any rate. Americans have no sense of history.

It’s ridiculous, really, to be going back. There’s no reason to think—

Well, as I told Maeve. It’s about the job. I wanted the job. I loved that job—though I’ll be working with adults and not children and adolescents as I had before. But most of what I loved is the same: the colleagues, the culture of constant learning and improvement via the latest research, the bucolic campus of the hospital. That’s all there is to it. A job.

* * *

Starla

Airports are not my favorite. The people, the bustle, the announcements you can’t understand but are probably trying to tell you something important? Yeah, not my jam. It’s better now that I’m settled in my seat in the last row of first class and don’t have to worry about missing my flight, or it being delayed without me knowing. All the things that, while fundamentally insignificant, really cheese people about air travel. I can breathe easier now.

Traveling for work isn’t my idea of a good time. But when a client like Rafa Cabrero asks me to come to Chicago to help set up his brand-new eight-million-dollar condo, I don’t say no. Not that I need the money, but I do like my business to run in the black. Also, Rafa really does need me and it makes me feel good to be part of his secret to success.

We struggle with different things—anxiety is his primary issue whereas mine’s depression—but we both find keeping tabs on our physical space to be helpful in managing our shit. So, he took a few days out of his busy finance industry schedule so we could set up systems big and small to help him be successful and in control, which in turn lowers his anxiety, which leads to being more successful and feeling more in control and well, you see how this works. It’s not magic, but it does take attention to detail, and an understanding of how mental illness can fuck with people’s heads.

These cycles we get ourselves involved in don’t always have to be bad, and that’s what I’d been here to help with: setting up this incredibly talented and brilliant man whose brain glitches when faced with certain stimuli to spend less time glitching and more time doing the things he’s awesome at. Those things he’s awesome at? They helped him buy that prime piece of real estate in the first place. Yes, Rafa had been very grateful, and I’m headed home feeling satisfied with a job well done.

Besides, it’s good for me to get out of Boston on occasion. I don’t often—what’s this “vacation” some people speak of?—but I had enjoyed the couple of extra days I’d taken to do some sightseeing. The museums, the aquarium—I even braved Navy Pier—they’d all kept me busy, my mind engaged with things other than the issues constantly gnawing at me lately.

It’s been rough for the past three months to be at home, ghosts around every corner. I miss my father. So much. But I’ve also got Tad Harding breathing down my neck and not the way he used to when we were together—that was, if ultimately a failure, still the sweaty, sexy, orgasm-inducing kind of being on top of me. This is none of that, except maybe the sweaty part because anxiety is fantastic like that.

I’ve inherited a controlling interest in Patrick Enterprises and I need to make some decisions. But I’m not ready yet. Aside from it feeling like a very final goodbye to my father that I can’t bear to make, even thinking about it spikes my anxiety.

If managing my own shit is like rolling a boulder up a hill on my best days like a modern-day Sisyphus, then holding tens of thousands of people’s livelihoods in my hands is like having a rockslide behind the boulder. But even knowing what I’m headed back to—and as much as I don’t like planes because strangers are all up in your shit and honestly, air travel brings out the worst in humanity—I’m glad to be on my way home. Traveling makes my anxiety kick up too, and it’s getting closer to the six-week mark of my ECT cycle so everything’s getting more difficult because of the depression that’s started tiptoeing around again.

Getting out of bed. Getting dressed. All the things most people take for granted are tasks that start to make me feel accomplished when I check them off my list. So, more difficult, yes, but not anywhere near impossible. I never get anywhere close to impossible these days. Which is perhaps part of the reason my father felt it was wise to direct that rockslide in my direction.

I don’t need to think about that yet, though. What I should do is take this opportunity to relax, breathe, and enjoy the last few hours before I’m on the ground at Logan—Boston, you’re my home.

Compared to the flat, wide-open spaces of Chicago, this space is cramped. I’m hoping the aisle seat next to me—which is technically mine, but I prefer the window so I’ve occupied it—will remain empty, although the flight attendants have been telling everyone the flight is full and given the overstuffed overheads, I believe them. Nothing I can do about it though, so I may as well read my book while I wait for takeoff.

I’m perhaps more tired than I thought after spending two full days with Rafa and then two more wandering around Chicago, taking advantage of the city’s excellent culinary scene when I wasn’t walking or riding the “L” between tourist sites.

The words on my Kindle start to blur and swim, and I catch my chin dropping to my chest a few times but try to shake myself awake to read more ofThe Devil in the White City, which I started on my way out here.

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