Page 64 of For Her Own Good

The shallow curveof her mouth and the way her eyes are large and luminous say no. And honestly, when I think back to Mr. Patrick…

“No. No, I doubt that you did. Was he always ‘Father’ to you?”

She nods and laughs a little. “Always. Can you picture it?”

I can. Of course, I didn’t meet Starla and her father until she was in high school, but I’ve seen pictures of her as a small child. Her eyes were even bigger then, as children’s are, but I doubt she’d ever acted all that much like a child.Father. And he was the person she was most comfortable with in the world. My God.

“Was it…was it very difficult for you, when he died?”

That is a ridiculous and insensitive question, and I’d like to suck it back between my teeth because of course it was difficult for her. It was difficult for her to make friends by the time I knew her—even if her classmates hadn’t known and gossiped about why she wasn’t in school—which they absolutely did—the fact is she was only ever there part-time. She didn’t have many friends, and while I think she enjoys spending time with some of her clients and Holden and has had some relationships, she still doesn’t seem to be a sociable, outgoing person. So, whereas it would be difficult for anyone when their father died, I doubt Starla was left with much of a support system. Probably why I couldn’t stop myself from getting on a plane and coming out here.

Thankfully, I have a stockpile of goodwill with Starla, and I seem to have only cashed some of it in by being thickskulled.

“Yes,” she says, not looking at me. She rolls her lips between her teeth and looks into the middle distance, and I hate myself more for bringing this up. I could have been pulling her over my lap, rucking her skirt up, tugging up the back of her panties until they separated her nice, plump, oh-so-spankable cheeks, and then laying my hand on her over and over until she was squirming across my thighs. I hope, anyway, though I don’t really have any experience with that. Doesn’t matter because, instead, we are talking about her dead father.Way to go, Lowry. You always did know how to muck things up.

But I’ll take it as a sign of how deeply she’s come to trust me again that she answers. The truth is I can’t imagine how devastated she must have been. My mum and dad and all three of my brothers are alive and well back in Scotland, and I never relied on them the way Starla had leaned on her father.

“Yes,” she repeats.

How bad was it? Was it so bad that she won’t say? Won’t risk me thinking less of her—I wouldn’t—or is she worried that I would end things here and now because I believe she’s literally trying to replace her father with me? I don’t.

“I’d had my depression managed really well for a long time. Was keeping up with my ECT, and though it wasn’t perfect, it was fine. I was fine. I know it’s never going to go away. The best I can hope for is to manage it and I was. And then he was gone, and I…”

She sighs. And I can see it. How disappointed in herself she was, how embarrassed she is even still. Which is ridiculous.

“It wasn’t managed anymore. There’s a difference between depression and grief, but for me, they got all mixed up. The grief made the depression worse, and the depression made it impossible for me to climb out of the grief, and I was… I should’ve been scared, but I was so far gone that mostly I couldn’t locate fear. Just despair. Disappointment. Pain. And it was so dark, so deep, I couldn’t even imagine the possibility that it wouldn’t last forever. I did manage to tell Doctor Gendron that, though, so I checked myself into Harbinson for a while until I felt like I had a reasonable grasp on reality again. Took a while. Longer than I want to admit, but at least I got there after I thought I might not be able to.”

It hurts me to think of her adrift in that sea of loneliness, of not knowing if she’d be okay again. Ever. Of having fought so many battles and won, but to be faced with one that made her want to lie down and give in because what was even the point?

I’m also fucking furious with myself for not being here for her when she could have used me the most. That’s nonsense though because I wouldn’t have been any good to her if I showed up then and only then. Like a fellow soldier who abandoned you in battle riding up on a shiny silver horse while you’ve been dragged through the mud and almost died half a dozen times. Pretty sure “Fuck all the way off” is the only reasonable response in that situation.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t here for you.”

She lifts a shoulder. “Why would you have been? You lived in Chicago. I hadn’t seen you in fifteen years. Why on earth would I have any expectation that you’d show up?”

Except that’s the thing, isn’t it? Awkwardness makes my throat thick and I’ve got to wonder if telling her that I was in fact here will make this better or worse. I’m almost certain the answer is worse. And yet, I feel as though with all of the things she’s told me and with everything I’m still holding back from her, this is a time and place where I should tell her. That I owe her the truth.

“I…” My throat works around a swallow and I send up a prayer that this won’t spell the end of things for us. Though Starla’s never been one to throw things away. She might be angry at me or disturbed, butoveris probably a reach. “I was here, actually. In Boston. After your father passed.”

Her hazel eyes narrow and her chin presses into wrinkles. “You were here? Like for a conference or something? Interviewing for your job? Or apartment hunting? It wasn’t that long before you moved back.”

I scrub a hand over the back of my neck because I’ve started to feel a bit sweat-prickled and cold-veined all at the same time. I’m not used to this and I’d like it to stop, but the only way to the other side of this is through.

“No. No, I decided to move back after I was here.”

“Why? I mean, why were you here, and what about your visit made you decide to move back? It’s not like you came at a nice time of year. I love Boston, but August isn’t when the city’s at its best.”

I should’ve had more to drink, made my tongue looser, so this would be easier to say even if the outcome is hard to take. “I saw that your father had died and I…I’m a foolish, arrogant man. I thought…I thought you might need me.”

“Need you?”

Her question is almost an echo, as if she’s bouncing my words back at me in the hope that when I return them again, they’ll make more sense. They won’t, because this all sounds rather daft.

“Yes. Like I said, foolish. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that you’d be in a bad way and if so, that you’d need all the support you could get. And I…” This isn’t about me, we’re talking about her and her father’s death. But I can’t explain this without telling her. “You remember yesterday when we agreed to a trade? We’d both tell our secrets, the things we weren’t all that keen to talk about?”

“Yeah.”

That slight tug up of her lip, an echo of a snarl, perhaps, makes me fear the worst. She’s going to be horrified, disgusted, and as soon as this began, it’s going to be over again. And worse, I will have left her with a sick feeling that no one can be trusted.

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