Page 87 of Just One Silver Fox

“But you aren’t. It took a lot of time for me to understand that compulsive eating was my response to that household and those people.”

“And what they did to you.”

“Since I saw that article, I’ve been wanting to face-plant in a gallon of chocolate ice cream so bad it hurts. I know why I feel the urge and I can recognize that it’s not healthy, on an intellectual level. I can work to ignore it, but that doesn’t diminish that first stab of reaction. It’s fierce.”

“Was Katia the same?” he asked.

“Exactly the opposite.”

“You mean she didn’t eat at all?”

“Not much.”

“But your parents had to see what the two of you looked like. Didn’t they intervene?”

“It sounds really cold, but we weren’t really in their circle of attention. They were both going through career changes at the time, and mostly interested in regaining what they’d lost. Their marriage was in a tempestuous phase. We were inconvenient, especially if we were demanding.”

“And not photogenic,” he said under his breath. “She said he always liked you best.”

“Yes,” Sonia admitted.

“Did she have the same experience?”

“No. She didn’t believe me when I told her.”

“And you said the household was always stormy.”

“It got worse when my step-father found a mistress.”

“She was his co-star on the set of a made-for-tv movie. It was supposed to be a pilot for a show and they worked a lot of hours to get it right. Ultimately, it ran for three years, which was pretty good. You might have heard of it.” She named the show and he shrugged.

“So, your parents split up?”

“They sent us to boarding school for a year, just to get rid of us for a while. They divorced while we were gone, and my dad moved in with his new co-star, Gloria. She was just a few years older than us. She’s quite nice. He married her later.”

“But he left her now.”

Sonia nodded. “Yes. After he left, money was even tighter and we moved to a cheaper neighborhood with my mom, then attended the local high school. We knew no one at first. That year away also messed up Katia’s ballet training because she couldn’t take classes from the dancer who had taken an interest in her. She was forbidden to take up her classes again.”

“Money?”

“And pride. The dancer offered to make a deal, but my mother had a huge fight with her. She insisted that Katia’s future was in acting and that dance only wasted everyone’s time.” Sonia frowned. “Katia was so thin after that, skin and bones, really.”

“She lost the one thing she really wanted,” Nate guessed and Sonia knew it was true. “Couldn’t you talk to your mother?” he asked with frustration.

The very idea was ridiculous. “You really need to meet Olivia to understand.”

“I’m not sure I want to.”

Sonia recognized that as a sensible impulse. “That was when Katia made friends with Tommy. She was smoking by then, trying to control her weight.”

“I thought she was thin.”

“But she didn’t think so. She was terrified to eat anything in case she became like me. She didn’t have to look far to see what could happen.”

“Did she fat-shame you?” He was so indignant that Sonia’s heart warmed.

She shook her head. “Not Katia. Pretty much everyone else did, though. Those two years at that high school were a lonely time for me.”