Page 72 of Letting Go

“I might actually take you up on that,” I say, which surprises both of us. Mostly me.

Then her tone shifts, gentler but firmer. “Keira is a very misunderstood and deeply affected young woman. What she’s gone through; the constant pressure and emotional isolation, it’s left marks. She’s learned to be overly submissive to male authority figures while being instinctively combative with female ones.”

I blink. “You got all that from one session?”

She lifts one shoulder in a half-shrug. “It’s a common pattern. In a lot of households, fathers are the quiet enforcers while mothers carry the emotional workload, including the yelling. Kids internalize it early, Dad says one thing and its law, Mom says ten and none of them stick. It creates a kind of unconscious devaluation of female authority. Especially when love and approval are attached to obedience.”

I just stare at her, my insides rearranging themselves.

“The reason I’m telling you this,” she continues, “is because she’s coming out of an environment of extreme control. And I know your instinct might be to give her space, to let her have free rein after so manyyears of tight restrictions. But she still needs structure, just not suffocation.”

I nod slowly, everything in me recalibrating.

“Talk to her,” she says. “Set clear boundaries. And then, this is the important part, adhere to them. Consistency builds trust. She doesn’t trust that the rules will stay the same, or that people will. You can start to change that.”

It’s not magic. It’s not a fix. But it feels like… instructions. A way forward that doesn’t involve me flailing around in a panic, trying to reverse fifteen years of emotional damage with car rides and soft voices.

“Thank you,” I say, and for once I mean it without reservation.

Dr. Landry just smiles, like she knows I’m standing on emotional quicksand but at least I’m facing the right direction now.

Before I leave, she says, “Can I just say, what you’re doing… it’s admirable.”

And she says it so gently, like she’s offering me something fragile. Not praise exactly. More like recognition. Something warm and delicate that lands right in the centre of my chest and makes me want to sit back down and sob into herFeelings Are Validmug.

“I’ve had patients abandoned for lesser crimes,” she continues, her voice that soft, firm cadence that makes you believe her even when you don’t believe inanything. “The fact that you chose to stay, and not just stay, but look behind her actions, try to understand the why instead of just reacting to the what, I wish more people were like that.”

I don’t say anything. Mostly because my throat is tight and my brain is short-circuiting with every buried hurt, I thought I’d outgrown.

She adds, “Parents who favour one child over the other… they always think they’re doing what’s best. But it ends up a disservice toboththeir children. One learns to break herself into pieces to stay in the light. And the other-” she pauses, not for drama but for weight “-the other spends their whole life wondering why the sun never touched them.”

I blink. Hard. And then again.

“Thanks,” I manage, voice paper-thin, already turning toward the door like if I stay a second longer, I’ll melt into her carpet.

“Really,” she says, “Keira’s lucky to have you.”

No one’s said that to me before. Not like that. Not as if they meant it.

And I don’t know if she’s right. But Iwanther to be.

Which might be enough. For now.

Chapter 27

After a morning spent talking about our feelings, the rest of the day feels… suspended. Not quite normal, not quite heavy. Just a kind of floating.

Keira and I spend the afternoon doing something startlingly adult: apartment hunting. Some we scroll through on Zillow, others are sent by realtors I half-trust, and a couple we drive by, peeking through windows like kids outside a candy store. They're all nice, clean, modern, overpriced, but my mind keeps looping back to the first one I saw. The one with too much sunlight and just enough imperfection to feel real.

By mid-afternoon, we’re seated at a sidewalk table outside a new bistro, with lemon trees in terra cotta pots and menus that say things like “locally foraged” and “ethically emulsified.”

We order overpriced sandwiches and iced lattes we’ll pretend aren’t mostly ice. For a few minutes, we just sit. Let the sun warm our skin and the buzz of the city replace the echoes of the house we left behind.

Then I ask the question that’s been tapping at the back of my skull all day.

“So,” I say, casually. Too casually. “Do you like medicine?”

Keira looks up sharply, eyes narrowing in confusion. “Like… Tylenol?”

---