Page 115 of Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel 3)
“It doesn’t look . . . The doctors have suggested I stay near her, you see.” His voice almost broke then, but he managed to keep it steady. “Just in case.”
“Auden.”
He ignored me. I wasn’t rebuffed by it; I would have done the same had someone tried to comfort me while I was explaining something so painful.
“So I decided I should run up to Cambridge to get a few things, since I’d be staying in London longer than I’d planned,” he continued. “I’d only been gone four days, and I’d talked with Delly on the phone twice a day during that time. I thought . . . You have to understand, she sounded like herself.” He looked at me pleadingly. “I thought she was doing okay without me, I swear I did.”
I looked past him to the beautiful girl staring out my window like she’d never seen a window before. “And then you got to Cambridge and found her like this,” I surmised.
“It was always the plan to check on her, but I thought—I really thought she was coping on her own.”
“Where are her parents?” I asked, suddenly feeling protective of her. “Why haven’t they been checking in with their daughter?”
“They went to the Maldives after the trial. Freddie had some meeting there. They tried to make Delphine come too, but she didn’t want to miss school. They’ve been calling her every day too, but—”
“She’s fooled them as well.”
“Yes, I think so. Because if they knew she was like this, they’d be home as fast as they could get here. My guess is that she didn’t want to disrupt her father’s work. She doesn’t want to be a bother.”
I studied the girl across the room. Even in her depression, she looked like money, like a future bride for an earl or a businessman with a private jet. And yet, we had this in common.
I understood utterly what it was to tiptoe around a father’s work, to want to be easy for one’s parents.
“I didn’t know what to do, Rebecca—I don’t think she’s eaten, I couldn’t get her to eat. So I did the only thing I could think of and called her therapist here.”
“And?”
“We just met. She was—well, evaluated is the word they used. I had to lie and pretend to be her boyfriend.”
I switched my gaze back to him, dropping my hand from his shoulder. “Is that a lie?”
He nodded, then scrunched his nose. “I don’t want it to be, but it’s more important that I be here when she needs me, however she needs me. The rest should wait.”
I privately agreed. “And what did the therapist say? After the evaluation?”
Auden looked like he was reciting from a carefully recorded memory. “She’s not ideating self-harm. She’s not catatonic. She concedes a need to care for herself and has agreed to try. But her affect is flat, and clearly she’s struggling to care for herself, so she’s close to needing inpatient treatment.”
I was more relieved than I could say that Delphine wasn’t thinking about hurting herself. But worry still gnawed me. “Jesus. What happens now?”
“She has to see Dr. Joy every day, at least for the next week, until she can determine Delphine’s getting better on an outpatient basis. She has an appointment with her psychiatrist tomorrow morning to discuss calibrating her medicine. And she—”
Even in the city gloaming, his hazel eyes were bright and vivid as he gazed pleadingly at me. “She can’t be alone, Rebecca.”
The dilemma assembled itself immediately. “And you need to be with your mother.”
“I’ve called Freddie and Daisy. They’re trying to get a flight back as soon as possible, but it’s the rainy season, and all the flights for the next few days have been cancelled, and so . . . ”
I let out a long breath. I’d excelled at maths always. My father liked to say that I could multiply before I could read, that I knew the counting words in three languages before I was two years old. It was probably a father’s boasting, but still, I’d always solved any mathematical problem set before me. And this problem only had one solution.
“Go be with your mother,” I told him. “I’ll work from home, and stay with her until her parents can get back.”
He slumped, but the relief in his face was short-lived.
Of course it was. His mother was dying.
“Go,” I repeated. “I’ve got this.”
“I have some of her things,” he said, swallowing and nodding. “A holdall in my car. I didn’t know what she would like, but you know, some knickers and clothes and things. Her phone and phone charger.”
