Page 108 of Guitars and Cages

There, I’d said it. And no, it did not feel liberating. I did not feel relieved; I did not feel anything people claim you are supposed to feel when you admit some heavy truth. I felt tired and guilty, and sick to my stomach.

“Well, then, let me ask you this: if you were the one who was being hurt, who was being ignored or mistreated, would you want someone else to stand up for you? Would you want them to care?”

“They wouldn’t care.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because I’d never tell.”

Chapter Thirty-Six

Neither Conner nor I had much of an appetite left after the way the conversation had turned, so I’d headed straight to bed after dropping him back at his apartment. Luckily, Travis had said it would be a long day so I should take a two-hour lunch, meaning I didn’t have to change my appointment with Dr. Hozman. It worked out good: with twenty minutes into the city and twenty minutes back, plus all the lunch traffic in the city, I could just fit it in. I’d brought my journal, though I hadn’t felt too comfortable having it in the saddlebags on my bike where anyone might find it. Maybe I was being paranoid, but I wasn’t comfortable with anyone opening it up and seeing the lies I’d written inside.

Dr. Hozman greeted me warmly, with a handshake and a smile, before he sat behind his desk and accepted the journal I passed over to him. He looked at the new entries briefly, and then back up at me. “So, how have you been, Asher?”

“I got a new job. I’m working with horses again.”

He leaned forward. “Really? Where did you find a place to do that around here?”

“In the suburbs. The lady who helped me with Ghost—Anne—I ran into her again at the shelter where she works. She told me about a friend of hers who runs a livery, and she called him for me and set up an interview for the job.”

“Well, that was very nice of her, wasn’t it? Why do you think she did that?”

I frowned, puzzled by the question and unsure of the answer. Finally, I shrugged. “Travis, that’s my boss, he said she’s always jumping in and helping.”

He looked at me thoughtfully, and I squirmed at the scrutiny. “Do you think she’d have done that for just anyone?”

“Yeah, why wouldn’t she?”

He chuckled. “Maybe because just anyone wouldn’t have gone through the effort that you did to save Ghost.”

“Yeah, like it did any good,” I mumbled.

“But it did do good, Asher. It might not have turned out the way you wanted it, you didn’t get to take Ghost home, but she did get to go home. You saved her life, and I am willing to bet that the people who loved her enough to put a chip in her so that if she were ever lost she could be returned to them, are very happy with the way things turned out.”

“I guess.”

“Let me ask you this. Would you have helped her if you’d known what the outcome would be, that you wouldn’t get to keep her?”

“Well, yeah,” I said. “She was hurt and she needed help; of course I would have picked her up and taken care of her.”

“And I think that kind of selflessness is exactly why Anne helped you get your job. It isn’t that she just likes to go around helping people, it’s that you did something that made her feel you were a person worthy of helping.”

“But I’m not, not after the things I’ve done.”

He shook his head and leaned back in his chair. “This is where you make your biggest mistake, Asher. You judge yourself by your past and the guilt you feel over the lies you’ve told and the people you’ve betrayed. I’m glad you are remorseful for those things; it will help you from ever making the same mistakes again, but you do yourself a disservice when you refuse to acknowledge that you have the capacity to be a good person.”

I looked away from him, staring at the wall. “What does disservice mean?”

He didn’t laugh at me for asking, and I was glad, ’cause I hated when people used big words that I didn’t understand. It made me feel even more stupid than I already was.

“It means that you’re hurting yourself when you do that.”

“How am I hurting myself by being honest? I’m not a nice person, and I don’t deserve for people to be nice to me.”

“So you won’t let them be, will you?”

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

---