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“My mum had me sit down with a shrink when I was maybe ten?” I said. “Complete wanker, he was. Had a little notebook that he wrote in when I refused to answer his stupid questions about what I was feeling and why my mum had sent me there. I went twice. Never said a single word to him, and in front of me, he told my mum that I’d do well with intensive psychiatric help someday.” I shrugged. “When I told her I didn’t like him, she cried the whole way home and never made me go back.”
Carol’s eyes got sad. “I’m sorry that was your experience. I don’t blame you for not trusting people in our profession. But it says a lot that you’re willing to let Mira have a different experience. Do you feel like you’d trust people more if you’d been able to talk about your parents’ divorce at a young age?”
I trusted people just fine.
It was myself I had less faith in.
“I never told you my parents were divorced,” I answered evenly.
My voice was the only even, calm thing about me. Inside, everything burned. The flames were too high, threatening to flow over dangerously.
It was far too tender of a place to poke when I was already walking on the edge of my sanity after the kissing.
Our entire situation felt precarious. And that was just me and Zoe. If this woman tried to rope my past into the conversation, I was likely to detonate in a messy burst.
A scar that was best left alone. An itch I couldn’t scratch because it was buried so deep beneath the surface.
The moment someone tugged at my past, a sticky discomfort spread over every inch of my body, and there was nothing I could do to make it go away.
So I ignored it. Until I couldn’t.
“You’re right, you didn’t,” Carol said. “I made an assumption when you only mentioned your mother, but I shouldn’t have done that.” She held up her hands. “Let’s change the subject for now. We can schedule separate sessions to discuss upbringings if that makes you both feel more comfortable.”
Zoe nodded, glancing sideways. “That’s fine with me.” She looked tentative. Her eyes were filled with hesitancy. Apology.
It made me want to claw my skin off.
This was the woman who’d met me fearlessly the entire time. For years, she had. Chased me down in the parking lot to give me a piece of her mind. Swung abatat my head. Granted, she didn’t know it was me at the time, but even if she had, I couldn’t help but think she still would’ve done it.
A couple of kisses and she wasn’t sure how to handle me.
I stood before I knew what I was doing. “Gonna go check on Mira,” I said tersely. Neither woman said a word as I strode from the room.
What I found stopped me short.
They weren’t playing blocks anymore. They’d moved to a big farmhouse-style table in the area just off the kitchen. The surface was covered with papers, crayons, and colored pencils.
The young woman next to Mira had her head bent over her own paper while Mira scribbled messily on a giant piece of yellow construction paper. She’d hardly noticed that I’d entered the room, so I walked quietly.
The therapist sitting with her lifted her head and smiled encouragingly as I approached. “Want to color with us?” she asked.
I didn’t answer her, though. My eyes were trained on Mira’s paper. At first, I could hardly make sense of the shapes and pieces. Jagged lines of brown and yellow and red and blue and black.
The proportions were completely off. It would never win any art awards, not in any universe. And there was no doubt in my mind that I’d see that picture when I closed my eyes for the rest of my fucking life.
The longer I stared, the more I wondered if anyone else in the room had heard the break of my bones as my chest cracked wide open.
It was us.
My hand, a wobbly line, was on Mira’s. My hair was a giant black blob, and in the area of my face, she’d given me a straight line for a mouth. Zoe—clearly identifiable because of the wild hair and the big, red, crooked smile—was on the other side of Mira.
In between the larger figures flanking her, Mira was only clear because of the brown hair. Instead of her body, she’d attempted to draw a heart over her chest.
I crouched next to her, settling my hand on her back. She was so little. Sometimes that was easy to forget because of how bloody big her personality was.
“What do you have here, duck?” I asked quietly.
Mira stopped, beaming up at me with a smile so big that I felt it in my fucking soul. “I drawing a family.”
