Page 120 of Letters From A Stalker

I laugh quietly, and her smile widens.

“And your mother?” I ask once the moment settles.

Julia inhales through her nose, but there is none of the old dread in it. “She was pretty well until I mentioned that I’m going to dinner with Tesa.” Julia brushes her thumb along the cuff of her sweater as she speaks, not nervous exactly, just thinking. “I told her because she wanted me to come over and I didn’t feel like using work as constant excuse was, you know, healthy…”

I smirk at that. “And what did she say?”

“She didn’t say much. She made a face.”

There is a pause. I wait. Julia’s mouth starts curving.

“And?” I nudge when she doesn’t start talking on her own.

“And I let her have a face.”

The laugh gets out before I can stop it.

She grins. “I know. Please hold your applause until the end.”

“That’s actually pretty significant.”

“It was a face, Kai.” The fact that somewhere in between sessions she started calling me by my name and not my title means more to me privately than it should, so I steer my thoughts back to the topic at hand.

“It was a disappointed reaction that you didn’t immediately take responsibility for.”

That quiets her humor without killing it. She looks down briefly, then nods.

“Yeah. I guess that’s the part that felt different.” Her voice becomes more thoughtful, although not heavy. “Normally she sighs or looks hurt and I immediately start explaining myself, even when she hasn’t asked me to. Then somehow I’m offering another day or making sure she understands how busy I am so she doesn’t think I don’t love her.”

“What happened this time?”

Julia gives a small shrug. “I drank my coffee.”

I can’t help smiling again.

“She had her face. I had my coffee. Eventually she got over it and asked if I wanted to watch this murder documentary she’s been talking about for weeks.”

“And did you?”

“Two hours of my life I will never get back.” Her tone becomes dry, but there is affection underneath it now. “She spent most of the documentary telling the detectives what they were doing wrong, so apparently she has a second career available if she ever gets bored.”

“And the visit was good?”

Julia thinks about it for a few seconds before answering. “It was. I think because I wasn’t pissed off when I got there.”

That catches my attention more than the joke did.

She notices and continues without needing to be prompted. “I didn’t spend the drive over there telling myself I had been guilted into going, because I hadn’t. I picked the day. She still had feelings about that choice, but I wasn’t sitting there secretly resenting her for making it for me.”

I nod slowly. “That sounds like progress.”

“It feels like progress.” She says it without immediately qualifying the statement.

No but. No explanation about why she probably doesn’t deserve credit. Something warm settles behind my ribs. For all the fucked-up reasons I have for wanting Julia in this room every week, this is the one I cannot dismiss. Therapy is helping her. Not because I am some exceptional psychiatrist who has unlocked a woman nobody else understood. She is doing the work. She is paying attention to patterns she spent years treating as facts, and every week she comes back willing to look at something she would rather avoid.

I’m simply helping her hold the flashlight.

The problem is that somewhere along the way, I started wanting to be here for the rest of it. Not just until she no longer needs me. That is considerably harder to justify.