I can. Of course, I didn’t meet Starla and her father until she was in high school, but I’ve seen pictures of her as a small child. Her eyes were even bigger then, as children’s are, but I doubt she’d ever acted all that much like a child. Father. And he was the person she was most comfortable with in the world. My God.
“Was it…was it very difficult for you, when he died?”
That is a ridiculous and insensitive question, and I’d like to suck it back between my teeth because of course it was difficult for her. It was difficult for her to make friends by the time I knew her—even if her classmates hadn’t known and gossiped about why she wasn’t in school—which they absolutely did—the fact is she was only ever there part-time. She didn’t have many friends, and while I think she enjoys spending time with some of her clients and Holden and has had some relationships, she still doesn’t seem to be a sociable, outgoing person. So, whereas it would be difficult for anyone when their father died, I doubt Starla was left with much of a support system. Probably why I couldn’t stop myself from getting on a plane and coming out here.
Thankfully, I have a stockpile of goodwill with Starla, and I seem to have only cashed some of it in by being thickskulled.
“Yes,” she says, not looking at me. She rolls her lips between her teeth and looks into the middle distance, and I hate myself more for bringing this up. I could have been pulling her over my lap, rucking her skirt up, tugging up the back of her panties until they separated her nice, plump, oh-so-spankable cheeks, and then laying my hand on her over and over until she was squirming across my thighs. I hope, anyway, though I don’t really have any experience with that. Doesn’t matter because, instead, we are talking about her dead father. Way to go, Lowry. You always did know how to muck things up.
But I’ll take it as a sign of how deeply she’s come to trust me again that she answers. The truth is I can’t imagine how devastated she must have been. My mum and dad and all three of my brothers are alive and well back in Scotland, and I never relied on them the way Starla had leaned on her father.
“Yes,” she repeats.
How bad was it? Was it so bad that she won’t say? Won’t risk me thinking less of her—I wouldn’t—or is she worried that I would end things here and now because I believe she’s literally trying to replace her father with me? I don’t.
“I’d had my depression managed really well for a long time. Was keeping up with my ECT, and though it wasn’t perfect, it was fine. I was fine. I know it’s never going to go away. The best I can hope for is to manage it and I was. And then he was gone, and I…”
She sighs. And I can see it. How disappointed in herself she was, how embarrassed she is even still. Which is ridiculous.
“It wasn’t managed anymore. There’s a difference between depression and grief, but for me, they got all mixed up. The grief made the depression worse, and the depression made it impossible for me to climb out of the grief, and I was… I should’ve been scared, but I was so far gone that mostly I couldn’t locate fear. Just despair. Disappointment. Pain. And it was so dark, so deep, I couldn’t even imagine the possibility that it wouldn’t last forever. I did manage to tell Doctor Gendron that, though, so I checked myself into Harbinson for a while until I felt like I had a reasonable grasp on reality again. Took a while. Longer than I want to admit, but at least I got there after I thought I might not be able to.”
It hurts me to think of her adrift in that sea of loneliness, of not knowing if she’d be okay again. Ever. Of having fought so many battles and won, but to be faced with one that made her want to lie down and give in because what was even the point?
I’m also fucking furious with myself for not being here for her when she could have used me the most. That’s nonsense though because I wouldn’t have been any good to her if I showed up then and only then. Like a fellow soldier who abandoned you in battle riding up on a shiny silver horse while you’ve been dragged through the mud and almost died half a dozen times. Pretty sure “Fuck all the way off” is the only reasonable response in that situation.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here for you.”
She lifts a shoulder. “Why would you have been? You lived in Chicago. I hadn’t seen you in fifteen years. Why on earth would I have any expectation that you’d show up?”
Except that’s the thing, isn’t it? Awkwardness makes my throat thick and I’ve got to wonder if telling her that I was in fact here will make this better or worse. I’m almost certain the answer is worse. And yet, I feel as though with all of the things she’s told me and with everything I’m still holding back from her, this is a time and place where I should tell her. That I owe her the truth.
“I…” My throat works around a swallow and I send up a prayer that this won’t spell the end of things for us. Though Starla’s never been one to throw things away. She might be angry at me or disturbed, but over is probably a reach. “I was here, actually. In Boston. After your father passed.”
Her hazel eyes narrow and her chin presses into wrinkles. “You were here? Like for a conference or something? Interviewing for your job? Or apartment hunting? It wasn’t that long before you moved back.”
I scrub a hand over the back of my neck because I’ve started to feel a bit sweat-prickled and cold-veined all at the same time. I’m not used to this and I’d like it to stop, but the only way to the other side of this is through.
“No. No, I decided to move back after I was here.”
“Why? I mean, why were you here, and what about your visit made you decide to move back? It’s not like you came at a nice time of year. I love Boston, but August isn’t when the city’s at its best.”
I should’ve had more to drink, made my tongue looser, so this would be easier to say even if the outcome is hard to take. “I saw that your father had died and I…I’m a foolish, arrogant man. I thought…I thought you might need me.”
“Need you?”
Her question is almost an echo, as if she’s bouncing my words back at me in the hope that when I return them again, they’ll make more sense. They won’t, because this all sounds rather daft.
“Yes. Like I said, foolish. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that you’d be in a bad way and if so, that you’d need all the support you could get. And I…” This isn’t about me, we’re talking about her and her father’s death. But I can’t explain this without telling her. “You remember yesterday when we agreed to a trade? We’d both tell our secrets, the things we weren’t all that keen to talk about?”
“Yeah.”
That slight tug up of her lip, an echo of a snarl, perhaps, makes me fear the worst. She’s going to be horrified, disgusted, and as soon as this began, it’s going to be over again. And worse, I will have left her with a sick feeling that no one can be trusted.
“Aye, well, mine is… There was a reason I left all those years ago. And it was you.”
* * *
Starla
This is what it must feel like to get slapped in the face with a freshly caught fish. Mortified, hurt, shocked, and slimy all over. That’s what I’m experiencing in the instant Lowry makes one of my worst nightmares a reality.
I’d always feared I was the reason he left, always believed it was my fault. I’ve used all of the skills I’ve picked up in twenty or so years of therapy to be rational about it, but it’s stuck around like cigarette smoke or cat pee in carpets: no matter how much you try to scrub it away or cover it up, it’s always fucking there.
Now he’s confirmed it—my fault. I was the reason. He didn’t beat around the bush or try to couch it in kinder terms. Oh, no, for once, his psychobabble bullshit has abandoned him, and at the worst possible time. Really could’ve used some coddling right about now, but thanks. This heart-shredding shame will work too. God, I want to crawl under my coffee table and curl up there until…forever. For-fucking-ever because life is getting too big for me and I can’t handle it.
My brain and my body are having a hard time processing this shock
to my system, and all I can do is laugh and look at my hands. “You know, I’d kinda hoped that wasn’t true?”
Turns out, it was. I asked for too much, practically begged for things I couldn’t have, and it’s no wonder Lowry ran away. Who wants that kind of responsibility? Who can handle those kinds of soul-sucking demands? Who wants to be a party to this big of a disaster? Not even the most patient, well-intentioned, and steadiest man alive.
I wish I’d known this before. I wish I’d made him show me his first. Because there’s no way I would’ve given all of myself to him like that if I’d known he couldn’t handle far less than that. Why did he even come back? Why did he even start this? Why, why, why? The little inside me is throwing a fit, stomping and throwing shit because this all seems so wildly unfair. But I’m not going to let him see that part of me again because apparently he can’t take it when I’m desperately needy. Fine, that’s fine.
“Starla, I—”
“No. I don’t want to hear anything else. I do wish you’d go. Because if you couldn’t handle what I needed then, you sure as hell won’t be able to handle what I need now.”
I haven’t even told him about Tad and my father’s company and these looming decisions I’m supposed to be making, this business I’m supposed to be running but instead am finding myself paralyzed—because who wants to be a failure? Who wants to ruin lives because they made a bad decision? Not this girl, but I’m also not capable of managing a multibillion-dollar corporation because as much as I’d like to deny it, on any given day, my mental health is like a house of cards. Could be blown over by a stiff breeze at any moment. Goddammit. God-fucking-dammit.
I won’t, will not, let Lowry see me cry again. I will swallow down all the tears, bite them back until my lip is bloody if I have to, but I will not cry in front of this man again. Now I’m mad about everything. I’m mad that he brought me my favorite Chinese takeout. I’m mad that he traded me when it became apparent I preferred his food. I’m angry that he tucked me into bed, and I’m absolutely furious he let me call him daddy and play a skittish virgin when we fucked.
“Sure, let me bare my soul and all of my secrets, intimate yourself into the core of my body, and then tell me it’s my own fucking fault you abandoned me.”
Okay, so I’m not going to cry, but apparently I’m going to yell.
He’s a blur of green and grey and ginger hair because the tears in my eyes have rendered him out of focus, so I scrub my fists over them, and apparently I’m standing now.
“How dare you. How fucking dare you. You were supposed to protect me and care for me and you left without a goddamn word and now you’re going to tell me it was my fault? No, thank you.”
“I don’t think you understand.”
Wow, does he look miserable. But I’m too angry to care. What did he think was going to happen when he told me? That I’d laugh, we’d clink champagne glasses on a yacht or some shit and then we’d fuck? Does he not know me better than that?
“You’re right. I don’t understand. Aren’t you supposed to be Saint Lowry or some shit? You’re the worst. The absolute worst and I hate you. I hate you.”
There she is. Little Starla is so mad she can’t even access her grown-up vocabulary anymore. She is—I am—hurt. All the way down. I wish I had a door to slam, but I live in a studio and my bathroom has a pocket door and my closet doors slide. It’s enough to make my frustration and fury boil over, and I want to hit something, but there’s nothing to hit and I’m fuming and mortified and tired, and I can’t anymore.
He’ll leave when he leaves, and short of calling the police or my doorman, there’s not much to do about it. I don’t feel like causing more of a scene than I already have, and Lowry doesn’t actually make me fear for my physical safety, so I’ll sit on my couch and tuck my knees up to rest my head on, wrap my arms around my shins, and make it clear that we’re done here. I’ll be a little Starla egg until he leaves. Again.
Except he doesn’t leave. He sits next to me. Doesn’t touch me, perhaps sensing I might punch him if he did, but still quite close.
“Starla. I am so sorry. I didn’t mean for you to understand it that way. Because that’s not what I meant, at all. I left because of you, but it wasn’t your fault. There’s a distinction, and I should’ve made it. I apologize for making you feel like…”
He makes a frustrated noise.
“You might hate me as much for this, maybe more, and I’d deserve it. I do deserve it, because it was never okay and it still isn’t, and I oughtn’t have started something with you under false pretenses but… For fuck’s sake, Star.”
Anguish, that is what’s coloring his voice, and I maybe turn my head a tiny bit so I can sneak a glance at him from over my knee. He looks desolate, racked with suffering, raking his hands through his hair. I’m not ready to offer him anything yet—no succor, no acceptance—but I am curious. And the way he can’t even spit it out… I’ve never seen him such a mess.
“So, why don’t you tell me why you really left, if it wasn’t my fault? I thought I broke you. Asked too much of you and you couldn’t stand it, so you left for Chicago. Stopped even working with kids and adolescents altogether. Why’d you do that? If it wasn’t my fault, what did you do it for?”
* * *
Lowry
“The job I took in Chicago was for working with adults.”
It’s my knee-jerk response, the one I give to anyone who asks. It seems obvious, yeah, that’s the job that was available so that’s the one I took. I had to do some studying up to get the latest on treating adults, but I think that shift is far easier than going from treating adults to adolescents.
Starla, though, knows oh-so-much better. And from where she sits, head still resting on her knees but fully turned toward me, her eyes narrow. There is no way in hell I’m getting off that easily. Nor should I. Yet I can’t seem to continue my explanation. Perhaps she’ll take pity on me. Play the therapist and ask leading questions that will compel me to answer. It’s not fair to put her in that position, not at all, but when you’re bogged down in self-loathing and hypocrisy and throat-closing disgust…
“Okay, but you could’ve gone anywhere. You were an incredibly well-regarded children’s psychiatrist with a specialty in treating difficult and persistent cases of depression and anxiety. Any practice or hospital would thank their lucky stars to have you. So, nice try, doc, but I’m not buying it. Next?”
It’s strange how the very things you can love about a person can also be the ones that drive you most mad. Starla is persistent, intuitive, and intelligent, all of which mean she’s perfectly reasonable to demand these answers. Doesn’t mean I want to give them to her any more, though. If anything, I want to hand them over less. Should’ve kept my mouth shut, took this secret to my grave, and perhaps gotten to live happily ever after. Though I wouldn’t have deserved it and probably would’ve wizened under the weight of getting a fairy tale ending I didn’t at all deserve.
“It’s…it’s not a nice reason.”
I can’t even meet her gaze anymore. There’s a nonzero chance she’s going to be horrified and demand I get out of her apartment, and I’ll go, no argument, no cajoling, just walk out and maybe throw myself into the Charles because all I could say to that is, “Aye, ye’ve got the right of it, lass.”
Also, I don’t want her to feel guilty. There’s no reason for her to, but she might anyway. She always takes too much on herself, makes things her fault when they aren’t. When the people around her should’ve been better than they were and they failed her. Like her father did. Like I did. But I’m not going to fail her now, keep this secret from her when she ought to know and then decide if she really wants to be with a man like me. If I even still have a chance after she’s said she hates me.
I force myself to look up at her and she’s regarding me, calmly, kindly, chin now perched on her knees. She probably thinks I’m exaggerating. I’m not.
“Did you know I grew up Catholic? Not like churc
h on Easter and Christmas Catholic, but church every Sunday, Catholic schools, went to confession every week, was an altar boy. That kind of Catholic.”
“I bet you were an adorable ginger altar boy.”
I force the corners of my mouth up to acknowledge her gentle teasing. How do I deserve this kindness from a woman like her?
“I don’t know about adorable, but I took my duties very seriously. Unlike my brothers, of course. But that’s neither here nor there. My mother thought about becoming a nun, but she met my da and changed her mind. Had a gaggle of kids she swore to raise up as good Catholics to make up for it. Her brother, though, he became a priest.”
I have very clear memories of Uncle Sean. He had red hair like me, and was always ready with a joke or a little magic trick. I thought that man had hung the moon. I haven’t talked about Sean in years, though I think of him often.
“We’d go to his church and see him give mass sometimes, and he was the kind of priest every parish wants. He was engaging, funny, warm, flirted with the old ladies, and…”
My throat closes, which is fine since it keeps the bile in my throat, not spilling out of my mouth and onto Starla’s expensive carpet. Best get this part over with, though, rip off the Band-Aid as it were, because the story’s not going to change no matter how long I wait. So I clear my throat, trying to breathe through the roiling in my gut.
“Turned out he was molesting little boys. He’s one of the few who went to prison for it, so at least there’s that. He’s out now, though I haven’t spoken to him. Can’t bring myself to. But when I was a boy, I was jealous of those lads. The ones he spent extra time with, who he seemed to take a special interest in.”
Makes me sick even now to think of it all these years later. I imagine it will for the rest of my life.
“Maybe if I hadn’t been so self-centered, I would have noticed the boys themselves weren’t so thrilled about it. Avoided him, more like. But I was a kid and it never occurred to me. It just seemed wildly unfair that Sean was my uncle and though we got to see him most Sunday evenings for dinner, he wasn’t around more than that.”
For Her Own Good Page 23