Every Single Secret(3)

One, in particular, was really locked in. She had long honey-colored, flat-ironed hair, beige lipstick, and bright-blue eyelash extensions. College student, probably. A baby. I almost wished I could pull her aside:

Stay one night with him, I dare you. See how it feels to wake up to him screaming and ripping the sheets off the bed. Trying to climb through the window. Breaking the wedding dishes you picked out together at Crate and Barrel. See how sexy that shit is.

I hung my purse on the hook by my knees, caught her eye, then pushed up my glasses with my middle finger. Not super classy, but you know what they say—you can take the girl out of the Division of Family and Child Services . . .

Blue Eyelashes tossed her stick-straight tresses and turned back to her posse. She said something that made them all titter, then they aimed a collective sneer at me. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the bartender chuckling to himself.

“I’m sorry I made you come looking for me,” Heath said.

I met his eyes. “Please don’t apologize. Not if you don’t mean it. Not if you’re just going to keep doing this every night.”

He started to say something but stopped, and in the sudden flash of light from the TV screens above the bar, I realized his eyes were red and damp.

“Not here,” I said quickly. “We can talk at home.”

“No. I can’t go home, not yet. I’m just . . .” He shook his head. “I need to tell you what’s going on. You’ve been really patient, and you deserve an explanation.”

I exhaled evenly. This was going to get tricky, I could feel it. Yes, I wanted Heath home, and yes, I wanted the nightmares to stop, and yes, maybe even an explanation from him would be just the thing to get us over this rough patch. But talking led to other, unwelcome things. Talking led to openness. To heartfelt statements, honesty, and confessions. Dangerous and unknown places. Places that terrified me.

Talking, for me, wasn’t an option.

Heath rubbed his eyes, and in the seconds he wasn’t looking, I picked four cashews out of a nearby bowl. I clenched them in my hand under the bar, feeling their reassuring kidney shape against my skin. Immediately the electrical storm in my head cleared, and I felt calmer.

I drew in a breath and let it out slowly. The counting was residue from my ranch years. A weird habit—or tic, whatever—that so far I’d been able to keep from Heath. Back then, it was always about food—how much was available and would I have access to it when I needed it. Now the counting alone seemed to settle my nerves. It always had to be an even number, preferably four. Four cashews, four stones, four pens. I knew it wasn’t normal—and sometimes I could curtail it with a quick snap of the elastic hair band I kept around my wrist, hidden among a stack of bracelets—but it did make me feel better. Particularly in moments of high stress. Like this one.

“Do you remember what you told me when we first met?” he asked. “About closure?”

I swallowed. Of course I remembered. It was the same thing I had said to every new friend I made, every guy who’d ever pressed me to talk about my past.

“You said closure was an illusion,” he went on. “You said we can’t go back. We can’t fix things. And trying only brings more pain.”

I waited. There was a but coming.

“I so admired you for believing that. For living it out every day. I wanted to be like you. I tried and tried, Daphne, but I’m not as strong as you. I want closure. I need it . . . and I need help finding it.”

He pushed the business card he’d been holding at me. I stared at it numbly.

Dr. Matthew Cerny, PhD, the elegant font read. Baskens Institute. Dunfree, Georgia.

“He’s a therapist. A psychologist,” Heath said.

A therapist. Someone whose sole job it was to make you tell your secrets. To poke and prod at you until you voluntarily gave up information that ruined your life—or someone else’s. I had opened up to a psychologist once, and it had torn a good man’s world apart. Torn mine apart too. The dread I’d been swallowing since I set foot in this place snaked up into my chest and lodged there.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“You said you didn’t believe in therapy.” My voice was faint.

“I didn’t, but maybe I’ve been wrong. Too stubborn to admit it’s the one thing I need.”

“Okay.” I hesitated. “It seems like a big shift, all of a sudden. But even if you’ve changed your mind, there’s no reason to go all the way to Dunfree. That’s at least three hours away, right? Up in the mountains? I’m sure you can find a doctor down here in Atlanta. Somebody who can help you get closure.”

The bartender pointed at me, his eyebrows raised, but I shook my head, and he turned back to the bar. I squeezed the cashews.

“I’m sure there are plenty of good doctors around here,” I barreled on. “Hell, Lenny could probably recommend a battalion of them, knowing her crazy family.” I touched his arm. “Growing up the way you did. Your mom and her boyfriends. Maybe that’s why you’re having the nightmares—”

“Heath. Dude.”

A young man in a badly tailored blue suit had materialized behind us. A basketball buddy or an old college friend. I didn’t recognize him. He clapped Heath’s shoulder and thrust out a hand. “Where’ve you been?”