Breakfast on Tuesday

35. Betrayed girl

The new year came and went and my injured arm was almost back to normal. Sometimes if I held a pen for too long, my pinky would cramp up. Besides that and the small dark scar where the bullet had viciously ripped into my skin, I was back to using my hand at full capacity.

I had never been to therapy before and sitting on a white, almost marshmallow-soft couch in Dr. Valez's upscale office was oddly comforting.

Two stunning art pieces were hung up on the white walls. I didn't have to know anything about art to know that each one was valued at fifty grand or more. I guessed being on the clan's payroll had its benefits.

Dr. Valez appeared to be a woman of high value herself. She was polished from head to toe with a bit of extra padding in all the right places. Her reddish-brown hair was tied up in a messy bun with soft tendrils that framed her round face.

"Have you been to therapy before?" she asked in a fruity voice when she noticed my eyes wandering over her walls.

"No," I said."Is it obvious?"

My answer seemed to surprise her. "I wouldn't say so. It's important for you to know what to expect out of these sessions. I like to think you're here because you have a problem that needs solving. Just know that you can be completely honest with me. This is a safe space. What would you like to talk about today?"

"I'm not sure. I did something bad and I don't know how to live with it."

"Something bad. Care to elaborate? Why do you think this thing you did was a bad thing?"

"I hurt someone."

Talkative today, aren't we?

Dr. Valez typed something on a small keyboard attached to a tablet. I counted five letters.

Did she just call you stupid? No, that's six letters. I get it. She typed the word 'dumbo'. The first letter she hit on the keyboard was the letter d.

"You're allowed to tell me exactly how you hurt this person," she implored. "Under normal circumstances, I would be obligated to report a crime, but not this time."

I bit my lip, unsure how much to reveal to this woman I just met.

You said that you trusted Dante. Then you should trust her as well.

"You don't trust me," she said, "and that's okay. Let's talk about something else. It says here that you recently stopped talking after a traumatic event, which I won't name until you want to talk about it. Has that happened before?"

"Yes, once, when I was seven after I witnessed my father getting shot. I was mute for two months."

I was still processing the fact that my father used to work for the clan. He always seemed so righteous, a man on the right side of the law.

The fact that the police believed that Dante killed him was a hard kick to the gut. I refused to believe he had, because that time in the kitchen when I told him about what happened to my father, he would have surely brought it up. He didn't and I didn't remember him looking guilty either.

The man kills people for a living. Why would he look guilty? He probably doesn't remember all the people he killed. I bet he's so cold and calculated because he learned to let go and let die, not let live.

There was a long pause as Dr. Valez waited for me to continue.

Dammit, why did I decide to do this again? I hated talking about that night.

The conspicuous silence reigned and soon enough I was babbling my life story, the stories rushing forth in a series of run on sentences until I ran out of breath.