Page 137 of What's Left of Us

“It’s a simple yes or no answer, doc.”

She reaches into her bag and pulls out her keys, sidestepping me to undo the door leading directly from the hall to her office. “It’s never that easy, and you know it.”

Using her hip to push the door open, she stops at the threshold and studies me. “There are always other factors to take into account. You’ve made exceptional progress.”

There’s more she wants to say. “But?”

“But,” she adds with a soft smile, “there are things we still haven’t discussed. The root of the reason you’re here.”

I lean against the wall. “Youwere the one who wanted me to start from the beginning. That’s eight years of history to unravel.”

She lowers her bag to the table beside the door. “Do you know who Robert Penn Warner is?”

I shake my head.

Her responding chuckle is light. “He might have been one of the authors you made one of your friends write about in high school to avoid those dusty books you loathed so much.”

The quirky comment cocks my head. “Touché, doc. So he’s a writer.”

“A Pulitzer Prize winner too,” she adds, taking her glasses off and folding them to hold in her hand. “He once said that history can give us a full understanding of ourselves so that we can better face the future. I’m paraphrasing a little, of course, but you get the context.”

“So, the answer is no,” I say, not that it matters anymore.

“The answer,” she replies easily, “is that you haven’t finished telling me your story yet. Only then will you be ready to move forward in life.”

“For a better future?”

She nods. “For a better future.”

Wetting my lips, I look out the window as the snowflakes fill the air. “I put in my notice at work, doc.”

For once, Theresa Castro seems speechless.

“Conklin used to say that I should focus on the present because it was the only way to make sure I built a good future for me and Georgia,” I say, shaking my head. “But I thought I was doing that all along. I wanted to make sure she was free from her father’s control, and instead, I pushed her right back into his arms.”

“Everybody has the ability to choose,” she says after a moment of silence. “Each one of you—Conklin, Georgia, and yourself—made choices that led us to where we are today.”

“But what if we were lying to ourselves the entire time we made those choices to make ourselves feel better about them? What if I wasn’t really doing it for her but for me?”

Her words that night at the diner struck a chord that I’ve held on to a little too tightly.

“History isn’t history without the truth.”

“Which author said that?”

Her lips twitch. “Abraham Lincoln.” She looks up at the clock on her wall. “My next client isn’t supposed to be here for another hour and a half. I came in early to do some work. But if you’d like to talk…”

There are a lot of places I could be today.

But there’s a weight on my chest I need off.

I walk inside and let her close the door behind us. “I don’t know if I lied to myself about being in love with Georgia or if it was real. But you know what I realized the other day?”

“What?”

“In eight years, she never said she loved me.”

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

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