Page 84 of Deliver Me

“You’re thinking about your father?”

Gabriel nodded. “My father. My mother. I just wonder if they really loved me. I think about all the ways I could make mistakes if I ever become a father, the things I could say or do to mess up a relationship and it seems so endless.”

“Parenting is a difficult job,” Dr. Lucas agreed. “You still haven’t spoken to your mother?”

“Not since she came to the apartment, and we were both pissed off then.”

“You said before that you felt like she betrayed you. Do you still feel that way?”

“Yes,” Gabriel said, then shook his head. “No? Sometimes I do and then I think, how would I feel if my child ever hurt Mia? I can’t imagine it. Can’t imagine what I’d do.”

“Is that part of why you’re worried about starting a family with Mia?” Dr. Lucas asked.

“I’m afraid I won’t be a good father because my parents were distant.” Distant was a weak word for what he’d experienced buteven now it felt like a further betrayal to tell his therapist that they had been neglectful and emotionally absent. “I don’t think either of them had good relationships with their parents, either.”

“You’re breaking that cycle and learning to have healthy relationships.” Dr. Lucas tapped his pen on his knee as he flipped through the pages of notes he’d taken during their session. “I’d say you’ve mentioned children at least every time we’ve spoken, so it seems that you and Mia want a family of your own. Perhaps you’d feel better about parenting if you healed the wounds with your own mother.”

“You want me to talk to Lilah?”

“I think it’s possible that it will help you move on from the past.”

Maybe it was, but that was still far from a guarantee, and he wasn’t sure how Mia would feel about the whole thing. Especially not after what had happened the last time he’d seen his mother.

“He wants me to talk to Lilah.” Gabriel told her the next day as he stood at the counter in their kitchen and waited for his morning coffee to brew. His announcement was met with silence, and he turned back to Mia, unsure if she’d heard him.

She watched him with a crease of worry between her brows. “Is that a good idea?” she asked finally.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “He thinks we might be able to work things out, especially if she agrees to go to therapy. I don’t know if that’s true, but I wasn’t sure about reaching out to Brittany and the others and that turned out all right.”

“It did,” she agreed. “Do you think Lilah would agree to therapy? She doesn’t seem like the type who’d be willing to pay someone to tell her when she’s wrong.”

He chuckled. “When you put it that way …”

“You’re doing so well right now and I worry about how you’d react if things with Lilah don’t go well,” Mia said as she tapped ablunt fingernail nervously on the side of her cup, “but if you and Dr. Lucas think this is the right thing to do then I’ll support you.”

“I told him I’d think about it,” Gabriel reassured. “I didn’t make any promises and I don’t have to decide today.”

“You can take as much time as you need,” she said.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” he said into the phone. He’d been working with Dr. Lucas for almost two months to prepare for this and now he couldn’t remember a word of what they’d discussed. “I came all this way, and I can’t seem to get out of the damn car.”

“You can,” Mia said. “I know you can.”

“What if she won’t see me?”

“Then you come home, and I’ll be your family.”

He was still white-knuckle gripping the steering wheel as he clung to the truth of those words. Months of work with Dr. Lucas had helped all of that feel more real to him, more tangible. He had lost his mother years ago and whether he got her back or closed the door on the possibility forever, nothing would ever take Mia from him.

The large white house just visible through the trees felt familiar to him, but it had never been a home in the same way the house he shared with Mia now was. He stared at the windows, counting the gleaming panes of glass on the second floor until he came to the one he’d grown up in. He had no memories there but loneliness and raised voices and a cold pit of dread settled into his stomach like a lead weight. It was a familiar feeling; the same one he’d always gotten when his mother had looked at him with her characteristic stern disapproval.

He’d always been too loud, too violent, too out of control. The wedge it had driven between them had been deep, the first seemingly irreparable crack in the foundation of his life. Had he been surprised at all when it had come crashing down?

“You’re more of my family than anyone else has ever been,” he told Mia honestly. “I need to try and fix this but if I can’t …”

“I know,” she said. “We’ll keep going, because that’s what we always do.”

“I love you.”

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