Page 65 of The Birthday Girl
For a moment, she couldn’t breathe. She didn’t even remember deciding to come here, but here she was. Her hand hovered over the ignition, trembling. She could leave. She could have backed out and disappeared, but instead, she killed the engine, slipped out of the car, and stalked toward the entrance.
Inside, the receptionist looked up in surprise. “Ms. Banks, you don’t have an appointment. Is Dr. Farrell expecting you?”
“No, and I don’t need an appointment,” Tahlia replied, her voice clipped, almost sing-song. “Tell him I’m here. Now.”
The receptionist, a mousey brunette named Kendra, who had only met Tahlia once but never forgotten the chill of her eyes, swallowed and buzzed the office. Dr. Farrell was finishing up a session, door closed, the muffled sounds of a toddler’s tantrum echoing from within. The mother was on the edge of combustion, trying to reason with the flailing child while Dr. Farrell spoke to the patient in that soothing baritone that had earned him his entire clientele.
Tahlia waited in the atrium, pacing figure-eights across the sky-blue carpet. She didn’t sit. She wouldn’t. Her feet resonated on the floor with the click and suck of soft slippers blotting up fresh blood.
When Dr. Farrell finally emerged, smoothing his tie and offering a plasticine smile to the departing mother, his gaze locked with Tahlia’s. For a fraction of a second, his professionalmask slipped, revealing a wariness that vanished so quickly most wouldn’t have registered it.
“Save it,” Tahlia cut him off, brushing past him into the office.
Dr. Farrell’s room was too calm for the havoc she carried inside. The walls were a soft cream, the shelves lined with books that smelled of dust and leather; the lamp threw a gentle glow that made her want to claw at something.
“I don’t even know why I came,” Tahlia said as she sank into the leather chair, her voice restless. “I was driving, and then I was here.”
Dr. Farrell tilted his head, studying her without judgment. “Sometimes our subconscious brings us where we need to be.”
She let out a brittle laugh. “This isn’t what I need. What I need is for the world to shut up. They’re replaying the clip of my hands on her throat over and over. The names they’re calling me—the headlines. I can’t even close my eyes without seeing them, and her. Always her.”
Dr. Farrell sat across from Tahlia, placing his elbows on his knees and leaning forward slightly. “Her?”
“My sister,” she snapped. “Danielle. Who else would I be talking about?” She twisted her fingers in the strap of her handbag until the leather squeaked. “Everything I love, everything I’ve built, and everything I’ve worked for, she poisons it. She’s loud, unruly, and knows exactly what buttons to press to make me snap.”
“Those are powerful emotions toward your sister,” he said, his gaze lingering on the mascara tracks down Tahlia’s cheeks, the blood-crusted slippers, and the tremor in her right hand. “How does that make you feel?”
Tahlia exhaled sharply, her chest rising and falling rapidly. “Like if I could just…remove the problem, I could finally breathe again.”
Dr. Farrell reached for his notepad, and his fountain pen skated across the page in tight, controlled loops. “Remove how?”
The question lingered in the air like smoke. Tahlia’s lips parted, then closed again. Her gaze drifted to the window, the city lights blinking beyond. Only after a long pause did she speak, her voice quieter now. “By cutting the string.”
Her words startled her, as though they had come from somewhere deeper than her conscious mind. She blinked, then looked at Farrell, searching his expression. He only nodded, jotting another note.
And in that silence, it hit her: this was why she had come. Not for comfort. Not for absolution. But because she wanted to confess that Danielle was the loose thread, and she wanted it cut.
Dr. Farrell set his pen down and laced his fingers together, his expression calm but his eyes intense. “You speak of Danielle as if she isn’t just a sister, but an obstruction standing between you and the life you want.”
Tahlia’s nails drummed the armrest of the chair. “She is. She always has been. Every time I’m at my best, she manages to drag me down. She doesn’t even try, and yet the world bends for her. She gets sympathy, pity, and attention she doesn’t deserve. Now she’s made me the villain as if she and everyone else who’s had to pay hadn’t done me wrong.”
“Do you feel she is defining your identity?” Dr. Farrell asked smoothly.
“Shedoes notdefine anything that has to do with me,” Tahlia snapped, then faltered, her lips trembling into a bitter smile. “But she could destroy it. She already has.”
Farrell nodded, letting the silence fill the space for a moment before speaking again. “You’ve described Danielle as poisonous, loud, and unruly, and now destructive. Do you believe that as long as she’s in your life, peace is impossible?”
Tahlia froze, her breath catching in her throat. She hadn’t strung the words together like that, hadn’t dared to, but hearing them out loud made something click. Her chest rose and fell with shallow, frantic breaths, and then she whispered, “Yes. She’s the only loose thread. Everything else could be repaired, but not with her interference.”
“So the question becomes, what do you do with a thread that refuses to stop unraveling the fabric?”
Tahlia stared at him, her pulse thrumming in her ears. For a moment, she felt suspended between sanity and confession.
“You cut it,” she finally answered.
Dr. Farrell jotted one last note, his pen scratching the page. When he looked up, his expression was unreadable. “You’ve found your answer, then.”
Tahlia sat very still, her words echoing back at her, and realized she had.
