Page 19 of With All My Heart, Joy

Joy pulled the hat off her head and combed her fingers through her hair. Isaac’s eyes traced her motions before he snapped his attention away.

Good grief, he might need his own counselor again.

“Definitely being overlooked or left out. Not getting credit for something I worked hard on. My abilities being doubted. Being put down. Negative comments on a post are brutal, or if a video I worked hard on has low views. Stuff like that.”

The issue was obvious to Isaac. “Why are you desperate to matter?”

Joy stared at him with unblinking eyes for a long, silent moment. “I am, aren’t I? That’s my issue,” she said slowly. “That explains so much about myself.”

He let her process the revelation in silence before posing his next packed question. “Do you feel that you don’t matter to anyone?”

Her chin trembled. “Can I tell you something I’ve never told a single soul?”

His cheek lifted in a half smile. “That’s what counselors are for.”

Her sigh could have dried all the oceans on earth. “I wasn’t supposed to be born.”

“Were you an accidental pregnancy?”

“My parents were done having kids. I’m six years younger than TJ and Lucy. With them, Mom got her girl. She didn’t need to try anymore. Third time was the charm, even if she got another boy as a bonus.”

“How did you find out you were, as you say, an accident?” Isaac didn’t believe any child was an accident, no matter the circumstances. Look at Paisley.

“I was six years old. My brother Ben was fourteen, and he and TJ—have you met TJ?”

“Lucy introduced me to both of them at the engagement party.”

“Okay, so TJ was twelve… ” A story poured out then, about a fight with her brothers and Ben’s heartless pronouncement that she was unwanted. The fact that Joy recalled every word her brother had said told him how deep this wound went.

“It all made sense after that. The way my mom always talked about going back to work while I was little. She had finally gone back to work at the bank after being a stay-at-home mom for Victor, Ben, TJ, and Lucy—then she got pregnant with me. I made her lose another five years at home. I completely changed their lives all over again when they thought they were done with that.”

As a counselor, Isaac had no trouble connecting the dots from that conversation so many years ago to who Joy was today. “Have you talked with your parents about it?”

“No. Never.” Her words were short and clipped. “They don’t know that I know I was an oops baby. They would deny it, of course. That’s what good parents do. Provide the best for their kids even when they don’t feel like it.”

He’d been in that spot a time or two or twenty.

“At some point, you’re going to need to talk with them.” He could guarantee that even though they hadn’t planned on having Joy, their feelings on the matter were a far cry from the way an adolescent brother had portrayed it years ago. “How is your relationship with TJ and Ben now?”

“I’m close-ish to TJ. He’s always been the more sensitive one. But I distanced myself from Ben from that day on. And he never tried to close the gap.”

“Is that why you’re close to Victor?”

A fond smile filled her face. “Victor’s twelve years older than me. He was almost like a second dad until he went to college. And even then, he talked to me on the phone often while he was away at school.” Her smile faded. “I wish he hadn’t moved to Lansing. I always thought he’d come home after med school.”

Isaac didn’t realize the eldest Halverson sibling was a doctor, too. “What’s his specialty?”

“He’s an ENT.”

“Have you talked to him recently?”

She bit her lip and shook her head. Worried ripples shot across her brow. “He rarely answers, just texts back that he’s working. But he doesn’t call me later like he used to.”

“I see…” There was so much Isaac longed to say. But most of it was too harsh for counseling day two. “Maybe you should start by talking with Ben. Be honest with him about how he affected you all those years ago. He might not even be aware of it.”

“You’re joking.”

He tilted his head an inch. “I am not.”

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