I wondered if she was telling the truth. The paper had been at the center of her desk and turned so that anyone approaching from the doorway would see it immediately. According to the date on the letter, it had been sent out almost a week ago. How long had she had it? Did she get it the same day my aunt and uncle had? Why hadn't she told me immediately? Was she worried about what the news would do to me? Was she worried it would interfere with her efforts to change me? At the moment I was more curious about that than I was angry.

"How does this information make you feel?" she asked, and sat forward as if any syllable I uttered would be earth-shattering in importance.

I shrugged and looked away. Why did she always keep the window curtains closed in this office? Was she afraid we would find something far more interesting to look at out there? My eyes drifted to the floor. Where was that grate Gia had described? Was anyone listening in on this conversation? Was Posy down there? I heard nothing, not a peep.

"When you've been apart from someone like you have been apart from your mother, news like this"-- she held the paper up--"doesn't seem real. Long-distance death loses its impact. You have to be close up, right there sometimes, to believe it at all.

"But despite the face you're trying to put an. I can see you believe it. Phoebe. Holding it all bottled up inside you won't help and it doesn't make you stronger. It eats at you from within. If anything, it makes you weaker. I'm always telling my clients that, because it's one of the truest things about human nature. you know. Shutting your emotions up, never expressing your feelings, just causes it all to fester and sour, and that ugly degeneration comes out in how they look, how they think, and what they do. It's poison. It's truly as if you were poisoning your own blood."

She sat back. relaxed, "What was the nicest thing, the happiest thing, you remember about your mother?"

"I don't remember anything nice or happy."

"Sure you do. You're just afraid to recall it now, afraid to mention it because that will make you feel sad, and believe me, Phoebe, you're afraid of being sad, afraid of it more than any of the other girls here," she assured me with a wave of her hand toward the door. I said nothing, just stared at the floor. My head felt as if it were full of angry bees.

She rose and walked slowly to the front of her desk, then leaned back against it.

"Think back." she coaxed. "Surely you have good memories of when you were just a little Dirt Think, remember. I want you to try, Phoebe."

"Why? Why do you want me to do that?"

"I want you to feel, to see and understand the most basic human needs in you."

"You're right. I don't want to be afraid and I don't want to be sad. Okay? You're right." Hot tears bubbled under my lower eyelids. "Satisfied?"

"I'm not worried about being right. Phoebe," she said slowly, and smiled. "I have nothing to prove."

I raised my eyebrows skeptically at that and I could see she didn't like it. She stopped smiling, stepped away from the desk, and stood as firmly as a steel pale, her eyes sharp, angry, bearing down on me.

"I'm already a success at what I do. I have the respect of my peers. I have been awarded many honors, and courts, judges, counselors, and other psychiatrists have given me the trust and the responsibility to reshape and save girls like you, so this is not about ego."

"What's it about then?"

"Right now? It's about you. Do you realize"-- she reached back for the letter from the clinic--"that you are really all alone in the world now?"

I tightened the embrace of myself and looked at the closed window curtains.

"Oh. I know you have an uncle and aunt. but I also know you're not fond of them and you do not believe they are very fond of you. You believe they would rather you disappeared. Am I right?"

I didn't answer.

"I said, am I right? Wasn't that in the autobiography you wrote for me on orientation day? Well?"

"Yes."

She nodded. satisfied. "You were correct in your analysis of them. They haven't even called to see how you reacted to the news. I've heard nothing," she said with such vehemence. I thought she was enjoying the pain her words imposed on me. They were like whiplashes, slicing and stinging my weakened wall of protection.

"In this world." she continued, returning to that teacher voice of hers, "someone without any family, without any friends, loses any sense of herself and any reason to go on and do anything with her life. Like it or nat, this is your new home. Phoebe." she said, holding her arms out widely apart.

"We are your new family. I want you to believe that and I want you to trust me, trust that I have your best interests at heart, no matter how hard and severe I might seem to be. We have demons to drive out of you, important changes to make. Just like a surgeon has to cut out a cancer. I have to cut all that out of you. Oh, not with a knife, a scalpel, of course, but with every available technique at my disposal. All I ask is you cooperate and try to help yourself.

"Is that asking for too much?" she followed in a tone so reasonable. all I could do was shake my head.

"Good. I think you're different from the others. Phoebe. and I don't mean the color of your skin or your background or anything like that. I think you have potential. There's more to you and a lot more to save."

She stood there looking at me. I kept my eyes directed at the floor, then I sniffed back my tears and closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

Of course she was right about what I was feeling and what I was desperate to avoid. Good memories, happy memories, of Mama were trying to rush in and I was holding the door closed. but I could hear Mama's laughter, catch a glimpse of her in the mirror as she fixed my hair or talked to me about how to make up my eyes like hers. The images were leaking in under the door. These memories weren't memories of the woman I had seen at the clinic after I had run away from my uncle and aunt. These were memories of my mama of long ago when I was still young enough to forgive her for her weaknesses and her failures. when I was still young enough to believe things would be better for us all.

Tags: V.C. Andrews Broken Wings Horror
Source: readsnovelonline.net