“You vixen!” Veronica said, but she said jovially. “I’m so delighted for you! What are you going to wear?”
“I hadn’t thought of it,” Clarice confessed. “I don’t even know where we’re going.”
“Dress for the best,” Veronica advised. “You have a nice figure and you should show it off. Pick something with a little cleavage! Green would make your eyes look hazel.”
Clarice looked down at herself in astonishment. Supermodel thin Veronica thoughtshehad a nice figure? She caught herself sitting up straighter.
“I don’t want to ask you to come in on a Saturday,” Veronica said, even though she regularly asked Clarice to come in on Saturdays, “but we could meet here beforehand and I could help you with your makeup. Do you have contacts?”
Could Veronica actually be the girlfriend that Clarice had been hoping for? She could be so nice and friendly…when she wasn’t being the exact opposite.
“I have some disposable ones,” Clarice said. “I use them when I go swimming.”
“Bruno Martin won’t know what hit him,” Veronica said, framing Clarice in her hands like a photographer. “Get ready for your glow-up!”
16
BRUNO
Bruno shunted his dating life and all of the questions that came with it to the back of his brain to get to work.
“Darius?” he called. His office shared a lobby with two other psychiatrists and all three of the waiting patients looked up at his hail. Only one of them stood; the other two returned to their phones.
“Or should I sayDelirious?” Bruno suggested, when the teenager slunk past him into the room.
“Ha ha,” Darius said, but he didn’t seem offended. He took a seat on the couch, his posture suggesting that he was more bored than nervous. Bruno wasn’t sure yet how much of that was deliberate.
Bruno sat across from him, leaning back to give the impression that the session was no big deal.
“I spoke last week with your dad,” Bruno said, flipping to a clean page in his notebook. “He’s concerned that you’ve had a lot of big life upheavals in the near past. Your baby brother came to live with you last year about this time, and the two of you were kidnapped by a genetics lab.He’s two now? Pretty tough age. Your dad has a girlfriend, I understand. How do you feel about him dating Weird Wendy?”
“She’s fine,” Darius said with a shrug.
“Do your friends tease you about her?”
“Nah.”
“How do you feel about your baby brother?”
“He’s okay.”
“Your dad says you help out a lot at home, and I saw you at the pool with him last week. Do you feel like it’s unfair that you should have to take care of him so much?”
Darius slouched further back on the couch. “Nah.”
In some ways, Bruno preferred the weeping emotional sessions. Teenagers were tough nuts to crack.
“You want to talk about your mom? Do you resent the fact that she gave you and your brother up?”
“Not really.”
“You were there when she got shot.”
If Bruno hadn’t been watching his face, he might have missed the boy’s wince.
“It wasn’t that bad.”
“Why don’t you tell me about it,” Bruno invited.
