“Hey, I love you,” Dev said quietly just as Leaf was about to leave. “Drive carefully? And get lunch before the appointment, okay? You’ll feel better if you do.”
“Experience speaking?” Leaf raised a brow at him.
“Oh definitely. I could never eat after sessions, so I tried to do it before.”
“Okay, good to know. Love you. I’ll be back in the afternoon.”
“We’ll be here,” Dev said and got up to put Weasley next to Grace, who was pointedly staring at him by then. “Here you go. Your baby is just fine.”
When Leaf turned away to go, Dev stopped him.
“Hey, what was the song?”
“Oh, it’s that one with Eden in it?” Leaf said.
“Hozier’s ‘From Eden,’ then. It’s a good song. You should try to listen to the album during your drive maybe? Show me your phone.” Dev held out a hand, and Leaf handed his iPhone over.
After a moment, he got it back.
“Just press play. I queued it up in your Spotify.”
“Okay, thank you, sweetheart.”
“You’re welcome.” Dev gave him a quick kiss and retreated back behind the desk.
Smiling, Leaf left the house. He hoped he clicked with the therapist and didn’t have to find a new one before he got started.
LEAF DIDlisten to the album on his way to Denver, quite enjoying the sound. He found himself jamming along with the faster songs, and even tearing up a little on some slow ones. They got him right in the feels, as Dev would say.
Leaf found the building where Dr. Lauren Reynolds’s office was and parked at a nearby diner’s lot. Then he went inside the diner and had some lunch, despite his stomach trying to disagree with him.
He asked for coffee to go, which they were happy to provide, and walked to Dr. Reynolds’s practice. The receptionist smiled at him and told him the doctor was actually running early, so they might be able to begin sooner than the set time since Leaf was there.
Leaf sat down to wait, and sure enough, fifteen minutes before his appointment, a blonde maybe ten years his junior peeked out from her room.
“Mr. DeWitt, come on in.” She smiled at him in a regular-person way, not in a superperky-annoying way, which was already a good sign.
Leaf went in and was told to take a seat wherever he wanted, so he picked a comfortable-looking armchair, and she sat at the end of a couch kitty-corner from him and pushed her black-rimmed glasses higher up her nose.
“You should call me Leaf—nobody calls me Mr. DeWitt,” he said, and sipped at his coffee. “And I hope you don’t mind if I drink this?”
“Oh, not at all, Leaf. I had my own dose of caffeine just before you got here, so I completely understand.” She took a pen from the holder that was on the nearest little end table and scribbled something on her notepad. She sat in a relaxed way, and her dark hair had been pinned back on the sides. Dressed in jeans and a pale blue button-down shirt, she looked casual chic and very approachable. “So, as you know, I’m Dr. Lauren Reynolds, and in the last decade or so, I’ve found myself with more and more patients who have very certain type of issues they want to talk about. In your case it would be the childhood you spent with what we know as the cult called Eternal Solace, and everything that ties to that, am I correct?”
“Yeah, pretty much,” Leaf said, then thought about it. “I mean, that’s what makes me… me?”
“I think Freud would say so at least,” she answered, grinning at him quickly. “Childhood experiences mold us, yes, but once we’re free to make our own decisions, I think we fix some things ourselves.”
He thought about that and slowly nodded. “I suppose so. I mean, sure, I’ve repressed a hell of a lot of the memories I have”—she made a note of that in her pad, and Leaf smiled on the inside—“but I’ve consciously made sure both myself and my sister are fine. That we didn’t grow up to be like our parents.”
Another note. “You said your sister, Rainbow, has had therapy before and suggested you might want to think of it too?”
“Yeah. I mean, she’s been in therapy for a long time. Probably something like fifteen years, if not more. But recently I visited an old friend, acquaintance really, from the Solace days, and I talked with her and… I guess some of those repressed memories came back.”
“I think we should look into that next time. Figure out how many of these memories you might have. Sometimes things in life can bring them to the front suddenly, even without having such conversations with someone.” She tilted her head as if to carefully choose her words. “Many people with history of being abused have triggers, whether they know it or not. I know patients who have had really bad experiences out of the blue when something completely mundane happened and some things popped back into their consciousness.”
“I… ever since I started to really think about this, coming here, I’ve had some nightmares,” Leaf confessed.
“Have you talked about this with your partner?” she asked, and he realized he’d only expressed that he was in a same-sex relationship and had been for a long time.
