“What about him?”
“Do you talk to him, ever? Where is he?”
“That’s not your business.” He said it cold in a way he had never been with me.
“I’m… I’m asking because I —” I caught it, barely. “Because I care about you, and there’s this part of your life with a wall around it, and —”
“Because it needs a wall. Some things you leave alone, Alyssa.”
“Or some things are just easier not to look at.”
“Alyssa.”
There was a warning in his tone I’d never heard from him, and I knew I’d pushed too far. He looked at me for a long moment, and his expression softened. When he spoke again, the cold had gone out of it. He was trying.
“What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to talk to somebody.” It came out like the line I’d been practicing in my head over and over. Clinical and small, and the wrong tone for the moment.
“You mean a therapist?”
“A therapist. A grief counselor. Somebody who…”
“Who what? Who’s qualified to tell me how I should feel?”
He looked at me with a face I hadn’t seen before.
“Julian. Can I just explain? I think you’ve been carrying this for eighteen years, and I think you’re tired. I think it’s starting to show in places you can’t see it. And I think if you talked to somebody who knew how to listen to a man like you?—”
“A man like me?”
“Don’t do that.”
“You said it. You don’t think I’ve thought about this?”
“What?”
“Therapy. You don’t think I’ve considered it?”
“I don’t know if you have. I’m asking.”
“I’ve sent Zion to therapists for his anger. I sent Simone to one for anxiety. I made Tre go, once, when he wouldn’t on his own. I understand therapy. How it works, who it helps, when to call. I haven’t gone myself, because I don’tneedto.”
“Okay, but?—”
“I don’t have eighteen years’ worth of bad time to hand a stranger in a room with a notepad.”
It was the first true thing he’d said since the conversation started. I felt the door crack, and I leaned toward it before I could lose my nerve.
“Then give it to me.”
He didn’t answer.
“Julian. You don’t have to give it to a stranger. Give it to me. I’d carry it. I’d sit with you. I would?—”
“Lyss. No.” He stood. “I think I’m going to turn in early. You and Micah staying, or you want me to drop you home?”
“Staying…” I said small. “If that’s?—”
