Page 283 of Mad Girl

But you merely blinked at me. “Well—no.”

“Why not?”

“That isn’t important, either. It’s⁠—”

“Why hasn’t she met him?” I didn’t like how dismissive you were being. Isn’t important? This was the single most important introduction you could make.

You stared at me for a long time, like you didn’t want to say. Then you gingerly folded your hands on top of the table and said, “Because he isn’t here.”

“Isn’t here? What do you mean? Where is he?”

You dropped your gaze to the steel table.

“Where is he, Casey?” If I sounded panicked, that’s because I was.

“He doesn’t live here at the moment. Not full time, anyway.”

“What? Why?” I cried, causing Vera to shoot me a look of warning from her post against the wall. My mind raced through the possibilities, none of them good. If Nic’s engaged and John’s moved away, what the hell is going on out there?

“Can we move on to something else?” you asked, averting your gaze. “Please?”

“But I want to know where he is. Tell me.”

“No. You told me you didn’t want to know about them. I shouldn’t have told you that. So we’re finished with this topic.”

I gripped the table. “The hell we are.”

“I’m not saying another word. You’ll just use it as an excuse to hurt yourself again.”

“I probably will, anyway! This whole conversation makes me want to hurt myself!”

“You do that,” you said, voice deep and foreboding as you leaned in, “and the next time you see me, it’ll be outside these walls on the day you’re released.”

I went still. “You don’t mean that.”

“Fucking try me,” you warned, holding my gaze. “I will not come back and subject myself to the sight of your face all beaten to hell like it was last time. I get that you’re hurting. I get that it probably feels as if your whole world’s fallen apart, but that’s where I draw the line. You want to get yourself beaten again? Go ahead. But bear in mind that seeing you all battered and broken hurts me, too, so if you choose to keep getting yourself hurt in here, I’ll choose to protect myself from the very real, physical pain that kind of behavior causes me.”

The expression on your face—hard, serious, intense—scared me into submission.

Tuesdays are ours. I can’t give them up.

“Fine,” I whispered. “Tell me what your plans are for the rest of Claire’s stay.”

That December, as glittery white lights shimmered from all the trees and bushes in the park and fresh wreaths with bright red bows hung from every lamppost around Beacon Hill, it wasn’t Christmas cheer I felt, but an overwhelming sense of gloom.

After therapy one day, we sat with Garland, a fire crackling beneath the magnolia-and-pinecone garland over the mantle, a Christmas movie playing on low. Miracle on 34th Street. The version from the 90s. You held a book cracked open in your lap, and on the cocktail table beside the sofa, steam curled up from your tea.

“You know,” you said, eyes on the screen, your expression thoughtful, “the guy in this reminds me of Nic.”

It was the scene where Bryan and the little girl, Susan, are sitting in the window seat, watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade from Bryan’s apartment. “I can totally see that. Except my dad’s way more handsome.”

You chuckled. “You’re right. He is.”

“I used to wish I had a mom like Susan’s,” I confessed. “Not some woman stepping in to be my mom, but my actual mom. Still with my dad. Totally chic. Confident…but sweet. I already had the house and the dad—all I needed was my mom back. But I wasn’t stupid enough to tell Santa that.”

“Why’s it stupid to ask for something you really want?” you asked softly.

“Because he never brought me the dog I wanted. If he couldn’t bring a dog, he sure as hell couldn’t bring a person back. I used to think I never got what I wanted because of how bad I was. So this one year, from Halloween on, I worked really hard to be good, and I still didn’t get the dog. Then I figured out he wasn’t real—that my dad was actually Santa all along—and I thought, No wonder I didn’t get the dog.”