Page 75 of Letters From A Stalker

There could be dozens of reasons. Perhaps she genuinely believes the letter is too insignificant to discuss. Perhaps she is frightened enough that speaking about it aloud would make it feel more real. Perhaps she intends to handle it privately or has already told Tessa, her mother or Nanna, or the police. The last possibility should concern me considerably more than it does. Instead, beneath every rational clinical observation, another voice moves quietly through me when Julia meets my gaze and deliberately keeps the letter to herself.

Good girl.

My fingers freeze around the pen in my hand. The thought is so immediate, so possessive and so entirely divorced from anything Dr. Blackwood should feel toward the woman sitting across from him that I almost lose track of what she is saying. I force myself back into the room. If she has reported the letter, there will be questions. Perhaps cameras. Maybe police driving through the neighborhood or checking whether anyone saw something Sunday night. The possibility enters my mind. I dismissed it within seconds. That is what actually concerns me. Not the police, the ease with which I decide they are manageable. I stare at the notepad long enough that the words on it blur slightly.

Yes. Transfer her. Immediately. And find someone willing to assess why a thirty-seven-year-old psychiatrist with a successful career has developed the self-preservation instincts of a rabid raccoon.

Julia shifts in the chair. “You okay?”

The irony of her asking me that almost makes me laugh.

I look up. “I’m fine.”

Her eyebrow rises. Apparently I deserved that.

“I walked directly into it.”

“You really did.” There is a little more of her usual warmth in the response, and I allow it to pull the session somewhere safer.

“Last week I asked you to pay attention to the point where someone else’s anticipated reaction enters a decision before your own opinion does. Did you notice anything?”

Julia’s expression changes in a way I have begun recognizing as the moment she realizes one of my questions is going to require more than the answer she obviously prepared on the drive here.

“More than I expected, actually.” She leans back, considering before she continues, and this time I let the silence remain hers.

“It isn’t always a specific person,” she says eventually. “Sometimes it is. My mother is probably the easiest example because I can practically hear her. What she would say before I’ve even decided something. But sometimes it’s just this general... calculation. How inconvenient something will be for someone else. Whether saying what I actually think is going to create a problem. Whether whatever I want is worth somebody being disappointed.”

“How often did you change what you wanted after noticing it?”

“Less than I thought I would.” A small crease forms between her brows. “Which was weird. Apparently just realizing I was doing it made some things easier to separate.”

I nod. “That was the point of the assignment.”

“I hate when you sound pleased with yourself.”

“I’m trying to contain it.” My tone comes out flat as always when I try to disguise the fact that I fucking love when she sounds bratty.

She looks at me for a second, and the humor fades naturally as her attention returns to whatever she has been thinking about.

“It made me think about boundaries differently too.”

I shift slightly in the chair. “How?”

Julia rubs her palms once over the denim covering her thighs before folding her hands together again.

“I always thought boundaries were mostly about saying no. You don’t want to do something, so you say no, and theoretically that should be the end of it.”

“Theoretically?” I invite the explanation.

Her gaze lowers. “Yes.”

There is something in the word that changes the room. Not dramatically. Julia doesn’t retreat, and there is no visible panic, but the ease she carried a few moments ago disappears around the edges.

I put the pen down because that catches my fucking attention. “What does “no” mean to you?”

She thinks about that for longer than I expect.

“Something very important,” she says quietly. “And something that doesn’t always mean very much.”