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I didn’t understand it, and I probably never would. Money had never been an issue for me. I had it in abundance.
I cleared my throat. “I found Theo at your place in the city a few days ago.”
Larry lifted his brow.
“He said he was looking for you. Does he have a key to your place?”
“Yeah. We all have keys to each other’s places, you know, if we need to crash.”
I nodded. “Did you know he visits Wendy at Piney Oaks?”
“Yeah.”
“And that he’s using my name?”
“Why would he do that?”
“I have no idea. I thought you might.”
“Dude, I’m clueless.”
Yeah, he was. In more ways than one.
“Have you been to see Wendy?”
Larry shook his head. “We were never that close. She’s more in tune with Theo and Tom. And, of course, you.”
“She and I were over a long time ago.”
“I get it, man. I do. I’m just not sure she does.”
“True enough.”
“You two sure were hot and heavy back in high school, though. Or have you forgotten about how you were joined at the hip and made out during passing period every damned day? Like you couldn’t wait until school was over.”
“We were kids.”
“It wasn’t that long ago, man.”
“Larry, trust me. It was a lifetime ago.”
He didn’t have any more information for me. I’d found out what I’d come for. He hadn’t paid for Daphne’s hospitalization, and he didn’t know who had.
None of this had anything to do with finding Patty or solving Murph’s case.
I’d come down here because of my own curiosity about Daphne’s father. Did it really matter who had paid for Daphne’s treatment? What mattered was that she’d gotten the treatment.
I was going home, where I’d solve the mystery of Murph and Patty for good.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Daphne
“I love Patty,” I said, “but I feel like I should be feeling worse than I do.”
“How so?” Dr. Pelletier asked.
“I have so much else going on. I have a baby who needs me, whose life has been threatened, and my husband is always working. When I’m not taking care of baby Joe, I’m napping. I had a really tough pregnancy.”
“Are you and Patty close?”
“As close as we could be, I guess, after really only knowing each other for a couple of months before I left school to get married.”
“Tell me, Mrs. Steel, have you ever had a close friendship other than with Patty?”
“There’s Patty’s boyfriend, Ennis, but I only knew him for the same time I knew Patty.”
“Anyone else?”
“Only once. Her name was Sage. She moved away during the summer between our sophomore and junior years of high school.”
“The summer before you were hospitalized.”
“Yeah.”
“Did losing her have anything to do with your depression?”
“I don’t know. I’m sure it didn’t help. I wrote to her. Five letters, and she didn’t answer any of them.”
“She was young.”
“So was I. We were the same age. If I could write, why couldn’t she?”
“I can’t answer that, Mrs. Steel.”
“Could you call me Daphne, please? I’m nineteen. I don’t feel old enough to be Mrs. Steel.”
“But you are Mrs. Steel. I find it best to keep a professional distance with my patients.”
“Okay.” I twisted my lips. “Maybe I never got over losing Sage, but that’s not enough to send someone into a tailspin.”
“Maybe it was, combined with the bullying.”
“But I don’t even remember the bullying. How can something I don’t remember send me reeling?”
“I’ve said it before. The human mind is a delicate thing. It may not recall actual events, but somewhere, deep in its recesses, it recalls the feelings.”
I lifted my eyebrows. “I don’t understand.”
“No one truly understands the human mind, Mrs. Steel. Not even professionals like me. Especially professionals, to be honest. We study and study and study, read theory after theory, only to be more confused. I can tell you this, though, with regard to your friend Patty. You feel like you should be feeling worse than you are. I think your mind may have trained you not to get too close to a friend again because of the heartbreak you felt when Sage didn’t write you back.”
I lifted my eyebrows again. “Hmm.”
“You were hospitalized for most of your junior year. What happened your senior year?”
“I went back to my high school.”
“And…?”
“I didn’t have any friends. People seemed afraid to approach me, and I heard a lot of whispering.”
“Did they know you’d been hospitalized?”
“No. The story was that I’d been in London studying abroad with a relative.”
“Do you think you imagined the whispering?”
I shook my head. “Absolutely not. I heard more than once that I was a ‘little off.’”
“I see. How did you handle all of that?”
“I threw myself into my studies. I’d always been an excellent student, and this time I truly worked hard. I studied for my college prep tests too, and I became a national merit scholar. I got a full ride to a very competitive college.”
