The Search for Lily Myers ✓

12 | Moving On

"Amelia?"

Her eyes shot up from where she'd been staring at the carpet. The voice belonged to Dr. Foster, her therapist whom she hadn't seen in a few years and had hoped she'd never need to see again.

But between the bursting into tears in front of Henry on Sunday and the bizarre intrusive thoughts she'd been having this week—the idea to let her head sink below the water in the bathtub, to purposefully draw blood when she picked up her razor to shave—it was pretty obvious to her that she needed to talk to someone before this got even more out of hand. So here she was, sitting in a waiting room she hadn't sat in for ages after taking a last-minute appointment opening that Dr. Foster had.

"Hi," she said somewhat shyly as she stood up and followed Dr. Foster back to her office.

Dr. Foster was a nice woman and great at what she did, but part of what made her an effective therapist for Amelia was that she was willing to speak the truth to her not-so-gently if that's how she needed to hear it. So while she had come here specifically seeking her expertise, she was nervous, knowing that she had a painful hour ahead of her. Even if she decided to be the gentlest person on the planet today, talking about this out loud was bound to make Amelia feel like she was ripping her own heart out.

At least therapists always had tissues on hand.

She was ushered through the door of the office, a small room decorated with a slightly excessive number of salt lamps but very comfy chairs. She sat down in one of them and Dr. Foster asked her how she was doing.

Amelia knew that the clock was already ticking, so she was straightforward. "Not great. I broke up with my boyfriend on Friday."

"I'm sorry to hear that." Dr. Foster jotted something down on her notepad. "Would you be comfortable telling me a little bit about that relationship?"

She didn't want to relive any of it, of course, but Amelia had obviously known that the question was coming. Dr. Foster wasn't going to be able to help her without any context. "I, um, I met him last December..."

As she started recounting things out loud, she began to wonder if this was more so for her own benefit than her therapist's. It was bizarre to speak about her life this way, listing off what happened as if it was just a series of plot points in a book. For a second, she was almost able to forget that she'd lived and breathed all of it. But when she looked at it from this distance, the dozens of red flags she should have noticed from the get-go also seemed painfully obvious.

She got to the part where she had to admit that he'd sometimes hit her.

"Is that why you broke up with him?" Dr. Foster asked quietly. "Because he hit you?"

Amelia's shame hit her like a bout of nausea, small for a second and then overwhelming her the next.

"No," she managed to say, her lips quivering. "No. I would have kept putting up with it if it weren't for–"

She hadn't expected the conversation to reach this point this quickly. Her fingers were threaded together, gripping herself so tightly that it was starting to ache. Dr. Foster was waiting patiently.

"I left him on Friday night because he was going to–" Amelia swallowed the hot saliva in her mouth, feeling sick, unsure if she felt more so like she was going to vomit or stop breathing. She couldn't bring herself to spit the correct word out. "He was going to...assault me."

She'd been too queasy to notice the tears that had welled up in her eyes, but they washed down her cheeks in rivulets now, unceasing. She hated crying in front of other people and she really hated the thought of crying where strangers might hear her, but Amelia felt physically incapable of putting an end to it. Dr. Foster's expression had softened into one of pure and utter sympathy as she passed over the foreseen box of tissues.