Rory stared into space while she sipped her tea. He expected Dr. Taylor was giving him time to figure out what he wanted to say or ask next.

  “I don’t envy you your job, Doc. I have a punching bag that could file a domestic violence complaint against me. The more I learn about what they did to her, the more I have to beat the crap out of it.”

  “I’m glad you have that outlet. I expect you’re smart enough to have realized your justified anger at them isn’t something she can handle well.”

  “Yeah. Is she angry at them?”

  Dr. Taylor’s eyes filled with sadness. “I think she views them as a caged and abused animal does. Just glad to be free, even while always fearing she’ll wake up and find herself in that cage again. Only this time, having found a life that is so much more than that, she’ll have lost the coping skills to survive it.”

  “So the key is helping prove to her she’ll never be in that cage again.”

  “Helping her prove it to herself,” Dr. Taylor corrected. “Every positive change for Daralyn will come from inside her. That’s what we focus upon, because it teaches her she has personal power. Your behavior and feelings toward her are very important, Rory, but it’s vital for me to emphasize that. The only thing we can give her are tools. Not a solution. That has to come from her for it to be real.”

  “That makes sense.” He went with a different question, honestly needing to back away from the other. “Food. Has she explained why she won’t eat much? She said they were always on her about wasting food, but I think it’s more than that.”

  “You’re perceptive. Daralyn wasn't allowed to want things. If it looked like she had a desire for anything, and I do mean anything, she didn’t get it. Which meant if she acted too hungry, they took the food away. To survive, she learned to eat indifferently, even as her body was starving. It’s remarkable that she learned a complex adaptation like that at such a young age. After enough years of shutting it down in her head, it became a permanent thing, like it does for a severe anorexic. I’m not sure she even knows what genuine hunger is anymore.”

  Rory thought about Daralyn’s cooking skills. What had it been like, cooking food for those two assholes to enjoy, while they denied her all but stingy bits of it?

  But Dr. Taylor was wrong about one thing. Daralyn did know what genuine hunger was. He’d seen it, in her expression, in her body language, when he was touching her. Feeding that hunger, satisfying it, letting it open up until she felt free to consume everything in the world she wanted to taste, know, feel, learn, was something he welcomed, encouraged. Cherished.

  He was tapping his push rim hard, alternating thumb and forefinger, a sign of agitation. He stopped when he saw the psychiatrist note the tell, but he met her gaze squarely, let her see his feelings. “When my punching bag is done for, do you have any good anger management techniques that will keep me from murdering her uncle?”

  Dr. Taylor chuckled grimly. He appreciated the commiseration in her expression. “When Daralyn finally started to share more details on her family history, I kept a fifteen-minute block open after our sessions. I’d call my children, my husband, watch something on my computer that restored my faith in humanity. Because what can happen to the defenseless in this world is unimaginably horrific.”

  She paused. “The problem seems so simple. She’s no longer under their control. She can simply say what she wants, do what she wants, and see there are no negative consequences. Over time, with repetition, she’ll become more comfortable with it, right? But it doesn’t work like that. It’s more like being trapped in a cave, with multiple exits, all of them sealed by cave-ins, and having only what’s in that cave with you to try and dig yourself out. Some things are going to work. Some aren’t. Some will work for a while, then break. And just as you’ve chipped out a good section, it undermines another part of the cave so it collapses again, this time leaving you even less space, less hope for freeing yourself.”

  Christ. As a person watching Daralyn trying to claim happiness day by day, attempting to stretch her wings, the analogy was pretty much dead-on accurate. “Do you think she’ll ever get there?”

  “I believe in her. I believe she’ll never stop trying.”

  The simple answer wrenched his heart, because it matched his own. He met Dr. Taylor’s eyes. “Doc, tell me what I can do.”

  “Keep doing what you’re doing. While Daralyn, your family, and I continue to do what we’re doing. Do you have any phobias, Mr. Wilder?”

  “Rory,” he said.

  She inclined her head. “Rory, then. While everyone else is armed with a million logical, verifiable reasons why the phobia is unfounded, it means nothing to the person with the fear. It is ingrained, a deep part of their makeup, usually tangled with many other issues. This is like that. It will take a lot of time, therapy and a mix of experiences to get her to the point she can express her own wants and needs. We won’t know exactly what combination will work…until it does.”

  Her gaze met his. “Until then, she is a person who manages best on clear expectations and structure.”

  “Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “I was thinking maybe that’s why we’re doing okay together. Not just because I know her history. I, uh…I have kind of an old school approach to our relationship. Kind of a calling the shots thing.”

  “You’re the dominant in a romantic relationship.” Her tone held no condemnation, which relieved him. A light smile played on her lips.

  “You were braced for a feminist tirade, I see. Healthy relationships can take a variety of forms, and they have to be evaluated based on the people involved, not societal parameters.”

  He expected she’d meant dominant generically, not a capital D, but he could still work with it. “Yes, ma’am. She responds to it, really strongly. I don’t know if that’s an okay thing to encourage,” he admitted. Though he wasn’t sure how he could resist opening that door if he shouldn’t, knowing Daralyn’s response to that side of him seemed as well fitted as a key to a lock.

  Dr. Taylor lifted a shoulder. “There’s this idea that if you hand a million dollars and a mansion to someone born into poverty, that it will solve all their problems. On the rare occasion, you’ll find someone who will make that work. Far more frequently, they will be unable to hold onto the money, or maintain the house, because they have no experience managing either of those things. That transition to prosperity requires time, guidance, a structure. It’s not at all unusual that in her first romantic relationship, Daralyn needs more structure.”

  An assessment he didn’t disagree with, though he didn’t particularly care for the phrasing, which made him sound like the first stop on a much longer train ride, one that could take her from him. But he’d already acknowledged that possibility, so he wouldn’t get bogged down in it.

  “For people from a toxic family dynamic like Daralyn’s,” she continued, “it takes years of therapy for them to learn to assert themselves in a positive, healthy way. As we’ve discussed.”

  Her gaze met his. “Then there are people who are submissives from the beginning. In some ways, their road to recovery is… Easier is the wrong word, but they are the grasses that bend with the wind. They will always bend with the wind, because it’s their nature.” Her gaze sharpened. “She’s not a doormat. That’s not what I mean.”

  “She’s a natural submissive,” Rory said, relieved he’d been given the opening. “She feels better when someone else has the control. But does she understand that giving someone that control is a choice? That’s the biggest worry I have, Doc.”

  “Yes,” Dr. Taylor said, her finger stabbing her chair arm. The emphatic reaction, the strong approval in her expression, told him he’d passed an important test. “Thank you, Rory, for being the one to point it out yourself. The biggest danger a person like Daralyn will face in a relationship is having choices taken from her, purposefully or inadvertently, because she can’t make them for herself. At least not in the usual way most people recognize or adjust to accommodate.”

  The woman leaned forward again, clasping her hands together on the top knee of her crossed legs. “I suspect your question connects to a specific situation. Would you like to discuss it?”

  He hesitated. “I know she’s given permission for you to answer my questions. But I’m wondering if me telling you the things that happen between us, if that’s the same thing or something different. I don’t want to betray her trust.”

  “Completely understandable. Perhaps you can find out her thoughts on it, in much the same roundabout way I have. If you feel like she is okay with it, you could save the questions in that problematic area for a future phone call.”

  Good thought. But his gut told him not to hold off on the Joe thing. As he described how Daralyn had reacted to her professor’s attentions, with that adamant declaration to Rory about belonging to him, Dr. Taylor’s mouth got straight and firm again.

  “I want to think about that one,” she said. “It’s difficult for me to say if that’s a destructive behavior, or just more of Daralyn’s thought processes I don’t fully understand. I made a couple mistakes early on, thinking I could match up what was going on in her head with other case studies. Every session with her is a maze. Sometimes I find myself in entirely new places, or wandering in circles. Other times I hit a wall, or she puts one up when I don’t expect it.”

  Not much different from his experiences with Daralyn. In the doctor’s intelligent blue eyes, pleasant by default, Rory nevertheless saw indications of when she’d hit those walls and been frustrated, or deeply concerned. “Daralyn feels things so vividly, so strongly,” she said. “When I talk her through confusing feelings, she uses my advice as a sculpting knife, creating the path before her according to what works for her.” A quick smile. “The way all of us live our lives, really.”

  She glanced at his chair. “I expect you have your own unique perspective on overcoming challenges.”

  He guessed every shrink knew the stages of grief a person with a disability handled to get back to living life the way it was meant to be lived. Rory gave her a wry look. “Yeah, except Daralyn doesn’t seem to have the primary tool in her arsenal I had.”

  “Which was?”

  “Anger. I was really good at it. It’s a serious testament to my family’s love that they didn’t shoot me like Old Yeller and put me out of my misery. And theirs.”

  Dr. Taylor chuckled. “Everything I’ve learned about your family suggests they have an extraordinary amount of loyalty to one another. Which includes the person they took into their home. Daralyn is very lucky to have all of you.”

  “Maybe. Honestly, I feel kind of lucky that we have her.”

  Dr. Taylor’s smile lit up the room. “Good answer.”

  Chapter Eleven

  It had been a busy morning. Rory checked the hay and grain inventory and knew he’d have to place an order this week. They were low on several other popular items as well, a good sign for the month’s profits.

  He’d always liked the idea of running the family business, but finding he was good at managing it had been an additional perk. Their profit margin had grown steadily the past couple years, thanks to repackaging the store as a yesteryear “nostalgia boutique,” for God’s sake.

  It hadn’t been that way at first. They’d been giving the idea a lukewarm try when his father was alive, but they were still a basic hardware and feed operation, in danger of becoming defunct from competition by nearby box stores, and due to fewer people operating functioning farms.

  Then his Dad had passed, Rory had his accident, and Thomas came home to manage the store, as the eldest son. One day, Elaine had brought Thomas a magazine article about a store like theirs, up in Ohio. They’d revamped their look and inventory, but they hadn’t stopped at embracing the old-timey general store feel. They’d connected to other small hardware and community general stores doing the same, becoming a network that advertised itself as a road trip destination, like the big fall yard sale that spanned hundreds of miles, the locations dotted along the picturesque rural highways that the interstates had replaced as the most convenient thoroughfares.

  In the margins of the article were carefully printed handwritten ideas about joining the network. Which included stocking the store with local crafts and foods, and hosting or sponsoring holiday events. Such as hayrides in the fall, a haunted corn maze at Halloween, carriage rides at Christmas. Creating a petting zoo with farm animals. The store would be the hub of all of it, thriving on nostalgia while simultaneously continuing its functional role as supplier of local farming needs.

  “Mom, this might just work.” Thomas’s face, too creased with concerns in those days, had been briefly transformed by a spark of excitement. “We could talk to Mrs. Bluefield at that travel agency you and Dad used for your cruise. She could probably recommend how to get ourselves into some of the higher-end destination trip blogs and e-zines with these other stores. And she could spread the word to her network of travel agencies and tour companies.”

  Elaine nodded. “Daralyn brought me the article. The notes are hers.”

  Thomas’s serious smile wreathed his handsome features. “Don’t know why I’m surprised to hear that. Let’s call her into this family meeting. If she’s going to be the genius that planted the idea, she’s going to help water it and help it grow.”

  And she had, her quiet enthusiasm inspiring all of them in various ways.

  For instance, something as simple as the restroom. Rory had remodeled it last year, transforming it from an employees-only closet into a more spacious area for their tourist traffic. Daralyn had mentioned to Thomas that some kind of relevant interior design would make it an even more appealing space. Thomas soon after came up with the idea of mounting a few junk hardware pieces on the bathroom wall, with a trio of old four-inch wide paintbrushes in the center. He painted each set of bristles a different bright color, then sketched simple paintings over them. White clouds against the blue, a frog against the yellow, and a white church on the green one. He’d added dots of yellow around it, as if the church was in a field of sunflowers.

  The online reviews of their place constantly mentioned the “quaint bathroom décor.” Noticing that, Rory had local residents bring him their old paintbrushes, and he kept them in a bin, selling them for a buck apiece so the tourists could take them home and turn them into their own wall art.

  Elaine had led the charge on the consigned consumables, stocking the store with community produced homemade jams, pies and salsas, as well as quilting and other needlecraft projects. Rory pursued the metal and woodworkers. Like John Tracer, who designed his wooden birdhouses to look like famous houses or movie icons, such as Tara and Twelve Oaks from Gone With the Wind, or the Michelin man from Ghostbusters, his round mouth the perfect place for a bird to pop in and create a nest.

  After taking over management of the store, Rory had also upped their social media presence by working out a deal with Forest, a tech geek he knew in high school, who ran a marketing business in Charlotte. Daralyn had shown an interest in maintaining the platforms, handling the online communication, posting pictures, notices of sales, that kind of thing.

  His dad would have been pleased to see what they’d accomplished, even as he probably would have felt he’d lacked the current day savvy to make it happen. He was a farmer first, the store having originally been a way to supplement the flagging income from that. But that was okay. Rory was proud to have been a part of the family effort to take the idea his dad had started and make it work.

  He glanced toward the painting mounted behind the cash register, and a faint smile touched his mouth. His brother had contributed to the consignment inventory with a few pastoral scenes, totally different from the erotic pieces he did for galleries. This one was just a picture of a clapboard farmhouse, backed by a field and the sun setting behind it, but there was something about the way his brother painted that caught the eye. The heart, too, since Rory was only admitting it to himself.

  A tiny figure worked in the field, but even with that perspective, there was a sense of the farmer’s focus, his hard work, evidence of a real person. Rory suspected Thomas had been imagining their dad when he’d painted it. Just looking at it made Rory miss him, the never-in-doubt love of their gruff-spoken father, the feel of his rough hand tousling his hair, on his shoulder. The earthy smell of his skin and clothes, the lingering scent of his aftershave on Sundays.

  Dad had been a simple man, a lot like Rory. But now Rory knew even a simple man could be complicated in what he felt or desired, and how he shaped those feelings into action to reach goals, handle disappointments, or care for those people and principles that mattered most.

  A deeper grin wreathed his face as he remembered the conflicting pricing advice Thomas and Marcus had given him about Thomas’s handful of pictures for the store.

  “If it’s a neighbor, give it to them for what you think they can afford,” Thomas had said. “No more than fifty dollars. For tourists, make your best call. Whatever’s fair and will bring in good money for the store.”

  Marcus had rolled his eyes. “I’m selling your original work for four figures or more, and you want to price it like it’s yard sale junk.”

  “What I’m selling in the store are local scenes and color,” Thomas pointed out. “They’re not gallery-level stuff.”

  While Rory agreed with his brother’s logic on pricing, when he looked at that painting on the wall—hell, any of his brother’s work—he wasn’t so sure about Thomas’s downplay of its quality. But Rory liked that Thomas never let his success as an artist get away with him. And the bug up Marcus’s ass about selling it like “yard sale junk” only added to Rory’s pleasure in hinting that he might do so.

  He looked up from the computer as the screen door slammed. Johnny muscled in another couple bags of weed and feed, restocking the few they kept on the inside shelves. Rory had given him the chance to hang around and earn some extra hours as they reorganized the landscape inventory outside. They were putting the lawn ornamentation and fall foliage in a more prominent viewing display with the road. A good percentage of their October beach traffic would be empty nesters who liked to do a lot of fall decorating, inside and out.