Broken Wings 2 - Midnight Flight, Andrews, C. [classic books for 10 year olds .TXT] 📗

arrogant and smug. You're lucky you're going in there to therapy or I'd have you digging in the cesspool for that remark.”

“Is that what you had to do?”

I thought she would get angrier, maybe even come at me, but instead, she smiled. “Worse. Which is what you can look forward to, Phoebe bird. Now get in there, and if you're smart, which you're probably not, you'll keep your wisecracks to yourself and be very, very cooperative.”

Holding that cold smile on her lips, she watched me go into the house.

“Go into the office, Phoebe,” Dr. Foreman called from the dining room. She was speaking with the cook.

I entered the office, but I didn't sit. Curious about what Gia had told us Dr. Foreman was doing with our case studies, I looked at some of the papers on her desk. That was a mistake, but not because she came in behindme and caught me doing it. It was a mistake because of what I saw.

It was a letter faxed to my uncle Buster and aunt Mae Louise. The letter was from the doctor at the clinic where Mama was being treated.

It began with the words, I'm sorry to inform you . . .

I should have stopped reading. I should have backed away from the desk and pretended I had not seen the fax, but I didn't. I drew closer and picked it up and read... that Mrs. Elder passed away last night. We believe her last visitor brought her some bad crack cocaine, not that there is any good crack cocaine, and it had a dramatic and fatal effect on her heart. We have turned the information over to the police. Please accept our condolences and contact us concerning Mrs. Elder's remains as soon as possible.

The letter seemed to float out of my fingers. It struck the edge of the desk and fell to the floor.

“Pick that up immediately,” I heard Dr. Foreman say. She was standing behind me in the doorway.

I looked at her, then did what she said.

“Who do you think you are searching through papers on my desk?” she asked as she entered.

“I didn't search through papers. I just saw ...” I glanced at the paper again. I had a right to look at this anyway, I thought. This is about my mother, I told myself, and then it hit me harder, sharper, like a slap across my face. My father is gone and my mother is dead now, too. Even though Dr. Foreman hovered just behind me, I had to read it again to be sure I hadn't imagined it. Remains? It made it sound like leftovers. Send a doggie bag for what was left of Mrs. Elder.

“Put that down and sit,” she commanded. I didn't move. “Sit!” she shouted, pointing at the chair. “Right now.”

I put the letter on the desk, went to the hardwood chair she had facing her desk, and sat. She sat behind her desk and looked down at the letter from the clinic. She seemed to be reading it for the first time.

“I was going to tell you about this myself, break it to you in a far more charitable and considerate fashion when I thought you were ready,” she said, her voice a little softer.

I wondered if she was telling the truth. The paper had been at the center of her desk and turned so that anyone approaching from the doorway would see it immediately. According to the date on the letter, it had been sent out almost a week ago. How long had she had it? Did she get it the same day my aunt and uncle had? Why hadn't she told me immediately? Was she worried about what the news would do to me? Was she worried it would interfere with her efforts to change me? At the moment I was more curious about that than I was angry.

“How does this information make you feel?” she asked, and sat forward as if any syllable I uttered would be earth-​shattering in importance.

I shrugged and looked away. Why did she always keep the window curtains closed in this office? Was she afraid we would find something far more interesting to look at out there? My eyes drifted to the floor. Where was that grate Gia had described? Was anyone listening in on this conversation? Was Posy down there? I heard nothing, not a peep.

“When you've been apart from someone like you have been apart from your mother, news like this”—she held the paper up—"doesn't seem real. Long-​distance death loses its impact. You have to be close up, right there sometimes, to believe it at all.

“But despite the face you're trying to put on, I cansee you believe it, Phoebe. Holding it all bottled up inside you won't help and it doesn't make you stronger. It eats at you from within. If anything, it makes you weaker. I'm always telling my clients that, because it's one of the truest things about human nature, you know. Shutting your emotions up, never expressing your feelings, just causes it all to fester and sour, and that ugly degeneration comes out in how they look, how they think, and what they do. It's poison. It's truly as if you were poisoning your own blood.”

She sat back, relaxed. “What was the nicest thing, the happiest thing, you remember about your mother?”

“I don't remember anything nice or happy.”

“Sure you do. You're just afraid to recall it now, afraid to mention it because that will make you feel sad, and believe me, Phoebe, you're afraid of being sad, afraid of it more than any of the other girls here,” she assured me with a wave of her hand toward the door. I said nothing, just stared at the floor. My head felt as if it were full of angry bees.

She rose and walked slowly to the front of her desk, then leaned back against it.

“Think back,” she coaxed. “Surely you have good memories of when you were just a little