Prince Charming Wears A Badge

Callie took her first bite and whatever spices Poppy had added to the food danced on her palate. “You were right, girls, this is delicious.”

Both girls spoke at once and kept up the conversation while Callie gulped down her dinner. She looked at the bright blue clock on the wall near the table and wiped her mouth. She had about three minutes before her therapist called. “Sorry.” She jumped up from her seat and took her plate to the sink to rinse it and put it in the dishwasher. “I need to run.”

“That’s okay,” Poppy said. “We understand. Go do what you need to.”

The last thing she wanted to do was spend an hour with her anger management therapist, but she had no choice.

Her therapist called right on the dot.

“Hello, Dr. Hammond,” she said when his face appeared on her laptop screen.

“How’s it going, Callie?”

She filled him in on what she’d done since arriving in town.

“Have you seen your family yet?”

This was where she could have told him about chickening out in front of her father’s house, but she didn’t. Instead she decided to give him a tidbit that would hopefully satisfy him. “I ran into my stepsister on Monday.”

“Your stepsister?”

He looked down and Callie heard the rustling of papers.

“You’ve never mentioned a stepsister.”

“You never asked.”

Pause. “I’m asking now.” His tone was stern and slightly irritated.

Callie swallowed. “I have a stepsister and I ran into her on Monday.”

“How old is this stepsister and what’s her name?”

“Wendy is a year younger than me, so she’s twenty-eight now.”

“And the two of you lived in the same house from the time your dad remarried?”

“Yes.”

The doctor was silent for an overly long time. “Why haven’t you mentioned her before?”

Callie shrugged. “I didn’t want to talk about her.”

“Do the two of you get along?”

“No.” Callie’s answer was immediate and came out harsher than she’d intended.

“Tell me about it.”

She didn’t want to talk about Wendy. “I don’t know what you want me to tell you.” That was a lie. She knew exactly what he wanted her to say.

“Why didn’t you two get along?”

“I don’t know. She hated me the minute she walked in the front door of my house.”

Dr. Hammond wrote something down. “Did she bully you?”

Callie hesitated. “Yes. You could call what she did bullying.” With all the cyber bullying going on these days, Callie could only imagine how much worse Wendy’s treatment of her might have been if they’d had social media growing up. Texts and emails were bad enough in those days.

“What kind of things did she do?”

“Can’t we talk about something else?” Callie really didn’t want to relive her childhood with him.

“I think we’re finally making progress,” he said. “Tell me what Wendy did to you.”

Callie inhaled slowly. Her hands were at her sides, off camera, while she sat on her bedroom love seat for their session. He couldn’t see her hands fist and relax.

“What didn’t she do? She called me names, she played mean tricks on me, she spread lies about me. She even spit on me.” She’d done even worse things, but Callie didn’t want to delve into them.

“That must have been very upsetting,” the doctor said in his calm voice.

“No kidding.” She couldn’t help her sarcastic tone.

“Did you do anything to retaliate?” he asked.

“I didn’t dare. If I’d tried, she would have worked twice as hard to hurt me back.”

“What about telling your father and stepmother? Didn’t they step in to discipline her?”

That was a joke. “No, they didn’t do anything to stop her.”

Dr. Hammond’s eyebrows shot up. “Really? You told them what was going on and they didn’t handle it?”

Callie shook her head. She swallowed the lump in her throat before speaking. “I told my stepmother about what Wendy did once and she told me to stop being a baby and if I told my father I’d be punished.” Her stepmother’s form of punishment. Something else Callie didn’t want to recall.

“So your father didn’t know about your stepsister’s treatment of you?”

“I went to him once, and he said he’d take care of it, but Wendy continued to harass me.” Her dad had talked to Wendy but she’d gone immediately to her mother, who’d then punished Callie for telling her dad. Her stomach tightened. That was the first and last time Callie had gone to her father for help.

“You didn’t go back again to tell him it hadn’t stopped?”

“Isn’t our time almost up?” she asked instead.

His gaze went to where he kept a clock across from his desk. “We have five minutes left.”

She needed to change the subject away from her family.

“You didn’t answer my question,” he persisted.