“I’ve never been pampered,” she whispers.
“Not ever? Not even by your father?”
“I never had one,” she tells me, and oh, the sadness in her words strikes me right in the heart.
“Come here.”
She moves quickly to where I’m sitting, and I pull her into my lap and wrap my arms around her.
“I’m afraid I may have to take away your choice tonight, then,” I murmur. “Because something tells me you could use a little pampering in your life.”
She murmurs something I can’t quite hear, but then she pulls me tightly to herself and for a little while, we just hold each other.
And it’s nice.
It’s so, so nice.
Being able to hold her, touch her, feel her.
It’s nice.
“Tell me more,” I find myself saying. Suddenly, I do want to know more. So much more. There’s a lot to Heather that I don’t know: that I don’t understand. She’s quite the mystery to me, but that’s okay. I’d like to know why she is how she is.
“What do you want to know?”
“Why don’t we start with your parents?”
“I already told you,” she says. “No dad. Remember?”
“What about your mom?”
“She did her best.”
“Did she?”
“Not really.”
“Did she date a lot?”
“More than I would have liked.”
“Were her boyfriends nice to you?”
“She only dated girls. They were fine.”
“No one really sticks out, though?”
“Not really.” Heather pulls back and looks at me. Then she cups my face and brings her lips to my forehead. “No one special. No one really made an impact on my life. Honestly, Peter…Daddy…most of my childhood, I just felt like I was in the way.”
“What do you mean?”
“People were always sending me away. They were always making me go somewhere else. I never really spent time with my mother. When I got home from school, she’d send me into the bedroom. When she had guests over, she’d send me outside or into my room. Again.”
“So you felt unwanted.”
It’s not a question.
She did.