Harvest Moon - By Robyn Carr Page 0,18

a whole lot of help. Then there was the counselor himself—a very, very tall, skinny…no, make that boney, scarecrow with shaggy, almost white-blond hair and large ears. And the biggest feet Lief had ever seen. He hoped to God Courtney didn’t just flat out make fun of him. Right to his face.

“Mr. Holbrook, hello,” the man said cheerily, extending a hand in greeting. “I’m Jerry Powell. How are you today?”

“Fine,” he said, shaking the hand. “I mean, not fine. I’ve never figured out what you should say to a counselor on your first visit. That you’re fine or that you need help desperately?”

Jerry laughed. “Come on into the office, Mr. Holbrook, and tell me how I can help.”

When they were seated—Jerry behind the desk and Lief facing it—Lief just launched in. “Well, my wife died a couple of years ago and my stepdaughter’s not handling it well. Her biological father and stepmother didn’t embrace her, didn’t pull her into their family, and she’s depressed and—”

Jerry held up his hand, indicating he should stop. “Okay, hold on a sec, I apologize, I should have led this discussion. I realize you’re here on behalf of your stepdaughter and that the two of you have issues. Let me just tell you a couple of things before we get deeper into the issues.

“First of all, part of my function in this county is that I’m retained by the school district for court-ordered counseling of young adults. What that means is, I usually only know what they’ve done to warrant that penalty without getting many details about their personal lives, about what might’ve motivated them acting out. Sometimes I know there’s been abuse in the family, death or divorce, that sort of thing, but there’s no one to tell me how they’re feeling but them. And I have to let the adolescent try to explain what pushed them into the behavior that caused all the trouble. It’s amazing how well it seems to be working. So—to that end—give me the basic facts, address incidents or behaviors if you think it’s pertinent. And then tell me about you. About your feelings, not hers. You and I will talk. Then Courtney will give me her feelings.”

“I bet she won’t,” he said.

“I’m relentless,” he said, and then smiled. “Besides, adolescents really can’t identify too many feelings. They’re not being stubborn. It’s an acquired skill. They’re working on growing up. It’s one of those things they have to develop.”

“Okay, then. My wife died,” he said, starting over. “A little over two years ago. At first my stepdaughter… I think of her as a daughter… Courtney seemed to grieve painfully for a while, which was quickly followed by weird, antisocial behavior. She’s kind of Goth now with the kind of friends that lie and steal and lure her out after hours. I just caught her last night with an older guy in the house stealing my DVDs while she was in the bathroom. They were drinking beer. She’s fourteen but looks nine.”

“Nine?”

“Not nine, maybe, but so small. She’s so little to act so old. One of the first things you’re going to notice about Courtney is that she’s extremely bright. High IQ. She was always in accelerated programs at school, but now she’s close to failing. She’s intellectually advanced and emotionally…” Lief lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. “Immature? I don’t know… Wounded?”

“How does this make you feel, Mr. Holbrook?”

“Call me Lief, please. It makes me feel like an idiot. A failure. Like I’m going to lose her to some disaster like drugs or grand theft auto or suicide.”

“Do you think suicide is an issue? I’ll take that information from you gladly—I should know.”

“It’s hard to say,” he answered with a shrug. “I found some websites that she’d looked at that deal with suicide and I almost lost it—I asked her if she was thinking about suicide. She said, ‘Everyone thinks about it, but I’m not going to do it.’ How do you know if something like that’s curiosity or an imminent danger?”

“We watch,” he said. “I’ll be certain to direct our dialogue to give me more information.”

“The girl barely eats. I don’t think she’s anorexic—she eats enough, I think. But she’s gotten so thin and she’s never hungry. I’m a farm boy—that bothers me more than you can imagine. Some people think I know inside stuff about her age group, about troubled teens, because I wrote a couple of screenplays about young people in crisis, but I wasn’t