the doorway. Now his serious mouth tilted a little at the corner. It didn’t make him look less tired, but it gave his expression a wryness that eased Rory’s concerns. “Thomas.”
“Can’t blame him. You look a little rough.”
Marcus sat down on the sofa, stretching his arm out along the back. “I’m all right.”
Rory made a noncommittal noise. “Don’t know if Thomas told you, but she’s going with me to Florida.”
“He did.” Marcus tapped out a cigarette and lit it. It was a good thing most people didn’t look like a black and white film star when they smoked, or everyone would be lining up to get lung cancer.
Marcus considered Rory a long moment. “The way you handled things by the barn last night. You were as calm as any Dom I’ve ever seen during a crisis with their sub. How did you know what to do? If I can ask without invading your privacy, or Daralyn’s.”
The compliment took him off guard, but it also reassured him. “Some of it…I just knew. Felt it. Does that sound crazy?”
Marcus shook his head. “Not for a natural Dom, one that has all the raw material and drive already in him. But you said that was only some of it. What’s the other part?”
He weighed his answer, decided it was okay to discuss, since it was a memory Thomas knew, and Thomas said he didn’t hide things from Marcus.
“When Daralyn first came to live with us, we all had some sit downs with the court-appointed shrink. The one before Dr. Taylor. And with Mom and Dad. It helped us get on the same page about how to deal with certain things. Particularly her panic attacks.”
She’d had them almost daily when she first came to live with them. After a couple particularly bad ones, the psychiatrist had suggested meds as one of the alternatives.
“Mom and Dad decided against it.” Rory recalled his mother’s explanation.
“That girl has had to suppress so much of herself for so long. If she needs to yell and scream, cry and act out…well, she's overdue for it, isn't she? We help her, be there for her and protect her, and give her the space to work it out.”
His mother and Daralyn had struck another deal. If things happened with Daralyn that worried Mom, Mom would talk to the shrink about them. Not tattling. Not that way. Mom had figured out early that Daralyn had a hard time telling the psychiatrist anything, but if the doctor already knew enough to ask Daralyn more targeted questions, she made better progress with her. A win-win, and a good safety net to head off more serious missteps.
“You'll have to trust me, honey. When I talk to Dr. Katz, it’s not because you've done something wrong. Not ever.”
Elaine had had that discussion with Daralyn at their kitchen table, while Rory had been in the living room, doing his homework. He’d heard Daralyn say “Yes, ma’am,” in her quiet way, and Elaine’s even quieter sigh after the girl asked to be excused to go to her room. There was no way to tell how Daralyn felt about any of it. Not in those first days, when she accepted everything with the same eerily blank face.
But no matter her personal doubts, Elaine had been firm on one point. “If we get bogged down in second guessing ourselves or overreacting when she has a bad day, we'll never help her look forward. And whatever small steps she makes forward, we celebrate those moments with her, rather than dwelling on the darkness she's endured.”
He paraphrased that for Marcus. Marcus drew on the cigarette, tapping the ashes into an open paper cup. No ash tray, but Thomas didn’t like him to smoke. Marcus was the unquestionable Dominant in their relationship, but there were other gives and takes between two people who loved each other.
“How do you think Elaine figured that out?” he asked.
That was easy to recall. Especially since every memory he had that involved Daralyn recently seemed to be tagged and transported to his frontal lobe, which made it easier to sift through the information, figure out how it fit with where he wanted to go with her.
“During that first summer Daralyn stayed with us, when the courts were trying to decide where to put her, she was helping Mom with a project in the attic, helping her clear out some things. She got sick. A bad flu bug. She hid it.”
“How do you hide a bad flu bug?”
“Through a