Read Online Send by Patty Blount - Free Book Online Page A

said and ignored my wince. “I won’t argue that. However, I think your sentence was overly harsh. But your judge wanted to send a message.”
    Irony , Kenny sang.
    Pop always said the same thing. There were no laws against posting pictures of kids wearing Scooby-Doo underwear online, so I was charged with the next best thing—distributing kiddie porn. And then I thought of the scars on my chest.
    Message delivered.
    â€œBut you have to remember Liam committed suicide. He was twelve years old. All you did was post a picture of him. I’d say his response was excessive, which makes me believe he had a lot of other problems.”
    Thinking about that made me frown. “So, you’re saying I shouldn’t feel guilty for what I did.”
    Dr. Philips rocked her head from side to side. “No. What you did was just one more problem for Liam in a life of so many. He reached his limit. You do feel guilty, and I think that’s a very good thing, but you must put it into the proper perspective. You shouldn’t feel so guilty that you believe you don’t deserve happiness in your life or, indeed, that you don’t deserve a life at all.”
    I laughed, a short, humorless sound. “Pretty sure Liam’s family would say I don’t.”
    She didn’t bother replying.
    Great. Did that mean I was right?
    â€œOkay. Our hour is almost up. I’d like to suggest something. Think of it as homework, give it some active thought.” She grinned and winked. “There are big differences between men and women, and I’m not talking about the physical ones.”
    I ignored Kenny’s evil little snicker.
    â€œI’m talking about the emotional ones. Women like to talk about problems, analyze their feelings, but men find little value in it.”
    I grinned at the irony. “True.”
    â€œYou’re a man, Dan, with a problem you need to fix because it’s the way you were designed. Changing your name gave you a way to do that. And it worked for a while at least. Now you have a new problem, specifically finding ways to permit some happiness in your life. Think of the ways you can fix this problem, and we’ll pick up with that next week, okay?”
    Dr. Philips stood, and I shook her hand. As I left her office, my brow creased in thought.
    You have to tell Julie the truth. Kenny started in as soon as I started the car.
    No. No way in hell was I about to put Mom and Dad through all that again. I thought of the mums my mother planted. Planting flowers meant she wanted to stay. She liked it here.
    I would not ruin that.

Sweeter Than You Look
    Dr. Philips’s homework assignment was all I thought about on my way home. Crap. It made sense in a warped sort of way. I was a fixer. A repair man. The image of me in a tool belt made me roll my eyes. I hid a smile at the bottom of the Italian ice I’d just bought. Cake batter. Yum.
    Since we’d moved to Holtsville, I’d driven past Ralph’s Italian Ices every day. I’d never stopped at the always-crowded store, but I did today because an enormous sign said it was the last day of the season and I didn’t want to miss out. So I sat at a rickety picnic table while summer hung on by its thumbs, slurping my cake-flavored ice, imagining how I could fix all the crap in my life.
    Pop. He was a tough one. He didn’t talk to me. I didn’t know why. He’d talked to me in juvie, so it had nothing to do with my crime. It wasn’t until later, after I was released and we’d had to move a bunch of times—
    Yahtzee.
    I couldn’t believe I hadn’t put this together before. He must be tired of all the moving. He’d been living with us since I was about nine, after Gram died. They’d lived apart for a long time before that. I don’t know if they were divorced or not. Every time I’d ask, my mother would whisk me out of the room. I knew Pop wasn’t an easy man to get