Pieces of Olivia Read Online Free PDF Page B

would find a local therapist and attend weekly visits. That was the reason why I found myself standing outside the white Victorian house with an elaborate sign reading
Dr. Rose Campbell
out front.
    I refused to see male shrinks. Actually, I refused to see male doctors in general. Not because I was an epic feminist—though maybe I was—but because eventually, something would come up that was a little less embarrassing to tell a female.
    I made the appointment at eight a.m. on the first day of classes, which may sound insane, but since my first class was at 10:10, I knew there was no way this new doctor would make me talk for more than an hour. I’d need time to get back to my dorm and then to class.
    I pulled open the glass weather door and heard the hardwood floors creaking as soon as I stepped inside. The entryway consisted of a wide hallway with an antique sofa and two wingback chairs positioned in front of one another, like a makeshift waiting room. I glanced around for a sign-in form or an admin or a freaking bell if nothing else, but came up empty. I sat down on the sofa, expecting a puff of dust to greet me, but instead the door across from me opened, like the sofa had some sort of sensor inside it.
    “You must be Olivia. I’m Rose,” the woman in the doorway said. She had short gray hair and wore a crisp white dress shirt tucked into black slacks with pleats. Shiny flats peeked out from the bottoms of her slacks instead of heels. The look was entirely masculine, like she hadn’t quite gotten the memo that she was a woman, not a man. Everything else about her, from her smooth Charleston accent to the way she smiled like we were old friends, oozed Southern breeding. But the thing that had my attention and made me think I might actually like her was the long white cigarette dangling in her right hand. Not because I was a smoker—I wasn’t—and not because I necessarily approved of smoking, but because it suggested she had a no-bullshit, her-way-or-the-highway attitude, and I could appreciate that.
    “Olive,” I said as I stood, though I didn’t know why I was giving this lady permission to use my nickname. Maybe it was because her eyes pierced through me in a way that said she knew all my secrets before I spoke them. Or maybe it was just because we would be talking a lot about the old me and apparently, I didn’t feel right doing that out of context. Either way, her grin widened a bit at the name. Something about her felt familiar, as though her voice was one I’d heard a thousand times, but I couldn’t remember ever meeting her before.
    “Well then, Olive, come on in. My office is feeling terribly unused this morning. I’d hate to think what Doris and Gertrude will think if I don’t get in there soon.”
    “Doris and Gertrude?” I asked as I slipped inside her office.
    She shut the door behind us and started for a plush leather chair beside a matching sofa. “The ghosts that haunt this home, of course.”
    Oh. Of course.
    Rose nodded for me to take a seat on the sofa. “Well, go head, sit. It is surprisingly comfortable. If I could sleep during the day, I would find it a great place to nap.” She took a seat in the chair and flicked her cigarette into an ashtray shaped like a cat. I noticed all the ashes were piled up over the cat’s head, none over the rest of its body, which was odd, and I wanted to ask her why, but I wasn’t ready to speak. Not yet. I had learned that with therapists, it was best to let them get their spiel out first.
    I allowed my gaze to roam over the rest of her office, taking it in. A grandfather clock sat against the wall beside her desk. On the other wall was a large portrait of a bird hanging upside down on a wire. Her curtains were a rose print, like something you would see in the kitchen of some old TV show, but her furniture was all modern.
    I turned back around to face her only to find her watching me, her eyes tight like a hawk’s. “What do you think?” she