Page 28 of A Taste like Sin

“Hello?” Diane picks up on the first ring. “Juliana?”

“What’s going on?”

“Oh, thank God! I told him to tell you sooner, but he didn’t want to worry you. And now I don’t know

what we’re going to do. The doctors don’t—”

“Slow down,” I urge. “I don’t understand. What’s wrong?”

“Your father is in the hospital,” she says. “He had a stroke. Juliana… It’s not good. Please come…”

The phone falls from my grasp, sliding across the floor as the world dips in and out of focus. One

minute, I’m standing; the next, I’m on my knees, supported only by a strong hand on my shoulder. Like

an anchor, a gruff voice sinks through the chaos of my thoughts, tethering me to reality.

“I’ll take you there,” Damien says, though I don’t even remember asking him to out loud, let alone

saying anything. “I’ve got you.”

Even now, whenever I picture Heyworth Thorne, it’s always as he was the day we met: a knight

in shining armor, rescuing me from a nightmare. I’d been sedated that morning, three days after

Simon’s attack. Lying tucked beneath the stale, stiff blankets of a hospital bed, draped in tubes and

wires meant to monitor my vital signs, I never felt more alone. My mother and father hadn’t been to

see me. Besides the police, doctors, and the average nurse, no one had.

I think my case manager back then explained the fact away with some spiel about reducing stimulus to

help me adjust.

But I knew the truth they had been too polite to say: Leslie was dead. I wasn’t. And while the

townspeople may have crowed their relief to the local papers, few of them could look me in the eye.

Until he came, Heyworth Thorne. A pudgy, stout man with thinning brown hair, wearing a green suit

that stretched at the middle. He stood tall despite the diminutive size, carrying himself like someone

who mattered. Someone important.

Asked to consult on my case by the local police chief himself, he entered my hospital room with little

more than a teddy bear and a strained smile. There was something rare tucked into the corners of his

mouth though: genuine concern.

“Hello, Juliana,” he said, dropping the crisp, polite tone everyone else used around me. His was

blunter. Honest. “I know that nothing I could say would ever be good enough, or empathetic

enough…” He cleared his throat and nodded to my empty bedside table. “So would you prefer we

skip the introductions and I smuggle you some ice cream from the parlor down the street?”