Page 39 of The Birthday Girl
T ahlia tore through her penthouse like fire racing through dry brush, devouring everything in its path. She yanked her necklace from her neck, and her pearls skittered across the marble like hailstones, the broken strand leaving white trails wherever the beads rolled.
“I hate them! I hate them all!” Tahlia screamed as she ripped the frame holding her parents’ anniversary photo off the wall, their faces frozen mid-laugh at a charity gala she’d paid for.
The glass splintered as it hit the floor, her mother’s smile now bisected by an uneven crack.
Chest heaving, she stepped barefoot over the wreckage, the shards biting deep into her instep, but she didn’t mind.
The pain lit up her nerves, but she welcomed it because it erased the duller ache of humiliation.
Leaving a bloody trail of footsteps behind, Tahlia made her way to the bar. Her hands shook violently, so much so that she knocked over a crystal decanter trying to pour herself a drink. Whiskey bled across the counter, and she smeared her palms through it, leaving smudged fingerprints behind.
Tahlia’s eyes flicked to the television she’d left running hours ago. Now it was replaying the clip of her hands locked around Danielle’s throat, frozen mid-frame while anchors dissected her rage. The chyron at the bottom read, The Devil Wears Pearls, followed by hashtags mocking her grief.
A scream ripped from her chest, and she hurled the remote across the room. The image stuttered, broke, then came back again. Danielle’s face, blotched and bruised, stared back at her as her words replayed, “You killed our parents! Just like you killed Tyriq and my friends!”
Tahlia clutched her temples, pacing, pacing, pacing. She hadn’t slept since the memorial. Coffee and champagne buzzed through her veins, keeping her on the knife’s edge between brilliance and collapse. Every shadow looked like Danielle, and in the silence, she heard her laughing at her expense.
Finally, with her mascara running down her cheeks and her curls knotted from restless hands, she snatched her coat from the back of a chair.
She slid her bloody feet into a pair of slippers and headed into the garage to get in one of her many cars.
No driver was needed today. Tahlia wanted to be alone.
The garage lights buzzed overhead, sterile against the gleam of her fleet.
She bypassed the Range Rover, the Rolls, and the Maybach and pressed the fob for the black Genesis G80 coupe tucked in the corner with the illegal tint.
The vehicle was subtle, almost discreet, but she liked that about it.
Tonight, she needed something that didn’t announce her presence.
The engine roared to life, swallowing the echo of her ragged breaths. Tahlia gripped the wheel tight enough that her nails dug crescents into her palms. Tires screeched as she shot down the ramp, blood seeping from the cuts in her feet.
Tahlia blurred past stoplights, pedestrians, and horns, all of it melting into streaks of sounds and color that didn’t matter. She wasn’t driving. She was fleeing. She didn’t remember the turns, didn’t register the streets, only the endless forward motion.
When the car finally slowed, her body sagged against the seat. She blinked at the lot surrounding her, headlights catching the muted gold letters etched above the building’s glass doors that read: HALbrOOK the lamp threw a gentle glow that made her want to claw at something.
“I don’t even know why I came,” Tahlia said as she sank into the leather chair, her voice restless. “I was driving, and then I was here.”
Dr. Farrell tilted his head, studying her without judgment. “Sometimes our subconscious brings us where we need to be.”
She let out a brittle laugh. “This isn’t what I need. What I need is for the world to shut up. They’re replaying the clip of my hands on her throat over and over. The names they’re calling me—the headlines. I can’t even close my eyes without seeing them, and her. Always her.”
Dr. Farrell sat across from Tahlia, placing his elbows on his knees and leaning forward slightly. “Her?”
“My sister,” she snapped. “Danielle. Who else would I be talking about?” She twisted her fingers in the strap of her handbag until the leather squeaked.
“Everything I love, everything I’ve built, and everything I’ve worked for, she poisons it.
She’s loud, unruly, and knows exactly what buttons to press to make me snap. ”
“Those are powerful emotions toward your sister,” he said, his gaze lingering on the mascara tracks down Tahlia’s cheeks, the blood-crusted slippers, and the tremor in her right hand. “How does that make you feel?”
Tahlia exhaled sharply, her chest rising and falling rapidly. “Like if I could just…remove the problem, I could finally breathe again.”
Dr. Farrell reached for his notepad, and his fountain pen skated across the page in tight, controlled loops. “Remove how?”
The question lingered in the air like smoke. Tahlia’s lips parted, then closed again. Her gaze drifted to the window, the city lights blinking beyond. Only after a long pause did she speak, her voice quieter now. “By cutting the string.”
Her words startled her, as though they had come from somewhere deeper than her conscious mind. She blinked, then looked at Farrell, searching his expression. He only nodded, jotting another note.
And in that silence, it hit her: this was why she had come. Not for comfort. Not for absolution. But because she wanted to confess that Danielle was the loose thread, and she wanted it cut.
Dr. Farrell set his pen down and laced his fingers together, his expression calm but his eyes intense. “You speak of Danielle as if she isn’t just a sister, but an obstruction standing between you and the life you want.”
Tahlia’s nails drummed the armrest of the chair.
“She is. She always has been. Every time I’m at my best, she manages to drag me down.
She doesn’t even try, and yet the world bends for her.
She gets sympathy, pity, and attention she doesn’t deserve.
Now she’s made me the villain as if she and everyone else who’s had to pay hadn’t done me wrong. ”
“Do you feel she is defining your identity?” Dr. Farrell asked smoothly.
“She does not define anything that has to do with me,” Tahlia snapped, then faltered, her lips trembling into a bitter smile. “But she could destroy it. She already has.”
Farrell nodded, letting the silence fill the space for a moment before speaking again. “You’ve described Danielle as poisonous, loud, and unruly, and now destructive. Do you believe that as long as she’s in your life, peace is impossible?”
Tahlia froze, her breath catching in her throat.
She hadn’t strung the words together like that, hadn’t dared to, but hearing them out loud made something click.
Her chest rose and fell with shallow, frantic breaths, and then she whispered, “Yes. She’s the only loose thread.
Everything else could be repaired, but not with her interference. ”
“So the question becomes, what do you do with a thread that refuses to stop unraveling the fabric?”
Tahlia stared at him, her pulse thrumming in her ears. For a moment, she felt suspended between sanity and confession.
“You cut it,” she finally answered.
Dr. Farrell jotted one last note, his pen scratching the page. When he looked up, his expression was unreadable. “You’ve found your answer, then.”
Tahlia sat very still, her words echoing back at her, and realized she had.
Dr. Farrell folded his hands atop the notepad, his gaze steady, almost unnervingly so. “Clarity can be frightening,” he said, his tone smooth as polished wood. “But it can also be liberating. Sometimes the truth is less about what we admit to others and more about what we admit to ourselves.”
Tahlia tilted her head, narrowing her eyes. “You make it sound like you want me to handle her.”
Dr. Farrell shook his head once. “Not at all, but you came here tonight because you were searching for the reason you feel trapped. You’ve given it a name. Now the decision lies in what you do with that understanding.”
She laughed, loud and humorless, twisting in her chair. “There’s only one decision. My life can’t move forward until she’s gone. Danielle has always been the parasite, draining everything I touch. If I want peace, if I want control, she has to be—”
She stopped herself, catching the slip. Her throat bobbed as she swallowed, and her lips pressed tight.
Dr. Farrell tapped his pen against the edge of his notepad, as though marking the space where her silence was louder than words.
The stillness unnerved her. Most people would recoil, try to scold her, tell her she was wrong.
However, Dr. Farrell just sat there, calm, watching. It made her skin prickle.
“You’re not going to tell me I’ve lost my mind?” she questioned suspiciously.
“No, but I’m going to tell you that you’ve reached a crossroads, and when a person stands in that void, the choice they make defines not only their path but who they become.”
Tahlia nodded as she rose from the chair, her hands smoothing the wrinkles from her coat. “Then I suppose I’ve made my choice.”
She didn’t wait for dismissal. Instead, she stalked toward the door, her bloody slippers leaving stains on the carpet.
At the threshold, she paused, her hand on the frame, and without looking back, “Thank you, Doctor. You’ve helped more than you know.”
The door softly clicked shut behind her, leaving Dr. Farrell alone with his notepad and her words still vibrating in the air. He sat motionless for several seconds, listening to the echo of her footsteps fade down the hall.
His gaze shifted to the notepad, where he carefully transcribed every word of her confession. Once finished, he dated and initialed each page, then tucked them into a thin manila folder and secured it in the locked desk drawer.
Only then did he reach for the phone. His fingers hovered over the keypad, tapping out one number, erasing it, then dialing another. Finally, he pressed a contact he hadn’t called in months.
“Detective Morales.”
“Andrew, it’s Farrell. I need to make a report. One of my patients expressed homicidal intent toward her sister, Danielle Banks. Given her current mental instability and impaired judgment, action needs to be taken immediately.”
“Did she name the sister outright?”
“Yes. Her name is Danielle. I documented the session word-for-word. This isn’t paranoia or vague hostility. She articulated intent. I don’t say this lightly, but she’s dangerous.”
“You’re telling me she’s going to kill her?”
“She believes her life won’t move forward until Danielle is ‘cut off.’ Those were her words. She left here with her feet bleeding, agitated, and with a fixation that reads as an imminent risk.”
The detective exhaled hard through the line. “I’ll get this information into the right hands and put someone on the sister right away.”
Farrell pressed the bridge of his nose, relief only half-forming. “Good. Just don’t take too long. If you don’t move quickly, Danielle’s life could be in danger tonight.”