Thomas's Doubt
Chapter 10 - Thomas's Doubt
The following weeks moved with a specific, exhausting weight, Thomas navigating divorce proceedings alongside an active criminal investigation, Lily settled at Ruth's house under careful, deliberate supervision, her anxiety around mealtimes, according to Ruth's careful reports, gradually softening as trust, patient and carefully rebuilt, slowly returned to her daily routines.
Thomas found himself, during this period, leaning increasingly on Casey, their conversations extending beyond the investigation itself into something considerably more personal, the specific comfort of talking with someone who understood, professionally and personally, exactly what kind of danger his family had survived.
"I keep replaying every moment of this past year," he told her, during one such conversation at the diner after her shift had ended. "Every time I praised Renata for being such a devoted mother, not knowing I was praising her for exactly the harm she was quietly causing."
"You praised her," Casey said gently, "because she constructed a very convincing performance of devotion specifically designed to earn that praise. That's not a failure of attention on your part. That's the specific, calculated skill of someone who's done this before and learned exactly how to make it look like love."
"You keep saying that," Thomas said, "and I believe you intellectually. I still can't fully forgive myself for not seeing it sooner."
Casey considered him carefully, her own history of hypervigilance and its costs informing her response in ways Thomas had come to appreciate deeply over the preceding weeks.
"I spent years after I got out unable to trust my own read on ordinary, safe situations," she said, "because my body had learned, overseas, to treat everything as a potential threat. I understand, considerably more than most people could, exactly how disorienting it is when your instincts and the actual truth of a situation don't match up the way you expect them to."
"Do you ever fully trust your instincts again," Thomas asked, "after something like that."
"Slowly," Casey said. "In pieces. I think that's probably what's ahead for you too, relearning which instincts to trust, after discovering the person you trusted most turned out to be causing exactly the harm you never suspected."
Thomas looked at her, something shifting in his understanding of the past several weeks, the specific comfort he'd found in her presence extending beyond simple gratitude for her intervention at the diner.
"I care about you," he said, the admission arriving with a directness that surprised even him, "considerably more than I probably should, given everything still actively unresolved in my life right now."
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"I feel something similar," Casey admitted. "I also think we're both smart enough to let this develop slowly, alongside everything else we're working through, rather than rushing toward something before either of us is actually ready."
"That sounds right," Thomas said. "I'm still glad you said it plainly, rather than both of us dancing around it indefinitely."
