It should have felt strange to tell a complete stranger something so personal instead of her brother. Then again, it was strange to have a disembodied voice permanently living inside your head. There were plenty of things going on inside her mind already that Eleanor considered too personal to unload on someone she just met, but this? Never in her wildest dreams would she have predicted this. It also didn't hurt that Spence didn't at all feel like a stranger, despite Eleanor's good sense still very much intact that was busy telling her otherwise. But he was here to help her, so comparing him to Aaron was hardly fair.
Especially when, despite the fact that Aaron used to be the one Eleanor told all her secrets to, it seemed he'd been keeping a few from her.
Under the best of circumstances, becoming a reincarnate still would have been a huge adjustment for her, and this was far from the best of circumstances. Eleanor spent a good portion of her time second guessing herself, wondering if what she was thinking or feeling was really her or manufactured by the cruel ways in which her brain chemistry sometimes worked against her. Now she had to deal with someone else's voice constantly invading her every thought without permission?
Helena wasn't so bad, once you got past her rough exterior and feral attitude. She left Eleanor alone for the most part when Eleanor was getting too overwhelmed, but it only helped so much. Sometimes she just didn't see how anyone could get used to this, and not everyone came with the hangups that she had. In so many ways, reincarnation just felt like another unwelcome invasion that she had no control over, and worse, it was permanent. Giving her two mental disorders to juggle was hardly fair.
Things were better with Helena now then they had been a few weeks ago at least, even if that was a pretty low bar to set. Eleanor had been pretty freaked out the day it happened, and if it hadn't been for a caretaker showing up when they did, things could have gotten a lot worse. Feeling overwhelmed was a pretty big understatement, but they'd told her it would eventually get easier, which at the time she could hardly see how. Funny how when coming out of Spence's mouth, Eleanor immediately believed him.
She was on the verge of letting it all spill out, but she held it back, if only because this wasn't the time or the place for it. She was hiring him to find Aaron, not to be her therapist. She already had one of those that she saw twice a week, and Spence might not be surprised to know that she'd so far neglected to tell her therapist about the much more recent situation she'd found herself in. Anyway, as kind as Spence seemed, he probably wouldn't appreciate the sudden word vomit, warm smile or not.
No one outside of Aaron ever really did.
Eleanor's eyes widened in response to his offer, hastily putting down her mug of coffee on the desk's surface so she could open the folder and inspect it for the aforementioned phone number, as if there was some chance that it wouldn't be there. It was, and Eleanor's heart skipped a beat before a fresh wave of hope swiftly followed, betraying all of the sensible caution that she was trying to maintain about her brother's case. "Wow, I-" She smiled up at him after another moment, exhaling deeply then as some of the tension started to finally leave her body. "I can't thank you enough. You're the first person I've talked to who's actually taking this seriously. Thank you."