I did feel myself smile as I pushed the jars onto the shelf, labels out the way she liked them. “He said it's like starting a new game.”
“Of course.”
“All the mistakes you made in the last one are wiped clean. You get to start over, fresh and clear. I can't play Rich's gameâor Christopher's âor anybody else's. I can't change them. I can only change me.”
As I reached for a bottle of organic tamari, Mickey put her hand on my arm. “What if the rest of us don't want you to change? I'm kind of liking you the way you are.”
I patted her hand. “It's the way I think about myself that needs to change. I think this is right. I don't totally get it yet, but I think I'm forgiven by Godâmy slate is cleanâand now I have to live like a person who's been given a second chance.”
“Is Dr. Barker telling you how to do this?” Mickey put up her hand. “I'm sure he knows what he's doing, but personally, I think you ought to get yourself a lawyer, drop-kick your son through a couple of goalpostsâ”
She stopped when I put my arms around her neck, tamari bottle in hand.
“You're such a trip,” I said.
“Oh, baby girl, I'm a whole journey. I'm sorry. Oscar and I, and Audrey, we want you to be happy and come out of this with some dignity left. Enough with the shame already.”
I stepped back. “I think the shame's going away. That's justâI think I have to fight to be allowed to hold my head up again.”
“That I can get into. If he's going to help you do that, then fine.” She turned back to a box of coconut flakes. “But I still think you ought to go ahead and bring that boy of yours in here so we can all go after him.”
I'd actually been tempted. But Christopher must be operating under a faulty premise as wellâone he'd probably never look at.
“Shouldn't Audrey be here by now?”
I looked up to see Oscar standing in the doorway with two plates up each arm, all steaming with fluffily-egged burritos.
“Not my day to watch her.” Mickey's voice was like sandpaper. “Dock her pay when she gets here.”
Oscar grunted. “Yeah, well, meanwhile, you've got four people out there waiting for breakfast.”
“I can serve them,” I said.
“You want to?” Mickey said. “I promised you wouldn't have to deal with the public.”
“I think I'm past bawling into people's food.” I nodded toward Oscar's heavily-laden arms. “But don't expect me to carry that many plates at once.”
Mickey took two of them and, looking like the proud mother of a budding waitress, said, “Follow me.”
Audrey didn't show up until two hours after her last class, which was unusual. In spite of Mickey's outward indifference, she watched the clock and looked furtively out the window, as neurotic a mother as any of usâthough she was quick to switch to near-homicidal when Audrey's Nissan pulled up to the curb.
“You better get to her first and find out what her excuse is,” she said to me. “Otherwise, she may lose several teeth, and I can't afford the dental bills.” Mickey's mouth tightened. “Find out what's going on and get back to me, would you?”
The chimes on the door heralded Audrey's entrance, but by the time I got out front she was nowhere to be found. I must have looked quizzical, because the regular customer sipping a Chai tea by the window pointed wordlessly to the restroom.
“Audrey?” I whispered at the door. “You okay, honey?”
No answer. I was about to tap when she opened it just wide enough for me to slip through and pulled me in. We stood almost nose to nose between the toilet and the batik hanging, her eyes leaping at me as if she were about to fall over an edge only I could hold her back from.
“Honey, what is it?” I asked.
She put her hands to her lips and stared at me, wild-eyed.
“Audrey, breathe.”
She gasped.
“Noânice big breathâlet it out.”
She did. I made her do it again, until she went limp, and then I pulled her into my arms.
“What happened?”
I said. “Did you have an accident?”
“Big time.”
I pulled her away to look at her. “Are you hurt?”
“No, Dr. C.,” she said. “I'm pregnant.”
“Come on, baby.”
Isabella's motor churned. Tried.
“Come on, now, a little more.” Sully pressed the gas pedal, and she tried again. The effort filled the air with gas fumes.
“OkayâI'm sorry, baby.” He patted the dashboard. “You're not ready.”
“Am I interrupting something?”
Sully jerked around, slamming his forehead against the top of the car door.
“Oh, my gosh!” Demi said. “I am so sorryâI didn't mean to scare you!”
Sully shook off stars and peered at her.
“Are you okay?” she said.
“I'm fineâare
you
okay?” He climbed out of the Impala, resisting the urge to check for a lump on his forehead, and kept his eyes on her.
“Is this all right, me stopping by?” she said. She drew her shoulders in and didn't seem to know where to put her hands.
He didn't have the heart to tell her that it wasn't. Their client-therapist arrangement wasn't the most conventional anyway. “What's up?” he said instead.
“I want to make sure. I'm in an awkward position, and I think I know what to do, onlyâI want to make sure I don't mess it up.”
Sully leaned against the car and folded his arms. “Something with Rich?”
“NoâAudrey. She's pregnant.”
“Ouch. By Boy?”
“He says notâbut Audrey says he's the only one she's been with, and I believe her.”
“Soâwhat's your awkward position?”
Demi shook her hand through her hair. “She doesn't want to tell Oscar and Mickey. She says they'll disown herâwhich I absolutely cannot believeâbut she's scared to death. I think if I hadn't gotten to her, she would have left town.”
Sully nodded.
“I told her she's probably just letting fear get to her. She's in shockâfinding out you're pregnant under the best of circumstances can throw you for a loop. But she refuses to talk to them unless I go with her.”
“Soâ”
“How do I feel about that, right?”
Sully grinned. “You're learnin', girl.”
“I feel like I should help. I have a great relationship with Mickey, so if there
is
any anger, I can probably mediate. She's always asking me to talk to Audrey, be there for her.”
“So what's the down side?”
Demi opened her mouth, then closed it. He watched several ideas pass through her eyes until she looked at him with surprise.
“None, I guess. I was thinking maybe I'm not qualified, given my recentâactivities.”
“But now you're thinkingâ”
“Now I'm thinking, who knows better than I do what it's like to make a major mistake and have to put your life back together?”
“Ding, ding,” Sully said.
Demi let one corner of her mouth go up, and then the other.
“Did I just figure that whole thing out myself, while you stood there and let me?”
“You sure did.”
She smiled, all the way, and stepped right into him. Her arms were around his neck before he saw it coming. She squeezed, let go, stepped back.
“Thank you,” she said. “You make me feel likeâI don't knowâ whatever it is, thank you.”
“You're welcome.”
And then Sully said nothing.
The smile didn't fade from her lips, but it left her eyes. She looked around the garage as if her next words should be there, and when they weren't, she said, “Well, I guess I should go. Can I call you and tell you how it goes tonight?”
“We can schedule an extra session.” Sully lined his words up carefully. “You want to come in tomorrow?”
The smile left her lips now too. “I'll call you,” she said.
And then she escaped. There was no other way to describe the way she extricated herself from the scene and got away to face her own embarrassment. He wanted to call after her, to say it was his fault too, that he hadn't made the boundaries clear.
But he let her make the fast break, let her save face. Heaven knew, she needed that.
Dang.
He put both hands on the blanket he'd draped over the side of the car by the opened hood and let his head hang between his shoulders. Demi was just feeling the exhilaration of getting it, getting herself. He was the first person who'd trusted her in months. She was bound to feel like being spontaneousâlike hugging.
He just couldn't let her.
You have to maintain a healthy distance from the client
, he told his eager young therapists who wanted to do lunch with patients who'd made breakthroughs, who needed more of them than a session in an office allowed.
You aren't their friendâyou're their therapist.
“She is my friend,” Lynn had said to him. “She understands me, and nobody else does.”
Sully shook his head. No. No memories tonight. He had to think this Demi thing through, or he was going to lose her just when she was making progress.
He picked up a wrench and looked down into Isabella's waiting heart. “Come on, baby,” he said. “You can do this. Get me through the night.”
It was dawn when she finally turned over.
I
couldn't believe I did that. Could not believe it.
I made it all the way back to the apartment driveway before I stopped the Jeep and banged my fists on the steering wheel.
You did
not
just hug that man.
I shoved my hair behind my ears. He hadn't taken the hug as a grateful client showing appreciation, eitherâI'd seen that in his eyes. Sullivan had drawn the same conclusion I had: that basically, Demitria Costanas was a sucker for any man who was nice to her, who showed any inkling of understanding her.
I felt wretched enough to run to my window seat and hide under a ratty afghan, except that Audrey's Nissan pulled up next to the Jeep. The curved-over waif behind the wheel looked worse than I felt.
Audrey opened her driver's door as if she were moving through a pillow. Picking up her purse, dropping her keys, retrieving them, all apparently took more effort than she could muster. She stood up, eyes large in her pale face. No doe in headlights ever looked so frightened, so sure that a terrible end was imminent. I'd seen that look before: every morning when I looked in the mirror and faced another day trying to make right what I'd done wrong.
“You're far more upset with yourself than they're going to be with you,” I told her as I half carried her up the steps to her parents' house.
“I don't think they'll understand,” she said.
“I do, and I'm not even your mom.”
Audrey let her head fall against my shoulder. “Right now, I wish you were.”
Mickey was crossing the kitchen with a basket of laundry when we came in. One look at us and she set it, teetering, on the counter.
“What's wrong?” she said. I gave Audrey's sweaty hand a squeeze, surprised it didn't wring out onto the floor.
“Come on, spill it.” Mickey shoved the laundry basket from its precarious position and leaned a hand on the counter. Oscar was in the doorway, the remote control in one hand, the remains of an hors d'oeuvre in the other.
“Come on, Audrey.” Mickey's voice was growing shrill. “You're freaking me out here.”
“Maybe we should go sit down,” I said. “Mick, do you have any tea made?”
Her eyes flicked in my direction, but basically she ignored me.
Oscar crossed to the trash can and tossed in his appetizer. “Aud?” he said.
“I can't say it!” Audrey said. “You're going to hate me!” She swiveled around and threw herself into my arms.
I looked helplessly over her head at Mickey.
“Oh, for heaven's sake, Audrey, we are not going to hate you.” Mickey took Audrey's arm and pulled her from me. With her hand on the girl's chin she pulled her face close to hers. “Now what is going on?”
Audrey whimpered.
“Mick,” Oscar said.
Mickey let go of Audrey, but her eyes kept her there. “What is it you're so afraid to tell us?”
“Promise me you won't think I'm horrible?”
“Whatâisâit?”
“I'm going to have a baby, Mom. I'm sorryâ”
In all of the scenes I'd participated in over the past eight weeks, I'd seen and experienced more emotion, I was sure, than most people did in a lifetime. That didn't include the kind of grief I'd shared with my community after 9/11, which was almost unbearable. But I had never seen weeping quite like this. Audrey cried so hard, I was afraid she'd lose consciousness.
Mickey, on the other hand, watched her daughter sob from her soul without so much as a nibble at her lip.
Oscar stood with one hand over the lower half of his face, the other tucked into his armpit, swallowed in the girth of his arm. I could only see his eyes, which blinked hard, as if he were confused.
“Okayâyou're going to make yourself sick, Audrey,” Mickey said. “Come onâbreathe.” She folded her arms around her daughter as if she were dealing with some strange child on a playground. “Take a breathâcome onâbefore you throw up.”
Audrey gasped several times and nodded.
I was sure I was watching a scenario that had happened many times before. Audrey seemed strangely comforted.
“She's been terrified about telling you all day,” I said. “She's been holding it in.”
“She gets like this. Oscar, get her some water.”
Oscar produced a glass, which Audrey drained while Mickey stood over her. The family dynamic was apparently restored. Time for me to leave.
“So what's the deal, Demi?” Mickey said.
“I'm sorry?” I said.