“Oooh, girl,” Camryn said. “Was he begging you to take him back?”
“No.” Grace thought about it for a moment. “He just wanted to grind his heel in my face. Punish me some more, make me feel like crap. Let me know he’ll always have power over me.”
Suddenly, Paula stood up. “Very nice, Wyatt and Grace. Excellent work, sharing with our friends. Let’s take a little ten-minute break, and then we’ll come back and, um, I have a surprise for all of you. Also? Who haven’t we heard from yet?”
“Me,” Wyatt said reluctantly.
The others shot out of the room like first graders at recess. All except Suzanne, who sat demurely in her chair, ankles crossed, hands in her lap.
Grace slid into the chair beside hers. “Suzanne? That was really wonderful, what you wrote. I think all of us saw something of ourselves in what you’ve gone through.”
Suzanne brightened, just a little. “So, you don’t think I’m the queen of crazypants?”
“You? Nah. That title belongs to Ashleigh,” Grace said. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a small pink nose pop out of the top of her tote bag. “Oh, Lord,” she breathed. “I’ve gotta go outside for a minute. So—will you come to the Sandbox tonight, after? Just for a little while? At least so we can discuss what’s up with Paula?”
Suzanne brightened. “So, it’s not just me? There is definitely something weird about her. Weirder than usual tonight, because she’s actually acting normal! About the Sandbox, I’d come, but it’s just such a long way there and then home again.”
“If you like, you can leave your car here and ride over there with me,” Grace offered. “I’m sure one of the others will give you a ride back afterward.”
“Maybe,” Suzanne said. “Let me think about it, okay?”
* * *
“Friends,” Paula began, once their break was over, her face flushed with excitement. “I didn’t want to announce this earlier, because, well, I wasn’t sure it was going to happen. But I got a message just before our break, and it appears that we are going to have a guest joining us tonight. I, for one, am incredibly honored that he’s taking time out from his very busy life to be with us.” She glanced down at her watch and, then again, at her cell phone.
She took a deep breath. “I’m sure he’ll be along shortly. In the meantime, I’d like us to think about options.” She looked around the room. “From what you’ve told me, all of you feel you’ve been badly hurt by your spouses. Of course, since we don’t have your partners here with us, I only have your version of events that led to your breakups.”
Camryn snorted. “We’re the ones got ordered to be here, Paula. If you want Dexter Nobles’s version of what happened, feel free to drag his ass in here.”
“Camryn?” Paula frowned at her. “Sharing time is over. Now. All of you have spoken of your feelings of powerlessness and inferiority. Now, I’d like you to explore what options you have, going forward with your lives.”
A man cleared his throat. All heads swung in the direction of the reception-room door. “Er, hello?”
Paula jumped up from her chair and clapped her hands in glee. “Judge Stackpole! Your Honor, we’re so glad you could be here!”
24
Judge Cedric N. Stackpole Jr. was dressed in his version of business casual and Grace’s idea of what not to wear to divorce therapy. A black short-sleeved knit shirt with the top button fastened—although Grace saw the glimmer of a thick gold chain resting amidst a tuft of chest hair sticking out over the top button. Very shiny, very faux-distressed, very obviously brand-new jeans, belted and worn navel-high. Highly polished black slip-ons, no socks.
His thinning reddish hair was slicked back with some type of hair product that he’d obviously bought in bulk in the eighties.
He nodded curtly at the group, and cracked something similar to a smile at Paula.
“Hello, hello,” he said briskly, his hands thrust awkwardly in his jeans pockets. “Uh, Dr. Talbott-Sinclair invited me to drop in tonight, just to see how everybody is doing. Er, uh, I hope you are all listening closely to her message. Because, uh, if more people like you all came to sessions with therapists like Dr. Talbott-Sinclair, there’d be lots less work for judges like me.” He seemed to think this was a hysterically funny line. “Right?” he asked. “Judges might not have jobs. Right?”
Paula’s laughter trilled up and down the musical scales. “That’s right!” she said, clasping her hands. “Very intuitive, Your Honor.”
Grace didn’t dare cut her eyes sideways to the left to see Camryn’s reaction to this. Instead, she pretended to study the journal on her lap. Through lowered eyelashes, she could see Wyatt, on her right, his arms folded across his chest, glaring directly at the judge, barely disguised hostility emanating from every pore.
“Well,” Stackpole said, “please don’t let me interrupt. I’ll just sit here in the back of the room, and you all go on as though I weren’t here.”
Like that’s gonna happen, Grace thought. She glanced nervously down at her tote bag, but for now it was very still.
* * *
Paula stood and faced the group. Her hair was neatly combed, and Grace noticed she’d reapplied her lipstick and powdered her nose during the break. And was the neckline of her dress tugged just a little lower? Showing just a hint of cleavage that hadn’t been visible before?
“Most of you are here because in the heat of the moment or, perhaps, after some very deliberate but ill-thought-out reasoning, you decided to strike out—violently, publicly, even
criminally,
against your spouse. Probably, you reasoned, ‘this person has hurt me, and my only option is to strike back.’” She nodded at Grace.
“Isn’t that right, Grace?”
“No,” Grace heard herself say. “That isn’t what happened at all.”
Paula gave her a patronizing smile. “We’ll come back to that.”
“What I’m trying to say,” Paula went on, “is that whether you know it or not, you had options at the time you acted out, and you have options now. Do you stay, or do you leave? Forgive? Forget? Neither?”
“Huh.” Wyatt shook his head. “That ship has sailed, Paula.”
“Yeah,” Camryn put in. “I already left, or rather, I kicked his butt out the door. You want me to forget? How do I erase the image of him in bed with my twenty-two-year-old daughter’s best friend? I wish I could forget it,” she said, throwing up her hands in surrender. “What’s that drug they used to give women during childbirth? Scopolamine, yeah, the twilight drug. You feel the labor pains, but after, you have no memory of the pain. You tell me how to find the equivalent of Scopolamine for what he did to me and my family.”
Grace’s mind flashed again to the scene of Ben and J’Aimee in the darkened garage. She closed her eyes and willed the scene to disappear, the same way she had nearly every night since it had occurred.
“That’s right,” Suzanne murmured, pressing her fingertips to her forehead.
“I don’t have any drugs to give you,” Paula said, her face flushing. She was looking past Camryn and the others, directly at the back of the room, where Stackpole sat.
Grace heard a little gasp at this, but then, at almost the same time, she felt the tote bag at her feet move. She dropped her journal to the floor as a cover, reached in, and scratched the warm furry head there, felt a tiny pink tongue rasp against the palm of her hand. She stole a backward glance at the judge, who was staring down at his watch, pointedly tapping the crystal. She sat back up again.
“I can tell you, though,” Paula said, her voice rising, “that until you spend time figuring out what went wrong with your marriage, until you stop blaming yourself, your partner, the other lover, you will never move past those scenes like the one Camryn describes. Even if your marriage is irretrievably, undeniably finished now, there was a time when you had hope. You had love. Whatever your version of love is. Next session, I want you to try really hard to get past your bitterness and write down one quality, perhaps one anecdote, that might explain what drew you to your partner. What about that person made you happy?”
“That’s easy. It was the big ol’ honkin’ ring he gave me,” Ashleigh whispered, with a giggle, fingering the bauble she wore around her neck.
Paula hadn’t heard, as usual. “I’ll see you all next week.”
Grace looked at her watch. It was barely 7:30
P.M
. Why was Paula suddenly in such a hurry to end the session? When she looked up again, she saw Stackpole speeding toward the door with the look of a man with a mission.
25
“Sandbox?” Camryn murmured, as the group drifted out to the parking lot.
“I’m in,” Ashleigh nodded vigorously. She turned to Suzanne. “You coming?”
“Well, I guess I could. I did tell my daughter I might be a little late,” Suzanne said.
Grace looked at Wyatt. “How about you?”
He hesitated. Camryn tugged at his arm. “Oh, come on. You can’t hold out forever.”
“I thought this was a girls-only thing,” he said. “No boys in the tree fort?”
Ashleigh gave him a wink. “For you, we’ll lower the rope ladder. Right, ladies?”
* * *
A hastily scribbled
RESERVED
sign was taped to the booth in the corner. Rochelle hurried over to the table when Grace pushed through the front door. “They’re coming tonight, right?”
“Yeesss,” Grace found herself slightly annoyed at her mother’s eagerness, but she couldn’t say why. While Rochelle returned to her post behind the bar, she slipped outside with the tote bag, and when she returned five minutes later, the rest of the group were arranged around the table, each with a drink in front of them. She slid into the booth beside Wyatt, who was sipping a beer.
“What was going on with Paula tonight?” Ashleigh asked.
“Here you go,” Rochelle said, as she placed a glass of white wine in front of Grace and a big basket of freshly made popcorn in the center of the table. She plunked herself down beside Camryn at the opposite end of the booth.
“Why?” Rochelle wanted to know. “What was Paula doing?”
“She was, like, sober,” Ashleigh said. “All dressed up. With shoes and everything. She actually kind of looked like what I pictured a professional therapist would look like. It was kind of crazy.”
“Mm-hmm. Mama was definitely on some new meds tonight,” Camryn agreed. “There were a couple times tonight she managed to almost sound coherent. Not that I agree with any of that forgiveness crap she was selling,” she added hastily.
“I couldn’t get over how changed she was. And when Judge Stackpole came in, I was really struck by the transformation,” Suzanne said. “It was like she was hoping for his approval. Dying for it.”
“The judge showed up?” Rochelle asked, her eyes widening.
“Asshole,” Wyatt muttered, staring down at his beer.
All the women turned to look at him at once. “Can’t help it,” he said defensively. “He’s gonna ruin my son’s life, letting Callie drag him off to Birmingham. How often will I be able to get to Birmingham to see him? Every other month? Probably not even that. Even if I could forgive her, I’ll never forgive him, if I lose my kid.”
Ashleigh waved the straw from her half-empty margarita glass in the air. “I think Paula’s got a big ol’ school-girl crush on Stackhole.”
“Stackhole, that’s good!” Rochelle said. “What do you think, Grace?”
Grace had been surreptitiously slipping a handful of popcorn in the direction of the tote bag, which was between her feet. She was distracted by the soft snuffing sounds and hoped the din of the bar would drown them out.
“Well … I agree, Paula was definitely on her best behavior tonight. And I did wonder about Stackpole’s appearance. Why was he there? Paula told us she reports to him on our progress. Doesn’t he have anything better to do than sit in on our sad little sessions?” She turned to Suzanne. “Do you think maybe there’s something going on between them?”
“Maybe,” Suzanne said, her voice tentative.
“Eeew,” Ashleigh said, wrinkling her nose. “Paula and that … old man? And isn’t he married or something?”
“He’s not all that old. My lawyer, Mitzi, was in law school with him. When he was appointed to the bench, he was the youngest judge in Florida. But, yes, he’s definitely married,” Grace said. “During our hearing he made a point of telling my lawyer that his own wife has no problems running his household with two thousand dollars a month.”
“Which pays for what?” Rochelle asked. “I’ll bet he doesn’t expect her to pay a mortgage or utilities or insurance for that.”
While they batted ideas around, Camryn was busily typing away on her iPhone. “I’ve got the Florida judiciary Web site here,” she announced, thumbing down the page. “Gimme a minute. Okay, here it is. Cedric Norris Stackpole, age fifty-one. B.A., University of Florida, 1980. J.D., University of Florida, 1983. Appointed to the bar, 2000.” She looked up. “Wow, a judge at forty. That’s impressive, even if he isn’t.” She scrolled a little more. “Married, 1999, to the former Eileen Bolther of Kissimmee.”
“Bolther? Why is that name familiar?” Suzanne asked.
“If she’s a Bolther and she’s from Kissimmee, she must be related to Sawyer Bolther. As in Bolther Groves and Bolther Beef. Two of the biggest cattle and citrus growers in Florida. Not to mention Bolther Bank and Trust,” Camryn said.
“How do you know all this stuff?” Ashleigh asked.
“I’m a reporter. I don’t know it off the top of my head, but I get paid to know how to find it out,” Camryn said. “I covered the last three governor’s races, and, as I recall, Sawyer Bolther was one of the biggest campaign contributors to that last joker we elected. So that gives you an idea how ol’ Cedric got named a judge at the ripe old age of forty. His wife’s family is politically connected.”
“What about Paula?” Suzanne asked. “I’m a little curious about her, I have to admit. She’s such an enigma. After those first two sessions, I’d written her off as a total fraud, or at least a deeply troubled person with some kind of substance-abuse issues. But tonight?” She looked around the table for consensus. “She actually said a couple things that I thought made sense.”
“Like what?” Wyatt asked. “I mean, I’m not disagreeing.”
“I can’t quote her directly,” Suzanne said, flustered. “It was something about taking the time to figure out what went wrong with our marriages, putting blame aside, and just, you know, taking a look at what the problems really were.”