Tears welled up in the therapist’s eyes. “That’s not fair. I’m sober again. I had a relapse, yes, but that’s over now. And it’s because of all I’ve gone through that I can be effective with my patients. I can use my experiences to help them get through their pain and sense of loss.”
“Keep telling yourself that, Paula,” Grace said. “Maybe part of it’s true. But what about the rest of it? You’re conspiring with Stackpole. He funnels patients to you—and we don’t have any choice in the matter. If we want to get on with our lives, you have to sign off on our therapy. It’s fraud.”
Paula clasped and unclasped her hands. “I am a
good
therapist. I can help people; I really can. But how was I going to start a new practice? Rent office space, establish myself in the therapeutic community here? Everywhere I looked, I had people slamming doors in my face. After my divorce—it was so humiliating. And unfair. He’s the one who slept with a patient and violated his professional oath. But I’m the one who lost everything. He gets to start over with a new life and a new wife, and I get…” She looked around the room, with its worn and stained carpet, cheap furniture, and depressing, institutional green walls. “I get this.”
Grace sighed. “Yeah, well, welcome to my world. The same thing happened to me—thanks to your boyfriend, the Honorable Cedric N. Stackpole.”
Paula lifted her chin defiantly. “You’re in a better place now because of me, Grace. I know you don’t believe it, but you are. Everybody in your group has made remarkable progress. Look at Suzanne. She’s not the same person she was when she walked into this office seven weeks ago.”
“Okay,” Grace said. “I’ll give you that one. Suzanne might be the poster girl for divorce recovery. But that doesn’t give you a pass where Stackpole is concerned. He’s a creep, Paula. He’s a crook and a fraud and a cheater. He cheats on his wife, and he cheats on you. Did you happen to catch the news last night?”
Paula bit her lip but said nothing.
“Did you?”
“I saw,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “Oh my God. It’s all so ugly.”
Grace felt sorry for Paula. She felt sorry for Eileen Stackpole, and she felt sorry for herself and everybody in her divorce group. But sorry wouldn’t begin to fix what Stackpole had done.
“She’s twenty-three, did you know that?” Grace asked. “That girl? The one he was cheating on you with? She’s a bailiff in his courtroom. Her name is Monique Massey.”
“He was mentoring her,” Paula said, her chin quivering as she said it.
“Is that what he told you?” Grace asked. “What a crock! She’s a county employee. He’s a judge! You don’t discuss your career in an expensive restaurant at ten o’clock at night. You talk about it over a cup of coffee in the break room. Or at lunch at the meat and three downtown by the courthouse. Even you couldn’t believe a load of bullshit like that.”
Paula sprang from her chair. “I have patients coming. You have to go, Grace.”
Grace stayed seated. “It’s all starting to come apart now, Paula. My lawyer and I have talked to your other patients—and their lawyers. We’re going to file a complaint with the state Judicial Qualifications Committee. We can prove Stackpole’s bias against women. Wyatt’s your only male divorce-recovery patient—right? We know Stackpole had some kind of an unethical arrangement with you. And now we know about the affair with his bailiff.”
Paula opened the door to the outer office. “You need to leave. Right now. I won’t listen to any more of this.”
Finally, Grace got up. “I’ll leave,” she said, standing just inside the doorway. “But I won’t shut up. This isn’t going to go away.” She studied the therapist’s face, looking for some opening, some sense that Paula might switch sides.
“I think you really do care about your patients, Paula. I don’t know how you got mixed up with a sleazeball like Stackpole, but you have to know he’s been using you. He’s betrayed his oath of office, and he’s betrayed you. Maybe you should take some of your own advice. Take an honest look at what’s happened in your life since you hooked up with Stackpole. Come up with an action plan.”
The bell on the outer office door tinkled and a middle-aged woman stepped inside. “Hello, Rachel!” Paula called out. “I’ll be right with you.”
She lowered her voice to a whisper. “You have to go!”
Grace touched the therapist’s wrist. “Think about it, Paula. We need your help. We
are
going to file a complaint against him. There will be an investigation. Questions are going to be asked.”
The door opened and another woman stepped inside. Paula looked frantically from Grace to the two women standing in her waiting room.
“Almost done here,” Paula called cheerily.
“I’m going to have my lawyer call you,” Grace said quietly. “Her name is Mitzi Stillwell. She’s a nice person. Will you at least talk to her?”
“Go!” Paula said fiercely.
64
The members of the Lady Slipper Garden Circle asked endless questions about Jungle Jerry’s unusual bromeliad and orchid collection, and Wyatt patiently answered each and every one. By noon he’d marshaled the eleven women through the park and returned them to the gift shop, where they ate their box lunches and listened to the patented garden-club talk his grandfather had written forty years earlier.
Finally, shortly after two, Joyce ushered the last garden clubber out the door and into the parking lot.
Wyatt collapsed onto his desk chair and drained the bottle of cold water Joyce brought him. “How was I?” he asked, as she sat in the chair opposite his.
“You were terrific,” Joyce said. “You always are. Every single one of them wanted to adopt you and take you home and feed you. A couple of the younger ones? I think they had better plans.”
Wyatt laughed and blushed.
“When is she leaving?” Joyce asked.
“Who?”
“Callie. You know I don’t normally poke my nose into your business, but I have to be honest with you, Wyatt. If she’s here for good, I’m leaving.”
Wyatt’s jaw tightened. “She leaves today. In fact, I told her this morning she had to be gone by lunchtime.”
“She’s still here. She took Bo over to Scout’s house and she was gone for a couple hours, but now she’s back again, and your dad is furious. He won’t stay in your place while she’s there, so he’s been out cleaning the bird cages for hours now, and I don’t think it’s good for him to be out in the heat this time of day.”
“Thanks, Joyce. I’ll deal with it. Would you please lock up here, then go fetch Nelson and tell him the coast is about to be clear?”
Joyce smiled. “I’ll be happy to.”
* * *
He found Callie in the trailer’s kitchen. She was barefoot, humming happily, and stirring something on top of the stove.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.
“What’s it look like I’m doing?” She didn’t look up. “I’m fixing my spaghetti sauce for dinner tonight. It’s Bo’s favorite.”
“Leave it,” Wyatt said.
Now, she turned from the stove, still holding the spoon she’d been using on the sauce. “Oh, for Pete’s sake, Wyatt. You know I don’t have any place to stay. Why are you being such a complete dick about this?”
He pried the wooden spoon from her hand and dropped it in the sink. “We’re getting divorced, Callie. That’s what you wanted, and that’s what you’re getting. Despite your best efforts, I’ve managed to rebuild my life. Without you. I’ve tried to be nice, but nice doesn’t work with you. So now, I need you to get your stuff and put it in your vehicle and leave.”
“And go where?” she said, already pouting.
“I don’t care where you go from here,” he said, amazed at the fact that he really didn’t. “Go back to your sister’s, to a motel, whatever. But you’re not staying here.”
Wyatt reached into his pocket and peeled off four hundred-dollar bills. “This is all the cash I’ve got. And it’s all you’re getting until next month, so don’t think you can come back here again for more.”
She just stared at him. “You’re really serious.”
He took her hand, pressed the bills into her palm, and closed her fingers over them. “Serious as a heart attack.”
“If Bo comes home from Scout’s and I’m not here, he’ll be heartbroken. I promised him spaghetti and garlic bread tonight…”
“Bo’s used to you breaking your promises,” Wyatt pointed out. “He’ll get over it. You can call him after you find a place to stay.”
Callie held up the crumpled bills. “And what am I supposed to do when this is gone? Sleep on a park bench? Eat at a shelter?”
Wyatt shrugged. “You might think about a job. But again, not my problem.”
It took her two trips to pack her stuff into the Jeep. She banged the screen door as hard as she could both times. Finally, he heard the car’s engine sputter and stall, and roar to life again. He heard the spin of her tires on the crushed-shell driveway as she sped down the road and out of his life. For now.
* * *
Monday was delivery day at the Sandbox. Grace found Rochelle standing in the dining room, clipboard in hand, as the Budweiser driver unloaded cases of beer and trundled them into the kitchen.
“I was wondering where you’d been,” she said as Grace came around the bar to fix herself a cold drink.
“I’ve been everywhere … and nowhere,” Grace replied. “I spent the weekend at Mitzi’s condo.” She gave her mother an apologetic smile. “Guess I should have called, huh?”
“Would have been nice,” Rochelle said. “But you’re an adult. I get that you need your privacy.” She looked up from her invoices. “If you want to talk about what’s going on with you, I’m happy to just listen.”
“I’ll give you the condensed version. Saturday, I went over to the house and found proof that J’Aimee really did vandalize and set fire to Arthur’s house. Then I blackmailed Ben into agreeing to a financial settlement. I broke up with Wyatt. Did you see the news last night? Stackpole’s wife caught him with another other woman at a restaurant in Sarasota, and it made the news last night. And then this morning, I dropped in on Paula and tried to convince her she should help us get Stackpole thrown off the bench. It’s been a busy time, Mom.”
“That’s quite a list of accomplishments. Did I hear you say you broke up with Wyatt?”
“Yes,” Grace said.
Rochelle sighed and patted her daughter’s hand. “Oh, Gracie. Why?”
“His wife wants him back,” Grace said. “Bo wants his parents back together.” She shrugged. “It was probably inevitable.”
“Doesn’t Wyatt get a say in any of this?”
“He says he and Callie are never getting back together and that he wants to make a life with me, but…”
“But you’re ready to give him up anyway?” Rochelle shook her head. “God, Grace. I could have sworn you were born with a backbone.”
“This is not about standing up for myself! It’s about reality, Mom. Callie will do whatever it takes to get her claws into Wyatt. She spent the night over there Friday, after she’d broken up with her boyfriend, and Wyatt wasn’t even going to tell me. In fact, she told me—after I showed up at his place to pick up Sweetie. She met me at the door dressed in his bathrobe. And she made sure I noticed she wasn’t wearing anything underneath.”
“Do you actually think Wyatt slept with her? Or that he even wanted to?”
Grace took her time answering, slowly peeling the paper wrapper from a drinking straw. “No,” she said finally. “But the point is…”
Rochelle waved her off. “The point is you don’t trust the man. You don’t trust his feelings for you. You don’t trust his ability to see through his ex. And you don’t trust yourself to work through any of this stuff in order to be with him,” Rochelle said. “And that’s a damned shame.”
“I can’t have this conversation with you,” Grace said, twisting the straw wrapper into a tight spiral. “I appreciate that you like Wyatt, and you want us to be together, but I have to do what’s right for me.”
“And if I didn’t love you so much, I would agree with you and let you alone,” Rochelle said. “But I love you too much to watch while you let happiness slip right through your fingers. You walked away from Ben when you found out he was a cheater. And I supported you on that. One hundred percent. But honey, Wyatt’s not Ben. Wyatt is good and loyal and true, and when I see the way he looks at you, and the way you look at him when you think nobody is watching, I know he’s the one. I think you know it, too.”
Grace pushed her drink away. “I don’t know anything. That’s the problem. Yeah, I think I love him. And I thought he loved me. But look what happened with Ben. I had no clue Ben was sleeping with J’Aimee, and they were literally doing it right under my nose. So how can I be sure Wyatt is the one? We only met two months ago.”
“Just trust your feelings for him,” Rochelle said gently. “And remember, nothing in this life is ever going to be one hundred percent for certain. But you can’t just hide out, never risk getting hurt again. What kind of life would that be?”
“A safe one,” Grace said.
“No.” Rochelle shook her head vehemently. “Not safe. Boring. Sad. A total waste.”
* * *
Grace sat on the bench on Coquina Beach and hugged Sweetie to her chest. The tide was out and a lone gray heron was stalking something in the calm shallow water. It was the same bench she’d sat on with Wyatt only a few days earlier. Sweetie wriggled in her arms, lifted her chin, and licked Grace’s chin. She glanced down at the cell phone on the picnic table, for the tenth time in the past hour. Wyatt had called twice that morning and texted her half an hour ago.
His message was short and to the point.
She’s gone. I’m not taking her back. You’re what I want.
He seemed so sure. Why couldn’t she be like that?
Because,
Grace thought.
Because you’re the girl who painted her first apartment six different shades of white the first week you were living there. Because you dated Ben for two years and lived with him for another two before finally deciding to marry him.
She’d waited and waffled after meeting Ben, and still she’d made a mistake. Maybe her mother was right. Maybe mistakes were inevitable. But maybe this time, she really had found
the
one. There was only one way to find out for sure.