Ladies' Night, Andrews, Kay [best time to read books .txt] 📗

to help us, Paula, when you’re still so messed up yourself?”

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