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

and her husband, Thorsen Sinclair, were in practice together. He was a psychiatrist; she was a therapist. Connie, the woman I talked to at KTXX, says they were pretty prominent, gave workshops all over the Pacific Northwest on ‘mindful marriage,’ whatever that is. They self-published a book with the same title. And everything was golden with the Sinclairs. Until he fell in love with one of their patients.”

“Oh, wow.” Grace breathed.

“Uh-huh. Both couples split up, and it made a nice little scandal, because the husband called the state board and filed a formal complaint against Thorsen and then leaked it to the media out there. Connie sent me a link to the story in the Portland paper. ‘Mindful Marriage Melt-Down.’ Long and short? Thorsen dumped Paula. After their divorce was final, he married the other woman. And Paula, apparently, fell to pieces. She ‘borrowed’ one of her ex’s prescription pads and wrote herself a bunch of scrips for tranquilizers. But she got caught.”

“Did she go to jail?” Grace asked, wide-eyed.

“It was a first offense, so the judge agreed to drop the criminal charges and allowed her to check herself into a rehab program for impaired healthcare givers,” Camryn said. “She must have completed it to the court’s satisfaction out there, because Connie couldn’t find any record of the arrest.”

“Poor Paula,” Grace said. “I guess she’s been through the wringer, just like all of us. But how did she end up all the way out here?”

“Probably got sick of the rain. You ever been to Portland?”

“No.”

“I don’t actually know what brought her to Florida,” Camryn admitted. “What I do know is, she only set up this divorce and life coaching business six months ago. And it seems like it’s just barely legal—as long as she doesn’t call herself a therapist or a marriage counselor. Which she doesn’t.”

“I see,” Grace said, toying with a piece of lettuce that had slid off her mahi-mahi. “So—is Paula actually qualified to do what she’s doing? I mean, I thought she was a quack that first week, but honestly, I think she really is trying to help us. And she has some real insights into what goes wrong with marriages.”

“When she’s sober or not having a ‘family emergency,’” Camryn said, still clearly not convinced. “Her credentials are for real. I checked. Her undergrad degree is from the University of Washington, and she got a master’s in clinical social work from Portland State. She belonged to a bunch of professional organizations in Portland and was even on the board of a center for battered women, until her life went to shit.”

Grace drummed her fingernails on the tabletop. “Obviously, she’s back on the pills, self-medicating. It’s such a shame.”

“She’s a grown-up,” Camryn pointed out. “Nobody’s making her take those pills. What I want to know is, how did she and Stackpole get hooked up?”

“Good question.” Grace considered the woman sitting opposite her at the table. “Camryn?”

“Hmm?”

“Why are you telling me all this?”

“You’re a member of the group. It affects you as much as it does me.”

“There are three other people in our group. You don’t even like me.”

“Did I ever say I don’t like you?”

“Well, it’s not like we’re buddy-buddy. You’ve never called me and asked me to go to lunch or anything.”

“I don’t do lunch, Grace. You want to know about the glamorous life of a morning anchor in a third-tier market? I get up at five in the morning, get on the elliptical, haul my ass to the station. I’m in makeup at six, on air at seven. After I get off the air, I’ve got meetings, I read the wires, the online editions of The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Miami Herald. Since I still do my own enterprise stories, I’ve got phone calls to make and interviews to set up, and lots of times I go out on remotes with a camera crew. I eat a take-out salad at my desk, go to some more meetings, make some more phone calls. Oh yeah, and I talk to my lawyer about this freakin’ divorce and brood about being single again at my age. And that’s my day.”

Grace still wasn’t convinced. “Why me?”

Camryn considered her over the top of her sunglasses. “Because other than me, you’re the only normal person in this group.”

Grace started to protest.

“Stop!” Camryn took off the sunglasses. “Wyatt doesn’t count. He’s a guy. A white guy, and I know it’s a new century and we finally have a black man in the White House. And I should be better than this, but I still consider him the man. Ashleigh? Pffft. I won’t even go there. You and I? Yeah, we did some stuff to our men, but they had it coming. Ashleigh is just all kinds of flaky. I wouldn’t trust her any farther than I could throw her.”

“What about Suzanne? She’s shy, sure, but she’s also smart and compassionate, and she seems to understand people.”

Camryn shook her head. “No. I can’t put my finger on it, but there is something definitely off about that woman.”

“She’s an introvert,” Grace protested.

“It’s more than that,” Camryn said. Suzanne is damaged goods. Like it or not, Grace, it’s you and me.”

“You and me—doing what?” Grace said impatiently. “We don’t definitely know that Paula and Stackpole are involved. She’s not breaking the law billing herself as a divorce coach. I don’t see us blowing the whistle on her because she’s got a problem with pills. If anything, I think we should try to get her help.”

“Help her?” Camryn looked disgusted. “Who’s helping us? Who’s helping us pay three hundred dollars a session for a ‘divorce coach’ who can’t keep her eyes open for an hour at a time? Who’s helping all those other poor women Stackpole sends to Paula for help? You ever consider that? I have. I hung around outside her office yesterday. Yeah. I saw what looked like three different ‘divorce recovery’ groups filing in there. Total of fifteen people. All