Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 89265 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 446(@200wpm)___ 357(@250wpm)___ 298(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89265 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 446(@200wpm)___ 357(@250wpm)___ 298(@300wpm)
I’d bide a little time. Get the lay of the land.
You might have won the battle, Mr. Woods, but the war isn’t over yet. Not if I have anything to say about it.
And I always had something to say about it. What grandmother didn’t?
Thirty-Two
Stella
I tried hard to forget.
I worked. I ran. I even baked an apple pie. But everything reminded me of him. Everything.
A new couple was referred to me for counseling, and the wife happened to be a military photographer who’d served in Afghanistan. She’d been diagnosed with PTSD, but she didn’t feel that was right. “It’s something else,” she insisted. “It’s more like the things I’ve seen have left a bruise on my soul that won’t go away. And I can’t relate to anyone who hasn’t seen those things, who doesn’t know what it was like for me to have to document them.”
Her husband loved her but didn’t understand why she hadn’t been able to simply come home and be wife and mother again. He kept telling her she hadn’t done anything wrong, had nothing to be ashamed of, and she needed to move on and stop obsessing over it. He wanted her to take the anti-anxiety pills her doctor had prescribed, believing that would “numb her up” and make it easier to cope.
I thought of Ryan, of course, and the night he’d told me about what it was like for him over there, and then what it was like for him to come home.
“Do you want to be numb, Carrie?” I asked her. “Will that help you cope?”
“No,” she said. “I want to talk to him about it. I want him to listen to me without trying to help me cope.”
“Do you hear what she’s saying, Dean?” I asked her husband.
He looked uncomfortable. “Yes, but talking about it upsets her so much. And it upsets other people. I don’t think she should talk about it.”
I leaned forward, elbows on my knees. Ryan’s voice was in my head. “She needs you to be a safe place, Dean. She needs to feel accepted and understood, no matter what she says. Can you do that for her?”
When they left, hand in hand and a little more hopeful than when they’d arrived, I locked my office door and wept.
Maren flew in the first weekend of November, which was the weekend before Emme’s wedding, and the three of us went out for dinner Saturday night.
“I’m starving,” Emme said, cracking open the menu. “But I’m so nervous to eat because I don’t want my dress to be too tight.”
“You’re not going to outgrow it in a week,” Maren assured her. “Eat what you want.”
Emme stared at her. “Hello, I’m pregnant, and my body is getting bigger every single day. I could absolutely outgrow my dress in a week.”
“Then you’d wear something else,” Maren said calmly. “The dress isn’t the most important thing.”
Emme shook her head, her eyes wide. “It’s like you don’t know me at all.”
I laughed, glad to be out with them, distracted from my broken heart. The server came around, and Maren and I ordered wine while Emme struggled to choose an appetizer. “The calamari. No! The spinach and artichoke dip. No! The steak tips. Oh damn, they have an olive plate too. I love olives.”
“Just bring them all,” I said. “We’ll have small plates tonight.”
Emme smiled. “Good call, sis.”
We chatted about the wedding, about family, about work. Maren caught us up on the house she and her fiancé Dallas were building on a ranch in Oregon and said they’d been so busy they’d made no wedding plans yet, but they were thinking maybe next summer out there. Emme answered all our questions about being three months pregnant and how she couldn’t wait to find out the sex of the baby.
“Don’t you want to be surprised?” Maren asked.
Emme looked at her like she was nuts. “Hell no. My life has had enough surprises. Now and then I’ll take a little advance notice, thank you.”
Eventually talk turned to me. “So what’s new with you, Stell?” Maren asked. “Anything exciting coming up?”
“Not really,” I said, twirling the stem of my wine glass. “I am trying to start a new therapy group at the clinic for combat veterans. But I’m still doing the research.”
“That’s interesting.” My sisters exchanged a glance. “Have you heard anything from that guy who lives next door to Grams?”
I shook my head as a lump jumped into my throat. “No.”
“Want to talk about it?” Emme asked gently. “You never mention him.”
“What’s to talk about? He dumped me. Just like Walter did.” The pain of it hadn’t dulled one bit.
“No.” Emme put up a hand. “I’m sorry. I met them both, and Ryan is nothing like Walter.”
“I agree,” I said. “But they had something in common—neither one of them was into me.”