Ladies' Night Andrews, Kay (great novels .txt) 📖

she said quietly. “I guess I should introduce myself? I’m Suzanne.”

“Ashleigh.”

“Grace.”

“I’m Camryn. Look here, is the judge hearing your divorce named Stackpole?”

Suzanne looked startled. “As a matter of fact, yes.”

“Uh-huh,” Camryn said, nudging Grace. “And did you do something ugly to your ex? Maybe act out a little bit, something like that?”

Suzanne’s face paled. “I can’t … I don’t … I won’t…”

“Never mind,” Grace said. “Whatever you did, I’m sure your husband deserved it.”

Suzanne bit her lip. “I still can’t believe I went through with it. And I can’t believe I’m here, tonight. It all seems so surreal.”

“What’s surreal is the fact that this group is all women,” Camryn said. “This isn’t group therapy. It’s ladies’ night.”

“A really, really, expensive ladies night,” Grace put in.

“Ladies…” Paula called from her seat at the front of the room. “Let’s get started, shall we? I’m expecting one more member to join us, but I think we’ll go ahead and get started. So take a seat, if you will.”

Grace sat down on one of the folding chairs and crossed her legs. The other three women did the same.

“Well,” Paula said, giving them a bright smile. “I take it you’ve all introduced yourselves to each other. Ashleigh, Grace, Camryn, and Suzanne. Tonight is an important night for all of you. Right? It’s the night you all start the healing. And the forgiving.”

“No way,” Camryn muttered under her breath.

“Excuse me?” Paula said sharply.

“I said, no way,” Camryn said defiantly. “That judge can order me to come to these bullshit counseling sessions. And he can order me to pay through the nose for the privilege of coming here. But he cannot make me forgive what Dexter Nobles did to me.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “And neither can you.”

“I see,” Paula said. She nodded at Ashleigh. “What about you, Ashleigh? Did you come here with an open mind tonight?”

“I came with an open checkbook,” Ashleigh said. “That’s the best I can do right now.”

Camryn guffawed and Grace managed to stifle her own laugh.

“Grace?” Paula’s look was expectant.

“My husband has locked me out of my own home,” Grace said, feeling her throat constrict. “He’s frozen my bank accounts. Canceled my credit cards. I have no way to support myself. I’m living with my mother, tending bar to pay for gas money. He’s living in a two-million-dollar home, shacking up with my twenty-six-year-old former assistant. So no, right now, I’m really not ready for what you call a healing.”

Paula frowned. “All this negativity. I find it very sad. Very disappointing.”

Too damn bad, Grace thought. She glanced over at Camryn Nobles, and then at Ashleigh Hartounian. Their faces were impassive. Suzanne’s face was scrunched in concentration.

“We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us,” Paula said after a moment. She went over to her desk, picked up a stack of old-fashioned black-and-white-spattered composition books, and handed one to each of the women.

“This,” she said. “Is your divorce journal. I want all of you to get in the habit of writing in it, at least once a day, although several times a day would be most helpful.”

“Write what?” Ashleigh demanded.

“Everything. Anything. We’re going to be doing some visualization exercises that I think will be helpful. And I’d like you to search, really search your souls, for the truthful answers to some questions I’m going to pose to all of you. Because, in here, honesty is everything.”

Paula waved toward the windows. “Out there, with your family and friends, you can hide your pain. You can cover it up, sanitize it, deny it. But in here—with group—I expect nothing less than absolute honesty.”

She opened the bottom drawer of her desk and brought out a boxy Polaroid camera. She walked briskly to the semicircle of chairs and snapped a photo of Grace, before Grace had time to object. When the photo ejected from the camera, the therapist handed it to Grace and moved on, pictures of Camryn and Suzanne, then Ashleigh, handing each woman her photo.

Grace stared down at the Polaroid, watching as the pale gray of the film disappeared and a grainy image of herself came into focus. She was shocked at what she saw. Her formerly full, round face looked gaunt. Her hair hung limply from a center part that emphasized her dark roots. She hadn’t bothered with makeup that day, hadn’t actually bothered with it at all since the day she’d been turned away from the security gate at Gulf Vista. There were dark circles under her eyes and deeply etched grooves at the corners of her mouth. It struck Grace that she couldn’t remember smiling, not in days. She looked sad. Sad and old, and defeated.

She glanced at the other women. Camryn and Ashleigh didn’t look any more pleased with their photos. In fact, Ashleigh had pulled a compact from her Louis Vuitton satchel and was busily applying more lipstick. Suzanne stared at her photograph as though she’d never seen a picture of herself before.

Now Paula handed Grace a stapler. “I want you to staple the Polaroid to page one of your divorce journal. This is your before picture. Now, turn the page and describe what you see in yourself in this photo. Tell me where you are, today. What you’re feeling about the place you’re in, right now, emotionally. If you like, you can write about this experience you’re having, your first night in group. Be honest. I know you all resent me, resent being here. I expect that.” She looked down at her watch. “I’m going to give you fifteen minutes to write. And when I come back, I want you all to be ready to share what you wrote with the rest of the group.”

“What if I don’t feel like sharing?” Ashleigh asked, tossing her hair behind her shoulder. “What if I don’t feel like writing anything?”

Paula’s smile was tight. “Oh, Ashleigh. You know Judge Stackpole made your attendance at group mandatory as a condition for granting your divorce, right?”

“How could I forget?” Ashleigh asked.

“It’s not as simple