Leigh looked at her appointment book for the umpteenth time, hoping that her one o’clock would have miraculously disappeared or been replaced with someone who didn’t make her skin crawl.
11:00 – Margaret Richardson.
12:00 – Lunch
1:00 – Mitch Perkins.
Nope. Still there. If she could just get through the day without totally losing it, she’d be okay. Even the news that her CT scan had been clear didn't relieve much of her stress. Lunch didn’t sound appetizing. Her stomach was in knots. That was a shame, because she’d planned to eat with Avery today, but she doubted she could handle the Burger Shack’s greasy food.
To make matters worse, Dr. Gadbury would be watching her appointments again today from his office, where the session would be live-streamed and recorded on his computer. All her clients, of course, were told their visits would be recorded until Leigh had been fully licensed. She still had a few hours of supervised sessions left, which made the knot in her stomach bigger.
She texted Avery: Not feeling much like eating. Rain check?
Avery replied within seconds: No way. Are you sick or what?
It’s just nerves. I can’t eat much when I’m this anxious.
Just meet me at the Burger Shack. I’ll get you a Sprite and crackers. It’ll do you good to get out.
OK I’ll be there.
Avery was right. Leigh could use some fresh air on her lunch break. At least her eleven o'clock appointment wasn’t anything to dread. She genuinely liked Margaret, though she felt a little awkward now, knowing the things she had confided to Leigh about the way Jesse treated her in high school. He had been really cruel to her and to so many people. Totally different from the good man Leigh had watched him becoming.
Becky chirped over the phone intercom, “Your eleven o’clock is here.”
“Okay, show her in.”
How that woman could be so perky on a crappy, rainy Monday, Leigh had no idea. She consoled herself with her certification hour countdown she had stored on her cell phone. 3960, just forty hours away from being able to take her licensing test. She could do this. Maybe.
The door opened, and Becky ushered Margaret into Leigh’s office. Her usually solemn client had a big smile on her face. What was up with everyone liking Mondays all of a sudden?
“Good morning, Margaret. You look happy today.” Leigh sat in her armchair, glancing at the video camera, while her client took a seat on the couch.
Margaret plopped her purse on the ground. “Oh, I am happy, and you’ll never guess why.”
Leigh grinned. “Let’s see, maybe a free HBO preview weekend so you got to watch The Game of Thrones season premiere?”
“No, I have HBO all the time, and my DVR is pretty much dedicated to that show.”
“Okay, then what’s got you smiling today?”
“I took a cooking class!” Margaret exclaimed, flashing a gleeful smile.
“That’s great! I hope you enjoyed it.”
“I did, and you’ll never guess who took me.”
Leigh hoped it was her husband, Ray, but the chance of that was slim to none. He hardly ever left the house. But she asked anyway. “Was it Ray?”
“No.” She shook her head and chuckled. Her face, usually strained with bitterness and doubt, looked ten years younger.
“Then I have no idea.” A thought occurred to her – she had counseled more than a few people who had affairs and felt free to spill all the details of their rendezvous. “You don’t have to tell me if you—”
“It was Jesse Maddox!” Margaret blurted out. “Can you believe it?”
Leigh dropped her pen. Bending over to fetch it off the floor, she replied, “I’m… No, I would have never guessed that.”
“Well, he did. He called me and and offered to take me to cooking classes down at Mann Cakes. And get this—he paid for a whole year’s worth of classes for me. Actually, he traded his time for it. The classes were full, but he made a deal with Garrett to wash dishes to pay for them.”
Pen back in hand, Leigh tapped it on her notebook and blinked at her client. She couldn’t show too much interest in this development, or her boss would know she had more than a counselor/client thing going with Jesse.
“He picked me up and was so nice, too. Not great at chopping, but he did try, poor guy. Sliced his thumb, and then I fainted.”
“Fainted? Why?”
“The blood,” Margaret whispered with a grimace. She shuddered. “I was so embarrassed.”
“How did Jesse respond to that?”
“He caught me. Then he brought me home. I was okay, though.”
“How did you feel when he called you?”
Margaret blushed. “I hung up on him. But he called back and left a message asking if he could take me to that cooking class. I picked up the phone then. He had me at cooking class.”
“I see,” Leigh said in her serious counselor tone, making a few notes which didn’t even register in her head. All she could think about was Jesse and how she’d fled when he kissed her. Here Margaret was, with every reason in the world to hate him after years of being bullied. Leigh’s distrust seemed petty somehow, her fears of falling in love just that. Fears. Cowardice.
She cleared her throat, coming back to the reality of the camera on the wall and her boss analyzing her every move and word. “The last time you were here, you mentioned that you couldn’t stop thinking of yourself as ‘Large Marge’ since you ran into him at the doctor’s office. Do you still think of yourself this way?”
“You know, I think I’m starting to feel better about myself. Thanks to Jesse, weird as that sounds. I can understand now why he acted the way he did back then, with what happened to his dad.”
That got Leigh’s attention. She needed only a few pieces to finish the puzzle surrounding Jesse’s broken family. “What happened to his dad?”
“I probably shouldn’t tell you about it, but since everything’s confidential in here…”
Leigh gave her an encouraging nod.
“Well, I heard this from my mother a long time ago. His mom and dad were both terrible alcoholics. They got into a fight one day and shot each other. She survived. He didn’t.”
“That’s so tragic.” Leigh had to keep her empathy in check, with only just enough to show she cared about a fellow human being and not the man she was falling for. “What happened to his mom after that?”
“She left the boys with their grandparents, Lorraine and Sylvester, and just never came back. Lorraine died not long after, so Sylvester was left to take care of them. And he was so grief-stricken, he didn’t pay much attention to the boys for a while. I guess that’s when Jesse turned bad. I wish I’d have understood that back then. It might have saved me years of counseling…no offense.”
“None taken.”
As soon as Margaret left, Leigh got on her laptop and searched online for news related to the alleged shootings. It didn't take long. Her search led her to the Beach Pointe Tribune's archives, where in a little sidebar article, a headline from 2001 read: “Man Gunned Down by Wife in Drunken Rage.” She kicked herself for not thinking to search for this earlier, though she wasn't surprised she hadn't heard about it before. Small town gossip ran rampant, but it often overshadowed dirty little secrets like this.
There were no photographs, but a short and simple account of what happened:
A woman is hospitalized and a man dead after a double shooting yesterday. Deputy Sheriff Ken Stanton was first to arrive on the scene. According to Deputy Stanton, the victim and alleged perpetrator had a history of alcoholism and domestic violence. It culminated in yesterday's tragic incident during which Lori Maddox, a Beach Pointe native, and her husband Steve Maddox exchanged gunfire in their trailer on Paradise Lane. Mrs. Maddox sustained gunshots in the leg and shoulder, while Mr. Maddox was shot in the chest and died at the scene. Two children, sons ages nine and eight, witnessed the incident but were unharmed. Mrs. Maddox was taken to Beach Pointe Baptist Hospital and is expected to recover from her wounds. Steve Maddox was a veteran of the NYPD before moving to Kentucky with his wife and two children in 1991. Funeral information is not available at this time.
Leigh covered her mouth, blinking back tears. Not only had Jesse's mother killed his father, but he and his brother had witnessed it. She could only imagine how traumatizing that must have been for them. No wonder Jesse didn't want to talk about it.
Among all the clients she'd had, none of them had experienced something like this. But what if they had, and they hadn't told her about it? How many hidden traumas existed in her clients? Was she helping them at all? She shut down her laptop. Now wasn't the time to wallow in self-doubt. She had to be strong for all of them, and especially for Jesse.