Page 92 of The False Flat

Blood drained from my face. Dr. E. Schultz. Dr. Elaine Schultz. Why hadn’t her name been spelled out anywhere?

Humiliation stung the back of my throat. I’d come here wanting help with overcoming my problems. Dr. E. Schultz had, up until about a month ago, been one of them.

The utter absurdity of the whole mistake burrowed into my abdomen and up my throat, emerging first as a cough, then projecting across the room as laughter. I stood in Dr. E. Schultz’s office, laughing my ass off because what else was I going to do? Cry? I felt like crying, felt more like crying than laughing, really, but laughter was what my confused body had decided to produce.

“I don’t think this is funny.” Elaine stood still, a scowl on her prim face.

I waved my arms, then blew out a breath, desperate to agree. There was nothing funny about any of this. I picked up my purse and started toward the door, but Elaine blocked my path.

“What did you hope to accomplish by coming here?”

I shook my head. “I picked you at random. I needed to talk to someone.” A harsh breath escaped my mouth. “I can’t believe it’s you.” I didn’t know if any of this made sense to her ears, but I hardly cared.

“You didn’t know who I was when you made the appointment?” Her delicate eyebrows came together as she kept her arms across her doorway. “Genuinely didn’t know?”

I moved my head from side to side. It was hard to believe. Even I wasn’t sure this hadn’t been some kind of subconscious weird act of . . . weird act of what?

I shrugged, angry at the universe. This was what happened when I reached out for help. I ended up in the one person’s office who couldn’t possibly help me.

I’ll take “More Things Trying to Ruin My Life” for $1,000, Alex.

Alex wasn’t the host anymore, but it would always be Alex to me.

“I didn’t recognize your last name. And everywhere I looked, there was only your first initial. I wouldn’t be standing here right now if . . .” I was getting teary. I tried to breathe. I tried to get angry, anything to burn away the moisture threatening to come out of my eyes.

Dr. Schultz blew a breath through her perfectly formed lips. “I go by my first initial so it’s ambiguous if I’m a man or a woman. It’s more for conferences and such, and it shouldn’t matter, but it does.” She gestured toward the pair of light-pink chairs. “Would you like to sit down?”

My stare was blank, and nothing on my body moved except for the bastard droplet rolling down my face. Did this woman honestly think I would sit back down?

“I should go.”

“Please. Obviously, I can’t act as your therapist. While I’d like to think I could remain objective and put my feelings aside, it would be sticky, a conflict of interest. But I’d like to think your coming here was, perhaps, divine intervention. Maybe we could both have a bit of closure, work out unresolved feelings. And the hour’s already booked.”

The line between her brows as she gestured toward the two chairs again was near-pleading. And to my utter surprise, my feet moved back toward the seat instead of away from it. If I guessed, I’d sat down out of curiosity, to learn more about the woman Grant had left behind for me.

“Thank you,” she whispered, as if my being here was a favor to her. “And once I have a better understanding of why you’re seeking a therapist, I can refer you to the best one I know. That I can do. Deal?” She sat in the chair beside me and stuck out her hand.

“I guess that’s fair.” And we shook.

And then we spent the next thirty-two minutes not as patient and therapist, but as two wounded women who wanted to understand why life was the way it was. By the time I left her office, an appointment for later that same day already made with Hannah Hardiman, a therapist who specialized in grief therapy and traumatic pasts, I think Elaine and I both felt lighter.

She’d spent the past several weeks wondering what she’d done wrong and admitted to thinking Grant was the man she was going to spend the rest of her life with, even though they’d been dating for less than a year. In the end, she’d been just as intimidated by me as I was by her, twin inferiority complexes settling in both our chests. After we talked, and she realized that mine and Grant’s connection was as strong as it was and that both Grant and I had tried to fight what was happening between us, Elaine said she felt like she’d finally be able to move on, which made me feel better. But it also made everything sharper because—it was easier to get hurt.

Elaine made me realize that what Grant and I had was even more special than I’d originally thought.

Later that day, I walked into Dr. Hardiman’s office, prepared to do what needed doing.

“Tell me a little about yourself,” she’d started, her quiet confidence immediately reassuring.

I started out with the small things, the general things—where I was from, my profession, most of my hobbies—and the more I talked, the easier it became.

“Tell me about your family,” Dr. Hardiman said next.

There it was, the f word. Hadn’t I known it would come up this soon? Wasn’t that why I’d come here in the first place?

Fatigue settled over me, reached into my mouth, and pulled the words out.

“My father died thirteen months ago.” Over a year. I hadn’t registered time passing. “He became a cheating alcoholic who drank himself to death. My mother became a control freak, a coldhearted woman who didn’t even care her husband cheated or her daughter was crumbling inside. We don’t have the greatest relationship.” The words marched out of my mouth in a solid line, without emotion, like I was talking about someone else.