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“You’ve made your point.”
“I thought I had the first time.”
Shauna left that alone and changed the subject. “Did you talk to the people in Seattle?”
“Not yet. I’ll call them tomorrow.”
“They’ll be shocked when you tell them what’s happened to you, why you won’t be there as scheduled.”
“I’m sure.”
“Will they let you postpone until after you’ve finished rehab?”
“Probably. If they don’t, fuck ’em. I don’t need the job.”
She thunked her glass onto the coffee table and stood up. “I think you do. I think you need to resume everything that was an aspect of your former life. But first off, you need to sober up.”
“I’m not through drinking yet.”
“You’re plastered. I’m going to fix you something to eat, and you’re going to eat it if I have to force-feed you.”
“I told you, I’m not hungry,” he said, raising his voice.
“Well, I’m starving,” she said, raising hers louder.
“Be my guest.” He gestured toward the kitchen.
“Fine. Sit here and wallow in whatever it is you’re wallowing in.” She retrieved her shoulder bag and shoes, then stomped from the room.
Calder was unmoved by their argument and uninterested in making peace. So what if he was being a shit? She had gone against his express wishes about using his name as leverage to get interviews. The Whitley woman seemed to have been okay with talking on camera, but he was certain that others shared his and Elle Portman’s reluctance to make their personal suffering available for public viewing.
Shauna would never understand because she hadn’t experienced the upending calamity they had. Resume every aspect of his former life?That may take more than a measly seven days, Shauna.
He should shout that at her. Or maybe confide it to her earnestly and humbly, beseeching her to understand. But he didn’t have the urge to do either. He feared that no matter what he said, she would never get it.
A strikeout ended the ball game. He fumbled around to find the remote and switched off the TV, then rested his head against the firm back of the sofa and closed his eyes.
He must be drunker than he’d thought, because he started thinking about rainbows, about the blurred line on the color spectrum where green merged with blue after blue had borrowed a pale shade of violet from its other neighboring stripe.
He thought about how one hue faded into the other in an ever-changing melding. Which of those colors dominated at any given moment was dependent on the light.
The light and the angle of her head. And the sheen of tears that had always seemed to be on the brink of spilling over the black, black lashes of her lower eyelids.
The description of her eyes that had eluded him earlier came to him now, and he whispered, “Like opals.”
Chapter 11
Two months later…
Does anyone want to lead us off today?” Dr. Alison Sinclair looked around the circle of twenty or so people in attendance.
The group therapy sessions were conducted in a basement room of the medical building where she shared a practice with four other psychologists. All were well qualified, but, in Elle’s opinion, Dr. Sinclair’s calm disposition was perfectly suited to guiding this group.
They met once weekly. During the meetings, she had gently urged each of them to talk through their impressions of that fateful day, as well as to share how they were coping—or not—with its aftereffects.
No one responded immediately to her invitation to launch today’s discussion. There was a nervous shifting of feet, the squeak of metal as someone squirmed in his chair, a couple of dry coughs.
Then, after a full minute had passed, someone blurted, “I’m mad as hell.”
