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Taryn, seated beside Sandrine, raised her hand. “I feel sad—obviously. I guess that’s stupid to say.”
Sandrine smiled. “No, Taryn, it’s not stupid at all.”
“Yes it is,” Nicola interjected. Only her head was visible from the cocoon of her brown blanket. The short locks of her hair stuck out like the points of a star. “Of course you’re sad. We’re all sad. We’re here because we’re sad.”
“Nicola, please,” Sandrine said. “We talked about this last night after your outburst at dinner. You’re very welcome to express your feelings but please do it in a respectful, civil manner.”
Taryn scratched her throat again, glaring at Nicola. “You’re very disrespectful—especially to Sandrine.”
“Please, Taryn,” Nicola spat back. Her head rose up from the blanket like a snake, exposing her slender neck. “Stop acting like this woman is the greatest therapist in the world. How do we even know she’s qualified to help any of us”—here her hands emerged from under the blanket to form air quotes—“‘process our trauma’? How do we know she’s qualified at all?”
Sandrine’s mouth hung open.
“Where is this even coming from?” Alice laughed. “You didn’t research her before you signed up for this retreat? Must be nice to spend money like that. I had to work three extra shifts just to cover the cost of this!”
Josie said, “My therapist recommended Sandrine. You didn’t hear about her through yours?”
Nicola faltered. Her pinched features slackened. Josie wasn’t sure what it was that flashed across her face. Confusion, maybe. She looked at Brian. He shifted in his chair, looking around at each one of them sheepishly. “We, uh, don’t have a therapist.”
Nicola added, “There was no requirement that we be referred by a therapist.”
Alice straightened her spine and smoothed her blanket over her knees. “You two lost a child, in one of the most horrific ways possible, and you don’t have a therapist? At all?”
“Alice,” Sandrine said softly. “It’s okay. Mental health treatment is often difficult to obtain.”
Josie could tell by Alice’s posture that she wasn’t going to let the issue go. “But you thought that a week in a group environment was going to solve all your problems?” Alice said to Brian incredulously.
“You are missing the point,” Nicola said. “It doesn’t matter how we got here. What matters is that the person who brought us here is not qualified to help us at all. We’ve all got trauma. How do we know Sandrine does? Because she says she does?”
Again, Alice laughed but there was an edge to it now. “Yeah, that’s kind of how it works. It wouldn’t be appropriate for her to ask us to carry her baggage as well as ours.”
Sandrine held up a hand to silence them all. “Nicola, I’m very sorry that you feel this way, that you’ve lost confidence in my ability to help you—”
Brian interrupted. “Sandrine, I think what my wife is getting at is maybe it would help if you shared just a bit of your own journey with us.”
Sandrine smiled stiffly. “I’m afraid not, Brian. I will not be put in the position of having to ‘prove’ that I am qualified to treat patients based on things that happened to me. I’m qualified due to my education, research, and experience in the field. I’ve worked with hundreds of patients.”
Nicola pressed on. “But how do we know you’re not a fraud? Not everything can be learned by reading books or taking college classes. It’s completely different when you experience something first-hand. Everyone in this room has seen trauma up close and personal. Except you!”
Alice slid to the edge of her chair. Color had returned to her cheeks. “I think finding Meg’s dead body counts as trauma, Nicola. Can you just drop this—whatever this is? We’re all tired. Sandrine has done her best to keep everything moving along in spite of some pretty extraordinary circumstances.”
Ignoring Alice, Nicola threw off her cover and stood up, stepping toward Sandrine. “I’ve seen a dead body before.” She looked over toward Brian, for encouragement or permission, Josie wasn’t sure. His face was inscrutable. Turning back to Sandrine, Nicola continued, voice shaking. “Our daughter’s dead body. The police took me to the drainage ditch and showed her to me. They made me go down into the muck to make sure they had the right child. I had to climb through sewage to get to her. To see my baby desecrated.”
“What?” Josie blurted out.
If Nicola heard her, she didn’t show it, keeping her gaze on Sandrine. Her voice gained strength, getting louder. “Has anything like that ever happened to you? Have you ever lost a child?”
She said the word “child” with extra emphasis, her throat quivering. Sandrine blinked, eyes filling with tears. She looked around the room at each one of them. Josie saw her lower lip tremble ever so slightly. The day—Meg’s death, all the hours out in the cold, the grief, confusion, and fear—it was all getting to her. Sandrine had been unflappable all week. Josie had the sense that she was used to being in charge and that angry, combative people did not intimidate her but this situation, with the loss of Meg during a blizzard, was uncharted territory for her. She was their de facto leader. If she cracked, what would happen?
And what in the hell was Nicola talking about?
Josie put her blanket aside and stood up. “Nicola, are you saying that the police took you to the site where your daughter was found for an ID?”
Nicola spun on her. A momentary blip of confusion crossed her face but was quickly replaced with a scowl. “What? Yes. It was—it was horrible.”
Josie put her hands on her hips. Just the small movements reminded her how sore her body felt, but she could not let this go. How she wanted to sit back down and just go to sleep. The detective in her would not allow it. “How soon after she was found?”
She was aware of everyone staring at her now. She knew it sounded insensitive. Itwasinsensitive to ask a grieving parent these types of questions about the murder of her daughter when there was no investigation at stake.
