The Art of Saying Goodbye - Ellyn Bache [89]
“No.” The realization scared her.
“It wouldn’t hurt to have someone to talk you through it. I know someone good. You can call her at midnight if you need to, and she’ll come to the rescue. Of course, I’ll come to the rescue, too, if you need me. I’m only next door. But it doesn’t hurt to have a safety net.”
Never did Paisley say, You need this because you’re crazy.
The lawyer Paisley found was known as a barracuda, though his sharp teeth wouldn’t be necessary, considering how quickly Bill agreed to everything Julianne wanted. The therapist was good, too, though Paisley had to drive Julianne to the first appointment or she never would have gone. In the end, Julianne went to the woman’s office once a week until after the divorce, after she’d returned to school. After she believed, for certain, that she’d really never hurt a child she loved and shouldn’t hurt herself, either. And wouldn’t.
It didn’t occur to Julianne until months later what a risk Paisley had taken that summer afternoon at Novella. If they’d been arrested—and Julianne supposed she was, at the very least, an accessory—then she would have been humiliated, embarrassed, humbled. But given Bill’s special talents, it wouldn’t have affected his surgical practice, or his income. Paisley was more vulnerable. “Newspaper Editor’s Wife Arrested for Shoplifting” the headline might have read. Mason wrote a popular editorial. He was a public figure. The rest of the press would have had a field day, bringing him down. No wonder Paisley had been pale and shaking when they’d left the store.
Sometimes Julianne wondered what other feats of benevolent daring Paisley had undertaken, given her penchant for sensing how to help even before people told her what was wrong. She’d practically assaulted Andrea’s husband for his apathy when his daughter was sick. She’d courted arrest and humiliation for Julianne. She’d offered aid as startling and effective as electric shock, only better. Who else had received it? She supposed she’d never know.
When Paisley’s house went on the market not many months after the shoplifting incident, Julianne briefly indulged a fantasy that Paisley was selling because of her. Maybe she was embarrassed about their afternoon of not-quite-crime. Maybe she couldn’t bear to watch Julianne go in and out of her house day after day, knowing what she knew.
Later, she laughed at herself for thinking that. Paisley didn’t go very far, only up to Lindenwood Court. And when Melody came along, it seemed clear that Paisley and Mason had moved simply because they were trying to have another child and wanted a bigger house for their family.
She and Paisley had gone back to their old ways by then—seeing each other at neighborhood functions, in the supermarket, at the mall.
But for one afternoon, they had been bound to each other in a way Julianne had never been bound to anyone before or after, in a way Julianne suspected Paisley never had been, either. As far as Julianne knew, no one else knew Paisley had ever shoplifted so much as a stick of gum. It was something only the two of them shared. It had carried Julianne all these years.
So when Paisley got sick, and came into that room for Julianne to examine, it was no wonder Julianne sensed something wrong, the moment they touched. She had a special bond with Paisley. If her fingers flew straight to the source of the trouble, it was no wonder.
Chapter 21
Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving morning dawns cold, just as Ginger thinks it should, a thin glaze of frost across the lawn, one of the first all season. She hasn’t cooked Thanksgiving dinner for years, not since she took over the store and her sister, Sally, declared that even a person like Ginger didn’t have the energy to host a big meal one day and spend long hours at work the next. In the retail business, an ad for a high-ticket item like a spa can bring in enough traffic to make the Friday after Thanksgiving chaotic, even if it doesn’t result in a sale. Eating at Sally’s has become a family