something about it. And that took way too much courage.”
“But you found the courage now?” Jan asked.
“My daughters are grown,” she said. “They’ve moved away from home, though their bedrooms are still preserved for them. I can’t live there anymore. Especially now.”
“Let’s set up some appointments,” Jan said. “I want to help you through this.”
* * *
September brought Lauren’s very favorite time of the year and she began to relax as the air became crisp and cool. The harvest from the farmlands of the central valley brought out the most delicious displays of fresh fruits and vegetables in bins outside the grocery and at roadside stands. The last of the tomatoes were displayed among ears of corn and ripe apples. Next would come the squash and pumpkins. She brought home artichokes by the bagful, so cheap they were practically free. The fall colors gave her a sense of renewal, a hopefulness.
Lauren’s do-over began. She pushed herself to become friendlier with her coworkers, beginning with Bea. They had lunch together soon after their meeting and while they spent a little time discussing their war stories, they soon moved on to their very similar childhoods, both of them being raised by single mothers. Then she pushed her way into the small cliques that met to lunch together. She asked if she could join them. She was welcomed and quickly realized that she had been aloof and kept herself separate from the social side of work.
“Of course you were,” Bea told her. “I imagine you didn’t really want too many people to understand how imperfect and secretive your life really was. Time to get some counseling and support, Lauren.”
“I’m way ahead of you,” she said. “I started counseling already.”
She shared some of the beautiful vegetables she bought at out-of-the-way roadside stands. She made cookies and brought them to the office. And she kept her appointments with Jan Straight. For the first time she felt she might actually realize her hopes and dreams for a new kind of life.
She grew comfortable in her new friendships. She went out for drinks with the girls from work one evening and they all giggled like children. They were women she’d known for a long time and yet hardly knew at all. Carly, in her early fifties, was single and her widowed mother moved in with her as she grew older and had medical issues. Merline was just thirty-five, married to a contractor and the mother of three young children who drove her crazy most of the time. Shauna was forty, divorced and the mother of two teenage girls. Anne was sixty with her seventy-eight-year-old husband now in memory care. Her children were grown and didn’t live near enough to help out.
Lauren was pleasantly surprised to fit right in. They were all dealing with personal challenges of some sort. Some of them seemed rather alone, some had large families they were close with. But none of them had worked at Merriweather for as long and remained as remote as Lauren. They all supported each other and were willing to support Lauren, too.
“Sorry about the divorce, Lauren,” Carly said. “But I’m glad you decided to come out and play.”
“Me, too,” she said, and meant it.
“Congratulations on taking your life back,” Jan said after their first few sessions.
The changes that started with a new house and fresh vegetables proceeded to lunching with coworkers, seeing Lacey without arguing about the changes in their family dynamics, talking for at least a little while with Cassie almost every day and meeting Beau for an occasional glass of wine at the pub a few blocks away. She and Beau easily graduated to laughing over ordinary things like one of his fussier clients or some of her failed recipe experiments. On one lovely fall evening she made them gourmet artichokes, the leaves stuffed with blue cheese and bacon, doused in garlic butter. They ate on the front porch, drank wine and watched the sun set.
“Do you hear from him?” Beau asked her.
“Through my lawyer, and that’s all. Do you hear from her?” she asked.
“Constantly. But it’s all the same old stuff. Nothing new. She can’t turn the boys against me—they’re men now. Sadly for her, they’re men who know how mercurial she is. So she’s threatening to wipe me out, leave me completely broke.”
Lauren gasped. “What if she does?”
He smiled, a smile she had come to depend on. “I don’t care. I can start over. She can’t get more than half. Right?”
“Why do I feel