Shakespeare's Counselor by Charlaine Harris Read Free Book Online

I reminded myself that, after all, Tamsin was getting paid to do her job, and she had been trained to cope with the inevitable depression that must follow hearing so many tales of misery and evil.
    Jack wasn’t yet asleep, so I told him what I’d been thinking.
    â€œShe listens to a lot of bad stuff, yeah,” he said, his voice quiet, coming out of the darkness. “But look at the courage, look at the toughness. The determination. She hears that, too. Look how brave you all are.”
    I couldn’t say anything at all. My throat clogged. I was glad it was dark. At last, I was able to pat Jack’s shoulder; and a minute later, I heard by his breathing that he was asleep. Before it could overcome me, too, I thought, This is why Jack is here beside me. Because he can think of saying something like he just said .
    That was a fine reason.

T HREE
    By my third therapy session, Tuesday night was no longer a time I dreaded.
    I’d had hours sitting in a car, standing in a convenience store, and drifting around a mall—all in pursuit of the Worker’s Comp. claimant—to analyze our counseling sessions. I had to admit I couldn’t tell if Tamsin Lynd was following some kind of master plan in directing us along the path to recovery. It seemed to me that often we just talked at random; though from time to time I could discern Tamsin’s fine hand directing us.
    Not one of the women in the group was someone I would’ve picked for a friend, with the exception of Janet Shook. Sandy McCorkindale made me particularly edgy. She tried very hard to be the unflawed preacher’s wife, and she very nearly succeeded. Her veneer of good modest clothes and good modest makeup, backed by an almost frenzied determination to keep the smooth surface intact, was maintained at a tremendous, secret cost. I had lived too close to the edge of despair and mental illness not to recognize it in others, and Sandy McCorkindale was a walking volcano. I was willing to bet her family was used to living on tiptoe, perhaps even quite unaware they were doing so.
    The other women were OK. I’d gradually learned their personal histories. In a town the size of Shakespeare, keeping identities a secret was impossible. For example, not only did I know that Carla (of the croaking voice) was Carla Preston, I knew that her dad had retired from Shakespeare Drilling and Exploration, and her mom took the lunch money at the elementary school cafeteria. I knew Carla smoked like a chimney when she went out the back door of the Health Center, she’d been married three times, and she said everything she thought. She’d become a grandmother when she was thirty-five.
    Melanie Kleinhoff no longer looked quite as sullen, and despite her youth and pale doughy looks, she set herself goals and met them (no matter how difficult) to the point of idiocy. She had never graduated from high school and she was still married to the man whose brother had raped her. Firella Bale, probably the most educated of all of us—with the exception of our counselor—seemed baffled sometimes by how to fit in; she was black, she was smart and deliberate, she had taught others, and she worked in a position of authority. She was a single mother and her son was in the army.
    Sandy, Janet, and I had never doubted that we could share our problems with a woman of another race. Tamsin seemed a little more careful of Carla and Melanie. We would all have known right away if Carla was uncomfortable with Firella, since Carla had few thoughts she didn’t set right out in front of us. Luckily, she seemed to have passed that particular rock in the road. Melanie hadn’t, and we could watch her prejudice struggle with her good sense and her own kindness. Our common fate transcended our color or economic status or education, but that was easier for some of us to acknowledge than others.
    I had neither witnessed any more incidents nor heard any rumors about