The Almost Wives Club: Kate by Nancy Warren Read Free Book Online Page A

one way or another. Remember what I said. I don’t do victims.”
    “Right.” Don’t think like a victim. “What’s the opposite of a victim?”
    “What do you think it is?”
    “Really, Lissa? Are you one of those kinds of counselors? Turning everything into a question and batting it back at me?”
    “You want to drive your ass back to LA and get a real therapist? Be my guest.”
    “Okay. I’m sorry.” Cars drove by with a dull, monotonous roar. She had to be in one of the last remaining telephone booths in North America, and this one could use an upgrade. The glass was dirty, the phone dented, and she was glad she always carried hand sanitizer. She’d doused the phone with it before putting it near her head.
    “The opposite of a victim. Victor? A winner?” She sighed. “I don’t want to win against Ted.”
    “Maybe Ted’s not the one you’re fighting,” Lissa said softly.
    “So, you don’t turn everything into a question and bat it back,” she said with a smile.
    “My approach is multi-disciplinary.”
    “Who am I fighting?” she repeated the not-quite-a-question aloud. “Is it my mother?”
    “Is it?”
    She let herself think about it and then the truth hit her. “It’s not my mother, is it? It’s me.”
    “You know what happens when you try to run away from yourself? You do a lot of running but you don’t get far.”
    “You think I should come back? Stand up to them?”
    “Actually, I don’t. Until you figure out what you’re doing, you’re going to fall back into your old patterns. I think you’re going to get braver. But you need some time.”
    Her last few weeks flashed in front of her eyes in a series of images, like a movie montage. She saw herself reflected in the mirror in the wedding dress, Evangeline pushing her breasts up to fill a dress she was never going to fit.
    She found herself telling Lissa about that last fitting, the curse, the gel pads. All of it. “That dress was like a metaphor. It wasn’t meant for me. I faded away in that dress. I literally got lost in it.”
    “Okay. That’s a good insight. In a way, that pin burst your fantasy bubble, too. Didn’t it?”
    A truck rolled into the liquor store parking lot and a guy in a ball cap got out, strode to the store and went inside.
    “Oh, my gosh. You’re right.”
    She pictured her dinner with Ted, when she’d tried to leave with him and he’d essentially told her to act more like his mother. She gasped as she realized that was what she had been headed for. The life of Millicent Carnarvon. Society wife, yes woman, and all around doormat.
    A string of other scenes flashed.
    “Maybe it’s not me I’m running away from. It’s Miss Perfect.”
    “Really? And what are you going to do about that?”
    The guy in the ball cap emerged with a six back of beer. As he sauntered past he gave her the once-over.
    And there it was. The perfect solution. “I’m going to kill Miss Perfect off.”
    “Hold on there, honey. Let’s not get carried away.”
    “No. I am. Lissa, you are brilliant. That’s it! Don’t you see? Ted and Ted’s family want me to join the family firm. They think I’ll be a real asset because I’m so squeaky clean.”
    “That’s because you are.”
    She shook her head feeling a sense of power begin to surge up from deep within her. “That’s who I used to be. Ted and his family want me because I’m so untouchable. But the best way to let them know I am not the wife they want is to destroy my own reputation.”
    “Look, Kate, you’ve been under a lot of stress lately. I’m all for you taking a little break, but don’t do anything stupid. Anything you’ll regret.”
    She felt as though a window had opened somewhere and she was finally breathing freely. “You know what I regret? I regret how much of my energy I’ve wasted trying to please other people.”
    “Speaking of which, have you told our esteemed boss lady your plans? Because she’s going to wonder if you don’t show up