Day 47, Draft 1

Sunday I was nervous. Was I crazy? I’d been tempted to ask Danny for more information about the recovery group but decided not to. I wanted to find out through his eyes. Atually I didn’t think I really wanted to find out at all. So I avoided it.

I arrived at the House of Grace ten minutes earlier than I was expected. Danny was already standing in front of the big doors, chatting with a tall man with an orange t-shirt and white hair. He hadn’t seen me drive in, or at least hadn’t appeared to, so I sat in my car and watched his reflection in my side mirror. He was relaxed, happy, animated. He was glad to be here.

I finally got out of my car and walked toward the two men. Danny came to meet me with a wide smile.

“You’re here!” he said. He paused briefly and then shook my hand. “Glad you made it.” He walked with me back to the front doors and motioned to the man in orange. “Josh, this is my friend Elle. She agreed to join us tonight. Elle, this is Josh Brunson, the Celebrate Recovery pastor.”

Josh lit up and held out his hand. “Welcome to CR, Elle!” His white hair didn’t reflect his age; he looked to be below forty-five.

“Thank you,” I said, not sure what else to say.

Danny opened one of the doors. “Come on in, Elle,” he said, holding it for me. “Let’s get a cup of coffee before the meeting starts. I’ll introduce you to some people.”

As I followed him inside, fleetingly I wondered how I could let him know my name was L, not Elle.

Day 46, Draft 1

I called Sarah as I was pulling out of the restaurant parking lot.

“Hi, L,” she said.

“Hey, Sarah. I just left Kelsey’s.”

“You did? Oh, then you saw them?”

I was glad Brian had at least told her where he was taking Max. “I saw them. Was this their first visit?”

“Second, actually. He stopped in here at home once before.” She sounded tired.

“Was Max excited?”

“Very excited,” she said. “He couldn’t even sleep last night. He’s even got the rest of the day off from school. Brian is already a hero.”

I winced. “But you’re his world, Sarah,” I reminded her.

“But what if he starts to believe he needs saving from his world? Now that he has a hero, I mean.”

“I hope Brian is wise enough not to try that.”

“I do think he is,” Sarah said. “But it might happen without trying. We need to sit down and really talk about how this is going to happen.”

“So it’s going to happen?” I asked.

“I think it is,” she said. “I can’t keep his father from him. And Brian’s a good man.” She sighed. “It scares me, but then most change is hard. Eventually it will become normal, and good again. Right?”

“Right,” I said. “You’re a wise woman, Sarah.”

Day 45, Draft 1

Max hadn’t noticed me. He was watching his father talk. He was listening pretty intensely, but I couldn’t detect any hero worship on his face. Max was a smart kid. I knew this. Sarah had raised him well. I wondered what would happen now that there was another parent around.

Brian must have said something amusing, because Max’s face broke into a wide grin. It seemed so natural, so right. He nearly giggled as I watched. Brian laughed too, shaking his finger in the air at Max. Max was happy. Sure, this man was still a stranger to him, but he was happy to be sitting across the table from his dad, happy to be laughing at his jokes. This is what he’d wanted all his life.

I felt Sarah’s pain. This boy was everything to her. She’d invested countless moments and sacrifices and choices and tears into him, knowing he depended completely on her. And now that wasn’t true anymore. Now there was Brian, who hadn’t done anything. No one had known he had another son. He had never been a part of Max’s life or contributed to it in any way. Yet here he was.

I would call Sarah after lunch. I wanted to know how things were going.

“L? Are we still here?” Sal was looking at me strangely.

I pulled my concentration back to her, away from the table by the window. “Yes,” I said. “Sorry. We’re still here. Or at least I am.”

Day 44, Draft 1

Sal was perfectly dressed, as always, but her hair was disheveled, as if she’d had such a fun ride in the wind she’d forgotten to look in the bathroom mirror when she arrived. I didn’t ask.

“You look nice,” Sal said.

I glanced down at my jeans and blue tunic. Nothing special. “Thanks,” I said.

“How’s Danny?” she asked

I looked at her. “He’s fine, I would assume. No, actually he’s probably not fine. His wife left him. How’s Rose?”

“Not fine either,” Sal said. She shook her head. “I don’t understand why things have to turn out like this. Okay, I know why it happened, but I just hate it. They were such a perfect couple.”

“What makes a perfect couple?”

“So well matched,” Sal said. “Both beautiful in the same way, both strong, both successful, both going the same direction. They always seemed so natural together, as if they were meant to be. The appearance of the fairy tale.”

Ah yes, the fairy tale. Kind of like Sal’s own fairy tale. I glanced around the restaurant for inspiration and recognized a boy sitting at a table along the wall. It was Max, Sarah’s son, eating with a man whose back was turned toward me. I watched him covertly until he turned his head. It was Brian. Max was out to lunch with his father.

Day 43, Draft 1

Danny called on Thursday, just as I was leaving home to meet Sal for lunch.

“Just wanted to make sure you haven’t backed out of Sunday night,” he said. I could hear him grinning.

“I certainly haven’t,” I told him. I went back inside the house and sat down on the chair he’d sat in a few days before. “As long as you’re still going, I’m going.”

“Oh, I’m going all right,” he said. “That’s where I spend all my Sunday evenings. Wouldn’t miss it.”

“Shall I just meet you there?”

“Sure,” he said. “I’ll wait outside for you so you don’t have to brave the doors alone.”

“Awfully kind of you,” I said.

He chuckled. “Having a good week?”

I smiled inside, warming. “I am, actually,” I said. “How about you?” I wanted to kick myself as soon as the words came out. He was getting sued by the woman he loved. Totally a good week. Idiot.

“Ah, not too bad,” he said. “All things considered, anyway. I’m glad I’ve got your expert help on my side.”

I was relieved at his casual save. “I don’t know how expert it is,” I said, “but I’m glad to help.”

“All right then, I’ll meet you at the House of Prayer at 4:00 on Sunday. I’ll be waiting for you.”

Day 42, Draft 1

I decided to feign ignorance.”We certainly do all botch love,” I said. “Thankfully I don’t have much personal experience with love myself. I let the rest of you do the experimenting for me.” I laughed lightly.

Lila looked at me. “Once bitten, twice shy, eh?” she said.

I grimaced, then grinned to hide it. I was done with this dinner.

“It’s okay,” she said. “It’s none of my business. I suppose helping dozens of divorces would sour one’s perspective anyway. You’re probably wise.”

“On the contrary, I think I’m ever so much more prepared for love when it comes, having seen first hand what destroys it.” I laughed again, still passing it off as a joke. “Someday I’ll be the most educated lover in town.”

Lila smiled and shook her head. “You don’t need education for love. It has its own grammar, and there are no rules. Sure, history can repeat itself, but it can be created brand new, too.” She shrugged. “Anything goes.”

“Until it doesn’t.”

“Yes, until it doesn’t.” She stared at the wall for a minute, and I was interested again now that we weren’t talking about me anymore. “I don’t regret falling in love with Alex,” she said. “I thought I did, before any of this happened, but I don’t. It was real. I followed my heart, and I wouldn’t go back and do it any other way.” She straightened suddenly and briskly sucked up the last of her soda. “Thank you for inviting me to dinner, L. I enjoyed it very much.”

“So did I,” I said, and I meant it. Apart from her probing questions, anyway. “Thank you for joining me.”

She stood up.”I can tell that you and I will make a great team. Let’s give Alex his new life. As long as I get mine too.”

Day 41, Draft 1

I looked at her without words. I didn’t mean to appear so dumbfounded; it’s just that I really was. I barely knew her, and here she was asking about my love life? Not only that, but my botched love life. Whatever magic we’d found in the Grand China that night was officially over for me. I hadn’t brought this stranger into my favorite restaurant just to be interrogated.

“I don’t mean to pry,” Lila said. “It just seems that you see so much of other people’s lives that I figure it must be nice to have someone want to see some of yours. And we’ve all botched love, honey.”

I shook my head, trying to think of something to say that wasn’t too dismissive. I liked my clients not asking about my life. It wasn’t a bad thing.

Day 40, Draft 1

“So he felt the incompatibility too?” I asked. “The other day you said you shouldn’t have married him. Is that what he thought too?”

Lila smiled, almost with relief, I thought. “For a long time I held claim to the stupidity. I was the one who made a bad choice, I was the one who got what I didn’t want, I was the one who deserved more. And then I realized I wasn’t holding onto my own stupidity but my own opinion of him as a failure. And then I saw that he wasn’t confident his choice to marry me was any better than my choice to marry him.” She chuckled. “We fought it out one night. Actually argued about who had been the most stupid for agreeing to the marriage. And then he shrugged and said, ‘Well, I’ve always known you were half stupid. It’s why I married you.’ I remember feeling I should take offense but not being sure if he meant it in a negative way or a positive. I let it go, and we brushed our teeth and went to bed and fell asleep curled together. It was the strangest thing.”

So she wasn’t all scorn after all. I could see her eyes shine with something softer. I leaned toward her a little. “You miss him, don’t you?”

“Blast it all, I do.” She took a bracing gulp of her soda. Behind her I saw Jay take note and grab a new glass to fill. “I don’t want to. I feel like we’re grown-ups, we can make our own choices, we never were well matched anyway. We’ve been through hell together. I should be thanking him for ending it.” She sighed. “When he left I realized I’d been hoping that deep down inside he was madly in love with me, couldn’t live without me, I completed him. That sort of thing. I wanted to be necessary. And, I guess, it was my feeble way of loving him.” She took another gulp. “I don’t blame him for leaving.”

Jay arrived at our table and put a full glass of soda in front of Lila. He waited while she transferred her straw and then took the empty glass with him.

“So.” Lila had thrown off her introspective mood and was looking at me intently. “What about you? What love did you botch?”

Day 39, Draft 1

I wasn’t actually sure I wanted to take Lila to the Grand China. It was my place. Kadek and Jay were my discovery, and I didn’t think Lila could appreciate my connection with them. Plus I wanted the Grand China to be my escape from the world — maybe even, to quote Lila, my magic.

And maybe it really was magic, because Lila turned out to appreciate everything. The restaurant was very quiet on a Tuesday evening, and though at first Kadek and Jay gave us space, we were soon all laughing and talking together as if Lila had been part of the whole thing and Alex’s unfaithfulness was only a bad taste in the mouth that could be cured with another plate of rice and orange chicken.

I found myself amazed. How could it be this easy to expand? Lila was the last person I’d have expected to bring with me into the warm gold world of this place, but here she was, and it was okay. She hadn’t ruined it. What other parts of my life was I too afraid to expand?

When Jay had taken our dishes to the kitchen, Lila grew quiet and looked at me. “I feel the magic,” she said. “Alex walking past, Jen sitting there, looking up, recognizing him.” She nodded over at an empty table near the buffet bar with the coconut shrimp. “While I was at home, doing something I thought was important, I’m sure.”

I looked at her, surprised. “Was he unhappy?” I asked.

“Not in so many words,” she answered. “But I thought all his energy was immature. I preferred to stay at home and do profitable activities, so he often went alone to wherever he went.” She looked toward the kitchen where Kadek and Jay were teasing each other and laughing. “I regret it now.”

Day 38, Draft 1

“You can always offer that and see if he’ll accept,” I said.

Lila sighed. “No, he’d probably think he was cheating me out of something. He’ll be fair to a fault, just so he knows he’s done his duty. So he can go off and marry the new girl.” She was sitting on the chair Danny had inhabited the day before, and I was surprised to find myself thinking of it as reserved for him, his own seat.

I took myself in hand. It was time to eat, and Sunday was still five days away. My client was feeling blue and needed some cheering.

“I’m hungry,” I said. “Want to join me for dinner?”

Lila looked at me doubtfully. She’d just confided that she wanted to start over in life and had resigned herself to Alex being halfway decent about the process of leaving her, and here I was talking about dinner. I didn’t blame her for being confused.

“I’m a little old fashioned,” I said. “When life weighs me down, I find it helpful to let someone else serve me a meal. How about the Grand China?”

She looked at me.

“Oh yes, right, probably not the Grand China.” I almost giggled at my poor memory. “Sorry about that.” I was disappointed; I wanted to see Kadek.

“Actually –” Lila squared her shoulders. “Actually let’s do the Grand China. I’ve never been there, but I think I should. Maybe the magic will work for me too.”