THE SHADOWED ONYX: A DIAMOND ESTATES NOVEL (10 page)

“So how’s business?” That should help keep the attention off herself.

Mom beamed. “Great. Dad and I made a big sale today.

Should make for a good Christmas in the Christianson home.”

“Congrats. What’d you sell?”

“You know that house out at the lake with the wraparound porch?” A grin pulled at the corners of Dad’s mouth.

“Sure. The one a few doors down from our new-old house?” If they ever finished the rehab so they could actually move in.

“That’s the one. We sold it for more than the asking price.” Dad wiggled his eyebrows. Nothing made the man happier than coming out on top of a good deal.

“Wow. That’s awesome.” For them. Not so much for the buyer. Buyer beware and all that good stuff.

“Yeah. It turned out well for everyone.” Mom spread her napkin in her lap. “As for the rest of the weekend, we still have a pretty full day tomorrow. We’ll go to church, and then Dad and I have a couple of showings after.”

Joy shrugged. “I figured. It’s cool. I have tons of homework.” But Joy at church? That would be interesting to say the least. Would some kind of spiritual alarm bell go off if she walked through the doors of the sanctuary?

Dad lifted his hands for the waitress to set the tall milkshakes down. “We’re just sorry we’re not around much this weekend.”

Or any weekend. But Joy would never say that to them. The mommy-daddy guilt would be too much for them to bear. They’d never believe that she actually preferred it that way. Or maybe they’d believe her, but then they’d worry what it meant.

Mom glanced at Dad with a question in her eyes. He gave a soft nod.

Oh great. Here it comes. The mental stability check.

“Okay, so your dad and I are very concerned about you, sweetheart. We want to know what’s going on with you. It’s time to be honest with us. How are you?”

Joy took a long draw on her straw, filling her mouth with the fudgy shake. How was she? The line from
Steel Magnolias
welled in her chest. Joy wanted to blurt out
“I’m fine! I’m fine! I can run all the way to Texas and back if I wanted to … but Melanie can’t!”
But there was no way Mom and Dad could handle that kind of emotion. “I’m okay. I’m sad. I’m mad. I had my life turned upside down, so it’s going to take awhile. But I’m going to make it.” Joy shrugged. “I have no other choice.”

Dad reached a hand across the table and covered Joy’s.

The warmth of the human contact drew her pain to the surface and tears welled up. She blinked rapidly, keeping the flow at bay.

“Joy honey, we’re concerned about you.” Dad squeezed her hand. “I just barely touched you, and now you’re ready to burst. You’re keeping your emotions in, and they’re just bubbling at the surface ready to pour out at any moment.”

As if to punctuate his point, a big tear coursed down Joy’s cheek. Mercifully, Dad didn’t point it out.

Pat saved the day. No one spoke as she set a perfect plate of greasy diner food in front of them. “Need anything else?” Pat wiped her hands on her white apron and glanced at each of them.

Dad smiled and shook his head. “I think we’re fine. Thanks.”

Easy for him to say.

Eyes back on Joy, Dad dropped the smile. “Your mom and I think you need to see someone.” He looked at Mom. “We think you need some professional help.”

Joy dropped her fork. “Professional help? What do you mean? Like a shrink?” They couldn’t be serious.

Mom shook her head. “No. Not a shrink—that’s a psychiatrist. What you need is a counselor. Someone who can help you talk through what you’re feeling. Help you come to terms with all you’ve lost. Melanie and Austin on the same day, and in tragic ways.”

She forgot to mention faith, hope, and love. Those three were gone, too.

Mom reached across the table and squeezed Joy’s hand. “It’s been a horrible time for you. And you probably carry some misplaced guilt about the circumstances.”

How did Mom know? If she could see it, then Joy was probably right in feeling guilty. Did everyone else think it was her fault? Did Maggie think it was Joy’s fault her daughter was dead? Joy pushed her plate away. No point in trying to pretend she had it all together. They knew the truth.

“… and your dad and I, we have to take care of you and protect you, and we can’t know what’s going on inside your head unless you let us in there. Right now, you’re closed off, and I understand. Self-protection is natural to a degree, but we want you to see someone professional who can help you break through some of that stuff.”

What stuff? Like how she’d never trust another relationship? How she’d probably never get married? How Joy’s view of what it means to be a best friend is shattered into a million tiny pieces along with her heart? That kind of stuff? Impossible.

Dad nodded, and a crumb fell from his bushy silver mustache. “We love you. You’re everything to us, and we’ll do anything to make sure you come out of this strong. Right now, this is the best option we see. We’re here for you of course, but we don’t have the ability to really know how to help you.”

Their words made sense. Joy would have recommended the same thing to a friend. It was so different when it was happening to her though. “Who will I see? And when will I go?”

“I’m not sure if you heard about this, but they hired a permanent family therapist at church, just this week. She moved here from New Jersey. Mary Alice Gianetti. She has an office at the church, and she’ll be meeting with you once a week on Mondays for about an hour.”

Mom’s words tumbled over one another like they always did when she was nervous. It was why she didn’t make a good salesperson. And why she wasn’t selling Joy on the concept of therapy.

“You said Monday. Is that like two days from now?” How could Joy get herself out of it by then?

“Yeah. Why not get started right away?”

Joy could think of a few reasons. “Is this open for discussion?”

Dad shook his head. “It’s happening, sweetie. Has to.”

Joy nodded. Wow. Good ol’ Mary Alice Gianetti from New Jersey wouldn’t know what hit her.

M
om thundered her Saab mid-life-crisis Turbo into the church parking lot Monday after volleyball practice. She pressed the satellite P
OWER
button silencing Bill Cosby on the comedy channel. Did Mom think listening to the same comedian’s spiel Joy had been hearing since she was a little girl would do the trick to help her forget about her best friend’s suicide? She couldn’t be that lame.

Joy closed her eyes. She’d have to walk across that big parking lot, through those familiar doors, sit down with the one stranger in the whole church—the counselor, Mary Alice Gianetti—and talk about her most raw feelings. Sounded like a party.

For once, as they left the car and walked toward the building, the parking lot seemed too small, the distance too short. Mom leaned her body into the back of Joy’s arm. Was she trying to hold her up or make sure she didn’t get away? Probably a little of both. Now there was a thought. Joy could take off. Run until she couldn’t run any longer. Problem was, the demons that plagued her would surely follow close at her heels.

The double-door entrance rose up under the steeple that pointed to heaven. Like most churches, this one believed it had a special “in” with God. A fast track to the pearly gates. Maybe it did … but, if so, that meant so many other people who thought they were right, too, were going to be really surprised one day. Joy never heard the pastors address the beliefs of other faiths. They preached as though they assumed everyone understood and agreed that their teaching was right, so by default the others missed the mark. What if they were wrong? Someone had to be.

Joy had already mostly proven to herself the church was completely off about one very important thing she’d been taught, and had believed, since she was a little kid. Supposedly, people died and then beamed right up to heaven. Simple as flipping a switch. But even though she wanted more proof, Melanie made it look pretty likely that when people died, they didn’t, or at least some of them didn’t, immediately go to be with Jesus.

So the pastor was wrong. And so was the Bible. Now, what was Joy to do with that bit of knowledge? Where did it put her faith in everything she’d ever been taught?

Maybe she’d make that the first question she’d ask her counselor. What happened to people after they died? Or better yet, what do you do about your faith in God when you prove Him wrong? If even a professional gave the party-line answer to either of those questions, as Joy expected her to, then she’d know that Mary Alice Gianetti really was as clueless as the rest of them. Or that there was no answer.

Mom held the door open and ushered Joy through. Her eyes searched Joy’s for signs of something. Poor Mom. The days of their carefree, chatty relationship seemed so distant. Now it was always somber with talk, or unspoken questions, about death, suicide, and betrayal. Joy shivered and pulled her arms tight around her body.

They approached the pastor’s office where light crept from under the doorway. Don’t knock, Mom. Just keep going.

Phew. She moved past the office door and zeroed in on the open door at the end of the hall. Mom poked her head through the open doorway. “Mary Alice? I’m here with Joy.”

Last chance to run. Joy stared through the window at the end of the hallway. Those snow-covered cornfields looked inviting.

“Oh hey, Peg. Great. Send her in. If you want to, you can wait in the coffee shop. I’ll send her down when we’re through.”

Mom nodded and held her hand out toward the office. “Go ahead, sweetheart. It’ll be fine.”

Whatever. Joy shoved her hands deep into her pockets and skulked past Mom through the doorway.

“See you in a little bit, sweetie.”

Joy nodded.
Stop being so fake, Mom
. Didn’t she know everyone could see through her? It was okay to be normal. Or at least some version of normal.

“Hi, Joy. I’m Mary Alice. Come on in and have a seat.” She stood from her desk with her hand outstretched, bangles tinkling from wrist to elbow, and gestured toward the corner.

Well, at least Joy thought she was standing. Mary Alice Gianetti could not have been five feet tall. Joy stepped toward the stuffed chairs and sank into one. The counselor followed her and chose the blue one across from Joy’s red one.

Mary Alice Gianetti crossed her denim-clad legs, her three-inch strappy gold heels dangling from her toe. So how tall was this woman really? And what was it about the counselor’s name that made Joy say the whole thing every single time? Mary just wouldn’t cut it. Mary Alice just sounded weird.

“So, Joy …”

Okay, if this lady was lame enough to say something like “tell me what brings you here today,” Joy was out of there.

“We’re actually going to do things a little bit differently than I usually would at a first visit. What I’d like to do is talk about the future. The past is the past. It’ll be there—we’ll get to it, but there’s a lot of tragedy in the past from what I understand about what you’ve gone through recently. More important is to try to rediscover what made you who you are. I’d like to help you find your purpose again and prove you’re still in there.” She tapped on her chest. “The real you.”

Joy shrugged. The more she could keep Mary Alice Gianetti talking, the less she’d have to say herself.

“So let’s start by looking ahead. What is the one dream job you could really see yourself doing one day?” The counselor waited with her pen poised over her yellow legal pad.

Joy looked up at the ceiling tiles. Some had rings of water stains. Two were missing completely. Surprising for a church where everything was usually impeccable.

The counselor kicked off her heels then drew her legs up into the chair and crossed them. Her bright purple satin tunic billowed up for a brief moment, and Joy saw a taut tummy—years of exercise, no doubt. The tan courtesy of the local beds.

“I don’t know.” Brilliant. All that buildup, and
I don’t know
was the best Joy could come up with for her first words ever spoken in a counseling session?

Mary Alice waited.

“There was a time when I thought I would be a veterinarian, but I don’t know anymore.” Joy shrugged.

“Why don’t you know? What do you mean you don’t know anymore?”

Was she joking? Joy searched the wall for proof of a college degree. “Well, I think it’s just with all that’s gone on, I don’t know who I am anymore. I don’t know what matters to me.” As she stopped and thought about it, where had the passion gone? The shelves of animal books lining her room. The National Geographic DVDs and magazines piled on the floor beside her desk. The applications to the best vet schools in the country that she’d collected early and stacked on her nightstand where they’d been for the past year, completed and waiting until the first moment she could send them.

Oh, and she couldn’t forget the animal first-aid kit she’d had beneath her bed since she was eight, waiting for a broken wing to splint. Time was, she hadn’t gone a day, rarely a few hours, without thinking about the clinic she’d open near the lake after she’d proven herself by working for the Animal Clinic off of Route 30 for a few years.

Joy hadn’t thought for one moment about that dream or any other since That Day.

“Aha.” The doc held up a finger. “My point exactly. You’re still Joy. What God put into you to make you unique is all still there. Who you were before your friend’s death is still who you are after her death. Circumstances can affect the way you look at life, but they don’t change who you are inside.”

Not buying it. Circumstances absolutely did change a person from the inside out. How could this woman try to say anything otherwise? Joy opened her mouth to protest, but what would be the point of arguing?

The counselor nodded. “See what I mean? We need to spend our time focusing on how to reclaim the Joy you once knew.”

Joy’s deep questions about life, death, and eternity probably had to wait until next time. Though she had little hope Mary Alice Gianetti would have any answers.

All the talk of the future made Joy want to cling to the past.

She pointed her trusty Bug toward Ogallala Cemetery. The last time she’d been there was the last day she saw Melanie in her physical form. In her casket. That smell. Oh, it had been awful. She noticed it the moment she walked into the funeral home. “Where is that smell coming from?” she’d whispered to her mom.