The Backup Plan

by Sherryl Woods

  Her mother nodded. “But I’m still going to speak to your father about this. I know he had a hand in it. He’s put way too much pressure on that boy.”

  Dinah regarded her with concern. “Don’t you and Dad already have enough going on between you? Tommy Lee’s not a boy, Mother. He’s a grown man who knows his own mind. Let him handle Dad.”

  Her mother’s gaze faltered at that, but her chin set stubbornly. “It doesn’t matter. Tommy Lee is our son. I won’t let him be pushed aside.”

  Dinah saw she wasn’t going to win. Besides, she had her own battles to worry about. Tomorrow’s appointment with the shrink was going to be here a whole lot sooner than she’d like.

  17

  Dinah was on her fourth trip up in the elevator of the small office building where psychologist Warren Blake had his offices. She’d ridden right back down three times. Hopefully this time she’d be able to make her self actually exit the stupid thing. It was going to be embarrassing if she started running into the same people on one of these trips.

  This time at least she was alone in the car. She punched the button for the seventh floor, then stood at the back of the elevator in a corner as it whooshed up way too quickly. The doors opened onto a now familiar carpeted corridor. She sucked in a deep breath and tentatively stepped out, holding the elevator door so it couldn’t close behind her.

  “If I go back down one more time, it just proves that I really do need to be on that shrink’s couch,” she muttered. For a woman who once had been intrepid enough to face bullets or land mines, this office visit shouldn’t be such a ridiculous ordeal, she thought, hoping that the self-derision would motivate her to walk down that hallway.

  With a great deal of effort, she made herself release the death grip she had on the door. She winced as it closed, taking away her option to retreat.

  For an instant, she truly regretted not accepting Cord’s offer to come with her. It would have been nice to have him here to goad her into doing what she needed to do. Then she could have spent a few days resenting him, but at least she would be inside the office and not cowering here in the hallway, proving to herself what a ridiculous ninny she’d become.

  She glanced at the number on the office door across from her, then counted down three doors to a suite that had to be Dr. Blake’s. It wasn’t so far, she encouraged herself. She could walk down there and stand outside until she got her bearings. She could still change her mind.

  But when she was facing the heavy oak door with its discreet sign, Warren Blake, PhD, it suddenly swung open and a man with an open, friendly face and twinkling brown eyes stood there gazing back at her.

  “Dinah Davis?”

  Caught and unable to speak, she nodded.

  “I thought so. I recognize you from TV. I’m Warren Blake.” To her surprise, he came into the hallway and let the door close. “You running late or running scared?”

  She grinned despite the tension churning in her stomach. “Scared,” she admitted.

  He shrugged. “Happens all the time. We could go downstairs for coffee, if you’d feel more comfortable.”

  Relief washed over her. “Really?”

  “Really,” he confirmed, then warned, “Don’t get too excited, though. You still have to spend fifty-five minutes with me, hopefully telling me what brought you here. You told my service it was an emergency.”

  “Not like an appendicitis attack,” she said, feeling foolish.

  “Good thing. That’s definitely not my specialty.” His compassionate gaze settled on her face. “What’s it going to be? In here or downstairs?”

  “Downstairs this time, if you don’t mind.”

  “Fine by me.”

  He walked off toward the elevator without waiting to see if she was following. He obviously assumed she would, even though it had seriously crossed her mind to bolt for the staircase. That stubborn pride of hers, which was occasionally good for something, kept her from doing it. She refused to have one more person thinking she was a terrified wimp.

  The coffee shop off the lobby was packed with the lunch hour rush, but Dr. Blake managed to snag a table that was just being vacated. “You stay here,” he instructed Dinah. “I’ll get the coffee. Anything to eat?”

  “No, thanks, but you go ahead. This is probably your lunch hour.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I’ll be right back.”

  When he returned, he set her coffee in front of her, then settled back with a disgustingly healthy bottle of water.

  “You know until I saw you with that, I thought you might be a perfectly normal person,” she said wryly. “Now I know you’re a health nut, like everyone else these days.”

  He laughed. “I can drink coffee if it will put you at ease.”

  Dinah shook her head. “Something tells me there’s not enough coffee in the universe to put me at ease.” She met his gaze. “How do we do this? I mean without the whole couch thing?”

  “You’ve been watching too much TV. We hardly ever ask clients to sprawl out on a couch unless that’s the way they feel most relaxed. As for what we do now, you talk. I listen.”

  “Could we start with the weather?” she quipped.

  “We could, but it would be a waste of your money. It’s Charleston in summer. What is there to say once you get past hot and humid?”

  Since the weather was out, Dinah asked, “How do you know Maggie? That’s the friend who recommended you, in case I didn’t mention that to your service.”

  He chuckled. “Nice try, but I get to ask the questions. You fill in the blanks.”

  She clung to her cup and took a drink. It was still so hot, it burned her tongue. “Maybe you should ask one then. I don’t seem to know where to start. I’ve never done this before.”

  “Done what? Had someone poke around in your head?” he asked, his amusement plain.

  She nodded.

  “It’s not an invasive procedure, Dinah. You don’t need to be scared of it. All that needs to happen is for you to trust me enough to talk to me. I won’t tell anyone what we’ve discussed. Your secrets are safe.” He leaned forward, his expression suddenly intense. “But I’m not psychic. I might be able to tell if you lie to me or skirt the truth, but I can’t get at the truth unless you reveal it. You ready to give it a try?”

  Was she? Not really, but there was little question that she was going to be badgered to death by everyone if she didn’t make an honest effort to give this a chance.

  “Okay,” she said at last, still clinging to the cup so tightly it was a wonder it didn’t break.

  “Then why don’t I start? Anytime I’m getting off-track, you stop me and point me in the direction you’d prefer to go, okay?”

  Relieved by the suggestion, she seized it. “Sure.”

  “You’ve spent a lot of your career reporting in war zones, is that right?”

  She nodded.

  “Must have been pretty brutal.”

  “At times.”

  “Did you get used to it?”

  She regarded him with shock. “No. Who could ever get used to it?”

  “But you found a way to cope,” he guessed.

  “I suppose.”

  “Tell me how.”

  She gave the question some thought. “The same way all reporters or soldiers or cops do, I suppose. We resorted to irreverent humor. We sort of clung together and formed really deep bonds. Somehow we managed to create this little island of sanity in the midst of the chaos. It was an illusion, of course, but it worked.”

  “Did you work with the same people most of the time?”

  She thought she saw where he was going, straight at the bottom line, as a matter of fact. “Yes,” she said, her tension already building as he moved toward the inevitable question.

  “Anyone you were especially close to?”

  A lump formed in her throat and tears promptly welled up in her eyes. “Yes.”

  He regarded her with a patient, reassuring expression. “Am I getting too close, Dinah?
Is this what’s so painful?”

  She nodded.

  “Would you rather not talk about it here?”

  She was suddenly overwhelmed by a helpless feeling. Maybe this was the best place. Surely she wouldn’t fall apart right here, not with all those years of training under her mother’s tutelage about the proper way for a Southern lady to behave in public. Maybe she could control her reactions, just say the words and then let Dr. Blake guide her through the anguish. Maybe it could all be very clinical and cool.

  Moreover, maybe she needed to just blurt it out while she had the nerve. If they left this table, this café, by the time they reached his office, she might have stuffed everything back down again until she felt safe and in control.

  “It’s okay. We can do this here,” she said at last. “I was very close to my cameraman.” She tried to say his name and couldn’t. “He was an amazing man, a brilliant photographer.”

  “Was?” Dr. Blake repeated, his tone gentle.

  She forced herself to meet his gaze, forced herself to get that one devastating word past the huge boulder in her throat. “He died,” she said softly, feeling her composure crumble. “He died.”

  Tears trickled down her cheeks, then came in a torrent. Dr. Blake handed her a fistful of napkins, his expression revealing not the slightest hint of embarrassment at sitting here with a woman who was quietly crying. Maybe he was used to people coming unglued in public places. Maybe everyone in here was used to the psychologist and his unstable patients occupying this very table. The thought crept in and made Dinah smile, even though she was on the verge of filling the whole room with a foot of water from her seemingly unstoppable tears.

  “Was he the cameraman whose death was reported on all the newscasts a few months back? He was killed by a car bomb?” She nodded.

  “And you were there?”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “Have you talked about this with anyone?” Dr. Blake asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Why not?”

  She shrugged. He was speaking so calmly and with so much compassion, she wanted to respond the same way. She summoned her reporter’s objectivity, leapt behind the wall she’d always tried to keep between her self and her subjects.

  “At first everyone over there tiptoed around what happened to avoid upsetting me,” she said. “Then when I was finally ready to talk about what had happened, no one wanted to hear.”

  “Really? Not even your friends?”

  “You have to understand,” she said earnestly, trying to defend the people who’d all but willed her to keep silent. “Over there we all have to do what we can to keep the very fragile grip we have on things. If something like this could happen to one of us, it could happen to any of us. Talking about it reminds people of that, so after the first shock wears off, we pretty much stuff it down and forget about it.”

  “But, of course, no one really forgets,” he suggested.

  “No, not really.”

  “So how long did you stay there keeping your friend’s death all bottled up inside?”

  “About six months.”

  “And then what happened?”

  “I came home.”

  “By choice?”

  “In a way. I was no longer as effective as I had been. My bosses were worried about me. They wanted me to take a leave of absence or another assignment till I was more myself.” She swallowed hard. “I didn’t take it well, when they told me that. I guess I thought they should cut me some more slack, at least at first. Then, when I was forced to admit they were right, that I’d lost my edge in the field, I quit.”

  “So you’d lost your friend and then, in essence, you lost your job?”

  She forced a grin. “Yep, that pretty much sums it up. Pretty pathetic, huh? Local success story comes home a failure.”

  For the first time he regarded her with a trace of impatience. “You think of yourself as a failure? For what? Caring about your friend’s death? Caring that your life has changed dramatically? Do you know that two of the biggest stresses anyone can face—anyone, Dinah—are the loss of someone important and the loss of a job? And do you know a third? Moving. So, here you are back home in Charleston without the career that apparently defined you, at least in your own mind, without some one who mattered to you, and far away from the world you’d been living in for how long?”

  “Ten years.”

  “Well, gee,” he said, his tone wry, “I don’t see anything there that you could possibly be depressed or upset about, do you? I’m surprised as heck you’re not out appointment and whooping it up every night.”

  He’d just made her sound almost…normal. Dinah regarded him with amazement. “I’m not crazy?”

  He laughed. “Not unless you persist in beating yourself up over this.”

  “Then I’m cured?” she asked happily.

  His expression sobered instantly. “Sorry. It’s not that easy, I’m afraid. You and I are just getting started.”

  Her momentary joy dimmed. “Really? But I thought—”

  “You thought I could just snap my fingers or wave a magic wand and you’d start to feel better, right?”

  “But I do feel better,” she insisted.

  “But do you have the slightest clue about what comes next?” Dr. Blake asked. “Is your grief for your friend manageable? You haven’t even told me his name, Dinah. Or how he died. I know because I remember the incident, but you didn’t say the words. Doesn’t that tell you something? You made it as impersonal as you possibly could, but this man wasn’t some almost anonymous colleague. For you to be this sad, he must have mattered deeply to you. You need to get all of that out in the open. We haven’t even ripped the scab off the wound, much less cleaned it out so it could heal.”

  Dinah knew he was right, but she’d wanted so badly for there to be some quick fix. She’d wanted that magic wand he’d talked about.

  “Same time tomorrow?” he suggested. “But in my office, okay?”

  “You really think I’m going to come unglued, don’t you?”

  He gave her a look filled with understanding and compassion. “If you’re lucky.”

  Dorothy was still upset about Tommy Lee’s decision to leave banking and go to work for Cord. If that was his dream, fine, but she knew in her gut that he’d come to it because Marshall had pushed him too hard. She’d heard all her husband’s barely concealed innuendoes about Tommy Lee’s lack of skills. If he said such things to her, what had he been saying to their son?

  Even though she’d promised Tommy Lee she would stay out of it, she headed to the bank right after her monthly garden club luncheon. She’d intended to have this conversation with Marshall last night, but he’d been late coming home, probably because he’d guessed she was going to be furious with him.

  Inside the bank, she marched straight past his secretary with little more than a cursory greeting, then walked into Marshall’s office. He was in the middle of a meeting with one of the bank’s vice presidents, but after one look at her face, he told the man they’d finish up later.

  Dorothy acknowledged Grayson Pickett as he left, then took the seat he’d vacated.

  “I assume you want to discuss Tommy Lee’s absurd decision to go to work for Cordell,” Marshall said, seizing the initiative.

  Dorothy was familiar with the tactic. It was meant to take the wind out of her sails, but today she had quite a lot to say and she intended to spit out every word.

  “A decision which you no doubt pushed him into making,” she retorted.

  “Me?” he said incredulously. “You can’t seriously blame this on me. I’ve done everything I could to see that Tommy Lee knew what was expected of him here. Running this bank is a huge responsibility. Tommy Lee’s never been interested in buckling down to get it right.”

  “Which I’m sure you’ve been pleased to tell him at least once a day,” she snapped. What had ever made her believe she could work things out with this cold, disapproving man? Right this seco
nd, she wanted to smack him for hurting their son.

  He frowned at her. “What did you expect me to do? Let him slide along because he’s my son? As it is if he’d been anyone else, I would have fired him years ago.”

  “Then I’m sure you’re delighted with this turn of events,” she said.

  “No, I am not delighted,” Marshall snapped. “I would have preferred it, if he’d shown even a modicum of interest in assuming his rightful heritage. You asked me not long ago if I’d given any thought to retirement. Now do you get why I haven’t been able to do that? After four generations, the only thing I can do now is to sell out to one of the huge, impersonal banking conglomerates. This place will no longer be in Davis hands. How the hell do you think that makes me feel?”

  “Maybe you should spend more time worrying about how your son feels,” she said. “Obviously he knows he’s let you down. I’m sure he must feel like a failure.”

  “Well, how would you describe him? After every ad vantage we’ve given him, he’s going to work in construction.”

  She regarded him with dismay. She was no happier about that than he clearly was. “Isn’t there something you can do? Can’t you give him another chance?”

  “It’s not a matter of giving him another chance, Dorothy,” he said wearily. “This was his decision. Maybe I pushed him. I can’t say. But the truth is, he wasn’t happy here. Not from the very beginning. As much as it pains me to say it, I think this is for the best. Maybe he’ll find what he’s looking for working with Cord.” He gave her a sad smile. “There’s a lot more of you in him, than there is of me.”

  Wasn’t that what Tommy Lee and Dinah had both said? She hadn’t wanted to look at it in quite that way. Had she wanted another excuse to be mad at Marshall? Maybe instead of being furious with her husband, though, she should be proud of her son. Tommy Lee had felt pressured to get out of banking, but perhaps he’d found the one thing for which he was better suited. Perhaps they should both be rejoicing in that and not making the decision about the two of them and their failures at all.