“You know that, and I know that, Mara. But can you imagine when your mother finds out?”
Tamara shuddered.
“Please don’t even say that. How is it that you know and she doesn’t? She usually gets all the gossip before anybody else.”
“The guy I’m dating used to date her. They’re still really good friends, apparently.”
“The guy you’re dating—Eric? The one who’s twenty-five?”
“Twenty-five and hung like a horse, with the stamina of one. That’s the boy.”
“I don’t suppose his ex-girlfriend is dating daddy for the goodness of his heart?”
“And the size of his wallet, I believe, but you didn’t hear that from me. She picked him up three nights ago and apparently she’s already talking about a ring on her finger as if it’s imminent.”
“Oh God. Please, is there any way we can keep my mother from finding out?”
“Finding out what?”
“Oh! Oh, it’s a surprise, which is why we don’t want you finding out, mama.”
“Surprise?”
Leticia walked into her kitchen and surveyed her domain. Her birthday was the only day she let go of the reins in the kitchen. Even mother’s day wasn’t good enough for that. Felicity was the only one she allowed to take over those reins, too. Tamara had suggested, tentatively, that maybe for one birthday she could handle the food, and everybody had laughed until they’d cried.
“Well, as long as Felicity is the one in charge of the surprise, I suppose it should be fine,” declared Leticia, and left, to Tamara’s relief.
“Great, now I’ve got to figure out a surprise. You know what your mama needs, Mara? She needs to get laid. How long has it been since your parents got that divorce?”
“Many lifetimes,” muttered Tamara. That’s what it felt like.
“How many men has your mother dated since then?”
Tamara sighed.
“I can think of one date she went on because the pastor suggested it. That is it. I can’t blame her, Tee. She was hurt and she’s never forgotten it. I know what it’s like to be hurt.”
“We all know what it’s like to be hurt, Mara. A woman doesn’t live to her forties without knowing what it’s like to be hurt. But you know that you can’t live your life behind walls. You’ve gotta tear them down and start living sometime.”
“Like my father is doing?”
Felicity shrugged.
“I don’t know, maybe that’s better than this? Every time your father dates somebody, or somebody sees him with somebody, Aunt Lettie goes to pieces again.”
Tamara sighed.
“I know. I just want us to get through the birthday dinner before it happens. I can’t help my mother when she doesn’t want to be helped, Tee. You know what she says about therapy.”
“That white nonsense.”
Tamara had to laugh.
“Do you remember when I told her that I was going to specialize in psychiatry?”
“Oh, dear Lord. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it. I don’t know how I feel about how you used me as a literal human shield and hid behind me, Mara.”
“You owed me for the time I broke up with that idiot for you.”
“We put you through medical school and you decide to be a head shrink? The disgrace! We went through all that trouble so that you could be a proper doctor, not a charlatan quack!”
Tamara had to grin. Felicity remembered it word-for-word. Well, it had been a memorable evening.
“I paid them back.”
“I know you did, but it took years for your mother to forgive you. I don’t know if she still has, to be honest. She used to tell me that I had wasted my education by becoming a chef, which was just another way of staying in the kitchen, but she decided that a chef was better than a psychiatrist so I suppose I owe you for that...”
“My pleasure,” said Tamara, her face and voice wry.
She could joke about it now, but it had been no joke then.
“Well, considering that my mother’s views have still not changed even a little bit, there's no way I could get her to consider therapy. Without therapy, she’s not going to get to a place where she can be okay with seeing daddy dating. And daddy will not be able to find a stable relationship without therapy of his own, and he laughed for ten whole minutes the last time I suggested that to him so... So one of the lessons I had to learn for myself is that I cannot fix my parents.”
“Good thing you believe in therapy. Now, come on, let’s get this dinner started and let’s hope there’s nobody here who knows Trish—that’s your dad’s new squeeze—because she just put up a photo of your daddy and herself on Instagram. And Mara, I promise you, you don’t want to see it.”
Tamara felt as if she was holding her breath throughout dinner. When Felicity finally brought the cake out, she thought maybe, just maybe, they’d gotten away with it. Maybe her mother could have a good birthday, and they could put the fallout off for another day. Just one more day.
The cake was cut, the song was sung, the wish was made, and the cake was pronounced excellent. And then one of her mother’s friends—one of those friends who do the job of an enemy well enough to cause any enemy to turn green with jealousy—dropped the bombshell.
“Leticia, that ex-husband of yours doesn’t know any better than to date somebody who could be his granddaughter! What a shame! You’re well rid of him, Lettie. I can’t imagine how it would be to still be married to a man like that.”
And it was done.
Tamara watched as her mother raged, cried, and went to pieces. She and Felicity ushered all the guests out, with their cake in little boxes, and settled down to a night of taking care of Leticia.
At about midnight, Tamara thanked her best friend with all of her heart and sent her home, and settled down on the comfortable chair in her mother’s bedroom. Leticia had been sedated, and she would sleep.
For Tamara, there would be no sleep.
She knew that.
It was just another of those things you had to accept in life, because it was just how it was.
Well, the time didn’t have to be wasted. She had case files to work on.
And an email to draft for Meghan’s father, the distant but responsible David Wilson.
Tamara got to work as her mother slept. She might not be able to make things better for her mother, but there were people she could help, people who had come to her for help.
Help them she would.
Like, said a stray thought, David Wilson. The man with the blue eyes, with the taciturn mouth that hinted at softness if you could find it, if you could find the right way.
The man who had dealt with horrors beyond what she could imagine, if what she’d read was anything to go by. A divorce, dealing with her parents’ divorce, none of that could compare to what he'd gone through.
To love and to lose your love like that, to watch her life slip away as you tried to hold on to her – she'd learned how to help people through bereavement, but she'd never had to face such pain of her own.
She wanted to help him, she realized, because helping him would be helping Meghan, that young woman with so much potential, with so much life inside her, so much time to live, to experience everything.
She could help him see that. She could help him find joy in seeing his daughter blossom.
Was she being honest, truly honest? Was it just for Meghan that she wanted to help him? Or was there something more selfish there?
Tamara shook it off.
She was a professional. She would be professional. Maybe she had difficulties with accepting her limits with her own family, but that was only natural, that was to be expected. She would not have the same trouble with her clients and her patients.
She definitely would not invite that same trouble from her patients’ parents!
No, there were lines there that she would not cross.
She knew better.
Of course she knew better.
Still con
sidering her case files and the emails she should draft, without meaning to, without even realizing it, Tamara drifted off to sleep, and she saw blue eyes filled with pain in her dreams.
Chapter 4
“It’s not so bad. Nobody’s been giving me any weird shit, so that’s good.”
Tamara smiled.
“Because there’s nothing to give you any weird shit about, Meg. Didn’t you tell me that there was some kind of an art competition coming up?”
Meghan tensed up a bit, so Tamara knew she would have to tread carefully.
“I don’t think I’m good enough to make a submission to that.”
“Perhaps you’re not good enough to win, but I don’t think there’s a ‘good enough’ requirement to submit an entry. And you might not be good enough to win this time, but this is how you get there.”
“They say shit about some of the entries,” mumbled Meghan.
“That is what would be called constructive criticism in the industry, Meg. It’ll be a compliment if somebody thinks your art is good enough to spend time on that. Only complete shitheads spend time giving feedback on things that they don’t believe has potential. Shitheads’ opinions aren’t worth anything, so whatever constructive feedback you do get will be a compliment. People you admire thinking that your art shows enough skill that they should spend time telling you how you can grow?”
It was lovely when she could find that sweet spot like that, and watch eyes get bigger as they considered a new perspective.
“I never thought of it that way.”
“Think of it that way now. Choose something you love, something that you think is good, and work on it. Then make the submission. Whatever happens, the experience of what it takes to polish up a piece to make it worth submitting will be positive.”
Tamara watched as Meghan cheered up.
Just four sessions and the young woman had opened up so much! Not about the grief that ate away at the core of her, of course not, but about things that worried her in her life in general. Small things that made a big difference, thought Tamara. That was as much her job as anything else.
She was so bright, this girl, and so talented. Her art was hauntingly beautiful, so full of grief and such tentative hope, so complex for somebody who was just fifteen years old.
“All right. I’ll do it,” said Meghan solemnly, and Tamara nodded just as seriously.
“Wonderful. I’d offer to help but I’m afraid you're far too good at this for me to give you any real feedback, Meg. If you can get a good mentor who can help you, who understands, it will be good for you.”
“Do you think somebody will be interested enough to do that?”
“I don’t know, but I hope so. You won’t know 'till you try. Take a chance, Meg. And this will be something you’ve done on your own, for yourself. It will have nothing to do with your family or your background.”
Meghan nodded, looking almost hopeful for once.
Tamara glanced at the clock.
“We have ten minutes left. Do you want to talk about something?”
Meghan smiled.
“Dad asked me if I would like to change my schedule.”
“He did?”
“He asked me if I’d like to do my schedule myself.”
“Well, that’s excellent, isn’t it? That’s progress. It’s good for Martha, too.”
“And a few guys in school have been asking me if I can get them weed.”
“Meg...”
“I know. I said I don’t know how the oregano got in my bag.”
Tamara had to chuckle.
“Well, then. Establish your boundaries, and don’t hesitate to tell Ms. Benoit if something makes you uncomfortable.”
Meghan nodded.
“She’s nice.”
“She is.”
“I kind of hoped she and my dad would hit it off, actually.”
Tamara was shocked by the disapproval she felt.
“They didn’t?”
“No, turns out she’s gay, so she’s not interested.”
“Do you want your dad to get a girlfriend? Start dating again?”
Meghan considered. She always seemed to measure her words before saying them. She was far more self-possessed than Tamara had been at her age, that was for sure.
“I think sometimes that I might be losing mom.”
A breakthrough, thought Tamara, and when there were seven minutes left on the clock! She kept her eye off the clock deliberately.
“How?”
“I can remember her. Kind of. I mean, I remember things about her. But now sometimes I don’t know if what I remember are my memories, or from photos. I can’t tell.”
“I see.”
“I don’t want dad to live his life in photos.”
“You can’t fix your dad’s life for him, Meg. That’s one of the hard lessons we learn in life. We can’t fix anybody else’s life. We can only show them how they can live better with themselves. If your father is happy with who he is, then that’ll have to be enough.”
“I think it’ll be nice if he has something other than work. I remember how he used to take breaks. Like, when we went to Disney World, and it was this whole stupid clichéd vacation, when I was eight. I remember I cried a lot because I wanted to go on these rides and I wasn’t allowed to, and I was bitten by these ants and I had to get shots and I cried about that too, but it’s still happy.”
Tamara smiled, nodded.
“That’s the thing about memories. They hold on to the important bits. Meg, I’m sorry, but...”
“We’re out of time, I know.”
“I am sorry, Meg. But I have somebody else coming in, and I need to clear my head before I can help them.”
Meghan nodded quickly, but Tamara could still read the rejection. It wasn’t that hard.
“Sorry.”
“No. Please, you must listen to me. This deserves to be talked about, and you deserve to feel happy about this memory that’s so precious. We will talk about it.”
Meghan glanced at her, a sly smile.
“Maybe we can talk about it on the fourth.”
“The fourth?”
“The fourth of July. It’s in two weeks. You don’t work then, do you?”
Tamara shook her head, uncharacteristically slow on the uptake.
“Then why don’t you come and spend it with us? We’ll have a picnic by the pool and we’ll watch fireworks in the distance and it’ll be a lot of fun.”
“Meghan, I don’t think...”
“Come on, Dr. Jackson! It’ll be nice. You can maybe help daddy, too. You know daddy needs all the help he can get. Or are you going to be spending it with your family?”
Oh God.
It was always a battle, whether to spend it with her mother or with her father. Spending it all together was, of course, absolutely not even a question.
This would be a good excuse to get out of it.
Of course, it was impossible, even if this was the one holiday when she couldn’t count on Felicity to get her out of the hole either. It was still absolutely impossible to spend it with her patients.
“Dr. Jackson? It’s always the same thing. Dad arranges a party—well, he gets Martha to arrange a party—and there will be a whole bunch of boring people, and I will be bored, and dad will escape to his study and work. Maybe you could be there and make sure that he takes a break. It would be good for me if daddy were more present, wouldn’t it?”
Tamara had to grin.
“Don’t you use my words against me, young lady.”
“Still, it’s a valid point. Come on, please? It would mean so much to me.”
Tamara sighed.
The fact was that she did need to talk to her father. She’d sent him that email, after taking such pains to draft it just right, and he'd only sent a curt acknowledgment of it. But apparently, he'd taken note of what she'd said, at the very least.
She still needed to talk to him.
It couldn’t do any harm, c
ould it? It wasn’t like she actively avoided meeting any and all clients under any social circumstances. She just avoided interacting with them as doctor and patient when she happened to face such circumstances.
“I’ll think about it,” she compromised, and Meghan was smart enough to quit when she was ahead.
Tamara took a well-deserved breather after Meghan left.
It had been a couple of weeks and it wasn’t even over yet.
Her father was still dating Tricia. She was supposed to be meeting the new love of her father’s life that evening for dinner.
That was going to be fun.
It was going to be even more fun if her mother caught wind of it.
Sometimes she wondered what regular life would be like, without drama. Almost as if her life took that as a challenge, Georgina popped her head into the room, her face grim, her mouth set in a disapproving line.
Tamara knew what that meant.
“Terry's here?”
“He claims it’s urgent.”
Tamara sighed.
“Is Drew here yet?”
“He’s running a few minutes late. He called.”
Tamara nodded.
“Then ask Terry to come in while we wait for Drew, please.”
Georgina looked even more disapproving, but she nodded.
“Terry, this is a surprise.”
Tamara smiled when she saw her ex-husband. That was a victory. There had been a time when seeing Terry would’ve brought back all of her inadequacies.
“Sorry, Tammy, but I wanted to get this sorted out first thing. You know me, not likely to let any grass grow under my feet!”
Tamara’s smile widened. Well, that was true enough. There never had been a hustler quite like Terrence Burke.
“I’ve only got a few minutes now, but if we need time, I’ll figure something out for later.”
“No, a few minutes will do. The thing is, Tammy, the ten grand you invested will do better if it were fifteen.”
Her smile faltered just a little.
“What?”
“Now, don’t you look like that, baby. You know that you’ve got to think big! I was going to pitch a cool fifty grand into it, and I had it all lined up, but the thing is, I’ve run into a little bit of a delay. It’s going to come in, but this is time sensitive, you know what I mean? So I thought I’d give you a chance to pitch the rest in. It’ll be an investment, you’ll make a killing, and so will I.”
Over 40 And Head Over Heels: BWWM, Over 40's, Billionaire Romance (BWWM Romance Book 1) Page 4
