Always A Bridesmaid

“You spent the entire week going on about Roy’s son,” Shelly reminded him.

“What about Roy’s son?” Jillian asked.

Doug made a noise of frustration. “My boss’s kid. The little punk knocked up his girlfriend. Sixteen. Too stupid to wear a condom, the idiot.”

“Why does it make you so angry?”

“They’re too young to have a kid. Hell, they’re kids themselves. Either they keep it and really mess up their lives or she gives it up, or she gets rid of it. Idiot. All because he couldn’t keep it in his pants. And it’s such a freaking crock,” he said with sudden savagery.

“What is?”

“He’s sixteen and he can get his girlfriend pregnant. I’m thirty-five and we want a kid so much and I damned well can’t give my wife a baby.” Doug leaned forward and put his head in his hands.

Jillian waited in the humming silence. This was the moment she’d been working toward for months, a chance to finally get Doug to open up. And yes, the session was supposed to be ending but there was no way she was going to punch the clock on this one. “It’s okay to feel angry or guilty or out of control, Doug. The feelings are real. You’re allowed.”

He was silent for another moment, then he let out a breath. “I’m fine,” he said quietly, straightening. “We’ll get through it.” He glanced at his watch. “Anyway, our time’s up, isn’t it, Doc?”

“I don’t know, is it?”

He nodded slowly, his eyes on her. “Yeah. I think so.”

Reluctantly, Jillian rose to move to her desk. “Think about what we’ve talked about here today. You’re getting close to something, Doug, and I don’t think we should just let it go. Let’s talk about it more next week.”

“Yeah, sure, whatever.” He shepherded Shelly hastily out of the office.

And Jillian watched them go out together.

Together. That was the key. However difficult the emotional challenges, the two of them were still a team. They walked down the hall, Doug’s arm around Shelly’s shoulders. How would it feel to have that comfort? Jillian wondered, that sense that whatever you faced, you did it as a part of a whole?

How do you think your husband or boyfriend or whoever would feel?

She wouldn’t know, because Jillian didn’t have one. She never had.

She thought of her missing stepbrother Robbie, manager of the day care center at the Children’s Connection, part of her adoptive family. The stepbrother she hadn’t seen in over a month, ever since he’d walked out on his wife, the clinic, his family, driven away by the scandalous past he couldn’t escape. Why hadn’t Robbie been able to trust that they would be there for him?

Maybe because, like Jillian, he bore scars from the childhood years spent outside the Logan nest. Childhood trauma could haunt you, Jillian knew. Like the dark times she and her twin brother, David, had suffered before Terrence and Leslie Logan had adopted them at age six.

There was a tap at the door and Jillian glanced up to see Lois Carella, the senior social worker at the clinic, peering in. “Do you have a minute to talk about the Podracki birth-parent letter?”

Jillian checked her watch. “I’m sorry, it’ll have to wait until Monday. I’m supposed to be at a wedding rehearsal in a half hour.”

“Another one? You’re in more weddings than anyone I know.”

Didn’t she know it. It was the curse of the therapist. No one knew how to give better friendship. Jillian was unparalleled at being a friend.

It was just the part about accepting friendship in return that she wasn’t so good at.

“Who is it this time?” Lois asked.

“Lisa Sanders. She’s marrying some tycoon from Texas.”

Lois laughed. “The Texas tycoon. Sounds like the title of a romance novel.”

“A bit, I suppose. Except for the part where the Gazette dragged Lisa’s name in the mud.” The Portland Gazette, the same newspaper that had dredged up Robbie’s own history with a babynapping ring, the newspaper that had driven him away.

“I seem to remember they corrected things, though, didn’t they?”

“I suppose.” A spurious lawsuit from the father of the child Lisa had borne and adopted out as an unwed, homeless teen had turned into a biased, inflammatory front-page story. Eventually, the Gazette had gotten to the truth of the matter and cleared Lisa’s name. Eventually. “Too bad they didn’t do the same with Robbie.”

“Don’t blame the Gazette. It’s the tabloids and the television shows that have been hounding him.”

“It doesn’t matter. He’s gone.” And once again, Jillian’s family was torn apart. Once again, her adoptive parents were racked over Robbie, their son kidnapped as a child, rediscovered as an adult struggling to find the right path. Jillian was a licensed clinical social worker, for God’s sake, she had years of counseling experience. And yet she hadn’t been able to help him. She couldn’t heal where it counted.

“Don’t do that to yourself,” Lois said quietly.

Jillian straightened her shoulders. “Do what?”

“You demand too much of yourself, Jillian. You always have.” Lois’s eyes softened. “He’s going to be okay, you’ll see. It’ll work out.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“Of course I am,” Lois said briskly. “I always am. Now get off to your wedding. And Jillian?”

“What?”

“Don’t forget to catch the bouquet. I think it’s your turn now.”

The stained glass windows threw patches of glowing red and blue and green light over the polished wood of the pews. The very air of the church held a quiet serenity, an indefinable hush. Jillian should have felt uplifted. She should have felt joy for Lisa and Alan.

Instead, all she felt was lonely.

Which was ridiculous. Ninety-nine percent of the time—okay, at least fifty or sixty percent, she admitted—she was fine being alone. She preferred it, actually. She’d looked, but she’d never found her match. She’d grown happiest once she’d given up trying. She was one of those people who was best on her own, it was that simple. She’d had thirty-three years to get used to the idea.

So why was the thought of being single and watching one more happy couple pledge their lives to one another breaking her heart?

Not that she wasn’t happy for her friends. She was, she could say without doubt. But there was something now that struck her to her very core, something about knowing she’d never be the one walking down the aisle toward a groom who stood bright-eyed in expectation, that at the reception to come she’d have no date, no boyfriend, no husband, no one who cared for her above all. No matter. She’d smile and hold her head high. And she’d joke and dance the choreographed dances, walk with her fingertips on the arm of her usher, touching a man, something she did so seldom—aside from her brothers—that it belonged in the headlines.

And go home feeling more desperately lonely than at any other time in her life. Maybe it was Robbie being gone. Maybe it was the turmoil her family was in. Maybe it was just her.

With a sigh, Jillian glanced over to where Lisa Sanders, the bride-to-be, paced nervously.

“I wish he would just get here,” Lisa said, raking her fingers through her blond hair. “We only have the church for another ten minutes. Alan,” she appealed to her fiancé, “can’t you please call him?”

“Who?” Jillian asked.

“We’re missing an usher. Alan’s friend, Gil.”

Tall and sandy and Texan, Alan exuded calm control. “I talked with him this afternoon and he said he was going to be here.”