One Funeral (No Weddings #2)(10)

A door clicked behind me, and I turned around.

“Hannah? I’m Abigail Trent. Are you ready?”

I was surprised by the young, cheerful woman greeting me in the doorway. With her blond, upswept hair and welcoming smile, she reminded me of a fifties version of a wholesome TV mom, complete with a figure-flattering dress cinched at the waist by a tie in the back and sensible pumps.

I strode forward and shook her hand with a firm grip, a business tidbit from Cade’s sage advice that I’d retained. She grasped mine back with equal strength, then turned and led me down a short hallway, through an open door on the left, and into her office.

The room had a faint vanilla fragrance, and as I scanned her neat bookshelves, I spotted a green, blown-glass oil diffuser with several reeds poking out in different directions. The book subjects ranged from cognitive therapy to art therapy, including one on yoga and mindfulness. A tattered paperback lay flat on the shelf: Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers.

“Take a seat where you feel comfortable.” She hung an artsy, wooden Shhh…I’m with a Patient sign on her door and closed it.

I walked over to a tan leather chair that was positioned at a ninety-degree angle to a matching couch with four bright green pillows tossed haphazardly on its cushions. “So how does this work?” I grabbed one of the pillows and brought it to the chair, holding it in my lap as I sat. My gaze flicked to a tissue box on the table beside me. How many people had been reduced to tears in this chair?

“You tell me your darkest secrets. Then I get to judge you.”

My gaze flew up to her. No wonder the tissues were stocked.

“Kidding.” She didn’t smile, but amusement sparkled in her eyes. She sat in a black ergonomic chair, the see-through kind with adjustment knobs and levers. She crossed her legs and leaned back, and the chair rocked slightly with her shifted weight. “Therapist humor. You’ll get used to it.”

Finally, she gave me a warm smile and casually clasped her hands together in her lap. “You’ve hired me to help you deal with whatever issues you want to work on. So you share as I guide, and we figure things out together.”

I nodded. Sounded simple enough.

“So tell me why you’re here, Hannah.”

A barrage of thoughts whirled into my brain all at once. Unable to sift through them in any logical order, I kept the explanation simple, locking on to the one thing that had led me here. “When I went on my first date in years, I had a problem relaxing enough to enjoy it like a normal person.”

Again the warm smile. “We’re all some variant of normal, Hannah. Everyone has issues. Some are stickier than others, and we need a little direction on how to move past them is all. Why do you think you couldn’t relax?”

“I…Cade…he’s someone important to me.”

“Cade is the man you went on the date with?”

I nodded. “He’s my best friend.” My gaze fell to the carpet while I thought about how to fill her in on what had been spinning around in my head. “Actually, he’s my only friend.”

She regarded me for a moment, waiting. When I didn’t continue, she tilted her head. “Why is Cade your only friend?”

Struggling with how to respond in the hour we’d been given, I stared at Abigail. “There isn’t an easy answer to that.”

Giving me a nod, she grabbed a notepad off the corner of her desk and scribbled a quick note. “That’s all right. We can explore it further later. What about Cade? You said he was your best friend, yet the reason you gave me for not being able to relax was that he was someone important. Why do you think that is?”

“I had someone important in my life once. He became my fiancé, and I loved and trusted him. But when I stood at the church in my wedding dress, with friends and family waiting, he left me waiting. A very long time.”

Her brows furrowed. “How long?”

“He didn’t show.”

“I’m sorry such a devastating event happened to you.” She paused, waiting a few beats. “You didn’t see or speak to him afterward?”

I shook my head. “Not unless you count the time he was an * to me at a bar two years later.”

“What was this fiancé’s name?”

“Brandon.”

She made another quick scribble on her notepad. “You said there were friends and family at your wedding. His friends, not yours?”

“It wasn’t a big wedding, but yes, mostly his friends and family. The few people I’d invited, I wasn’t close with. A couple of girls I’d teamed up with in a class during my first semester at culinary school came. A friend he and I had in common, Penelope—who was actually more his friend than mine—was my maid of honor, my only bridesmaid.”

“You said Brandon didn’t give you any explanation. Did Penelope?”

“No. When Brandon didn’t show, Penelope left to try and find him. I never saw her again.”

“And how did his unexplained rejection make you feel?”

I swallowed hard and tapped into the deep scar. A cramp developed in my throat while I thought back, reliving the memory. “Abandoned. Betrayed. Destroyed. Foolish.”

She leveled a sympathetic look at me, then nodded. “You also mentioned family. Tell me about your family.”