Session three.
Penny Watson eyed the couple in front of her, Lauren practically in Joe's lap, arms around each other, and said, "I take it the two of you have progress to report."
"We do," Lauren said. "We've built on the progress we achieved at the end of last week's session."
"Yes, if I remember correctly," Penny said with a smirk, "Joe carried you in his arms back to my office, and it wasn't kicking and screaming either, as I might have predicted given how you stormed out of here earlier in that session."
"I think coming back helped," Lauren said. "Something about not giving up, and continuing to talk it out, has helped us reach a breakthrough."
"It doesn't hurt that Rachel and Al bought their new place and are moving out very soon," Joe said. "I can look forward to coming home."
"I noticed you blush when you mentioned Rachel and Al, Joe," Penny said. "Am I missing something?"
"Okay, something happened on Tuesday," Lauren admitted. "It was completely impulsive, and unexpected, but wild and wonderful."
Joe looked to Lauren, puzzled, "I thought you and Rachel planned it."
Lauren suddenly remembered the ruse she was supposed to be playing and said, "Well, yes, but we weren't sure you'd take us up on it, since you were so opposed to the idea before. I'm just saying I'm glad you did."
"Me too. Do you think she'd want to again?"
Lauren's mouth dropped open. "Uh..."
"Hold on! Hold on!" Penny exclaimed, raising her hands. "What happened on Tuesday?"
Now it was Lauren's turn to blush. "Joe came by the house on Tuesday morning, after the kids were at school and Al went to work. We had sex."
"And did you say Rachel was there too?"
"Yes. She joined in."
Penny's mouth dropped open. "Rachel participated in a threesome with the two of you? Why?"
"We were trying to balance the scales, to make up for the times I've been with her and Al."
"And you thought this would make Joe feel better about your infidelity, Lauren?"
"Well... I don't know." She turned to Joe and asked, "Does it?"
Joe cleared his throat and said, "No, but now I can't really be high handed about it either."
"Because this is now the second time you've been with Al's wife," Penny clarified. "By the way, has she told Al about this?"
"I don't think so," Lauren said.
"Has it occurred to you that Rachel might now be jeopardizing her marriage with Al?"
"I have no sympathy for Al," Joe said. "He's been allowed to sail through this whole thing unscathed, in my opinion. If he suffers even a little of what I've suffered these past few months, maybe it will make him think twice about taking liberties with my wife next time."
"And Rachel? Have you considered how she'll suffer if they split up?"
Joe shrugged and said, "Well, of course I'd rather they didn't, not if it will make her suffer like I have."
"Have you suffered, Joe?" Penny asked.
"Of course I have," he said indignantly. "I've been away from my kids for months, seeing them only occasionally to bring them to church and other small activities. I hate not being there with them at night, making sure they're safe. Then there's my parents, who can't even look me in the eye anymore, because they think I've left my family. Lauren's parents won't even talk to me. And what can I tell any of them? I can't badmouth Lauren to them and say she's just as culpable, because my parents don't need another reason to be smug about her being the wrong choice for me, and Mr. Hasegawa would come after me with the wooden sword he uses to train my kids with for saying anything against his daughter." His bark of laughter suddenly morphed into an ugly sob. "It sucks, you know?" he blubbered, face contorted in anguish.
"Oh," Lauren breathed, her eyes stinging with tears. She wrapped both arms around his waist and squeezed him tight. "I'm so sorry, babe."
Penny seemed unmoved by his plight. "I can understand how that change in your relationships with loved ones can be hard. But you haven't suffered monetarily, have you? You've been living rent-free at the house of your lover, Joanie."
"Well, yes," Joe stammered, a little embarrassed, "but I had to lease a new truck to get around, because Lauren needed to use the Highlander to drive the kids, and the only other vehicle available is her little Nissan Versa, which I find cramped and uncomfortable. That's money I wouldn't have had to spend otherwise."
"Okay, but you haven't suffered romantically, have you? Joanie has provided you with physical affection in Lauren's absence, hasn't she?"
"Not at first, because she was injured and I nursed her back to health. But, yes, at least until recently. I think she's distancing herself from me because she knows I'm going back and doesn't want to admit she'll miss me."
Penny removed her glasses and sat forward, intrigued. "Interesting. Was that the reason why you cooperated in an activity you once scorned?"
Joe didn't answer, just sat there in resentful silence.
"By the way, does Joanie know about what you did?"
Joe blinked in surprise. "No. Why would I tell her?"
"Isn't she an important person in your life?"
"Yes, of course, and telling her might hurt her, and that's the last thing I want to do. She's endured so much physical pain, it would be cruel of me to heap emotional pain on her as well."
Penny put her glasses back on and wrote in her notebook. "Do you think she would object to you having sex with your wife?"
"No, of course not! She likes and respects Lauren; Lauren made it possible for her to be with me, after all."
"So, you think she would object to you having sex with Rachel."
"I think that's a safe assumption."
"Do you think she has a right to feel threatened by the fact that you've had Rachel in your bed?"
Joe shrugged uncomfortably. "I don't know. Maybe? But she has nothing to worry about. We'll go back to our arrangement before I moved out."
"But now she'll have to compete with a third woman in the mix; if I heard you correctly before, you asked Lauren if Rachel would ever want to participate again in a threesome with the two of you."
"That would be up to Rachel to decide, and I'm not in a hurry to ask her," Lauren said. "Anyway, Joanie might not have predicted a third woman benefiting from Joe's attention, but then again she probably never predicted having him all to herself for months, attending to her every need. If she doesn't like it, she's free to leave the arrangement and find a more conventional relationship."
Joe squirmed. "I don't want to lose her."
"Because you looooooove each other," Lauren teased, using humour to mask the hurt she felt.
As if Penny had read her mind, she said, "When you were last here, Lauren, that revelation drove you out of the room, and I was afraid there was no hope for the two of you. Have you come to accept this situation, now, considering that Joe still loves you and wants to move back in with you?"
Now Lauren squirmed. "I don't know if I'll ever be comfortable with it, but like Joe said, I can't be high handed about it either."
Penny removed her glasses again and tapped one of the arms against her lip in thought. "I have to be honest with you," she said. "I'm not entirely sure this is progress."
"What do you mean?" Lauren asked.
"Well, okay, yes, you and your husband were intimate, but it didn't arise from a place of understanding and reconciliation. In fact, from what I heard, Joe was ambushed with an offer of a threesome, and Joe, feeling the lack of intimacy from Joanie, took you up on it to satisfy his needs. I would have felt better about this if it was just the two of you who had sex; sometimes it can be a catalyst to more communication, not just the result of it. When you added Rachel, you couldn't be alone to communicate your feelings about being intimate with each other after months of no contact."
Joe and Lauren looked at each other and shrugged. "What's to communicate?" Joe asked. "We've been married over twenty years. Making love was like riding a bike."
Penny rolled her eyes. "Well, yes, of course you don't forget the mechanics of it. But I think you once said, Joe, that trust is important to a marriage. I don't think you two have built enough trust back to be intimate with each other without further damaging your relationship, and the fact that you brought Rachel into it only confirms to me that you weren't coming from a good place when it happened."
Lauren flinched as if slapped. "I love Rachel, and I'd trust her with my life. Bringing her into my bed with my husband was the ultimate expression of my trust in her."
"I notice you mention trusting Rachel, but we're here because trust broke down between you and Joe."
"Are you implying that I shouldn't have trusted Lauren's intentions in inviting me into a threesome with her and Rachel?" Joe asked.
This was skating uncomfortably close to the truth, and Lauren kept her mouth shut in case she blurted something by mistake.
"Not her intentions," Penny said. "I believe wholeheartedly that Lauren wanted to have sex with you; from our conversations in this room, she's made clear her esteem for your attributes."
"So what's the problem?" Joe asked.
Penny tapped her pen against her notebook as she thought about it. "I don't know. I suppose her wanting you back has never been in doubt, but if your progress was a series of stepping stones across a raging river, what you two did was hop over one of them to get to the next, risking a slip and fall into that river and getting carried over a waterfall."
Lauren and Joe looked at each other. "Well, I don't know if I--" Lauren began, before her phone pinged with a text.
"You were supposed to turn that to silent," Penny reminded her.
"Sorry," she stammered, but looked at her phone anyway.
It was from Sunny.
Jordan found dead in Glenbrook Ravine.
She gasp-shrieked and stood from the couch.
"What is it?" Joe asked.
She showed him her phone. Joe read the text and blanched. "Shit," he breathed.
"Is everything all right?" Penny asked.
"Um, not really," Lauren said. "We've just been informed of a death of someone we met a couple of weeks ago."
Penny's face fell. "Oh! I'm... so sorry. Do you need to go?"
Lauren felt numb in her face all of a sudden. This was hitting her harder than she thought. "Yeah... I think we do," she said. "Can we rebook later?"
"Yes, of course."
"Can we get a refund for the time we didn't use today?" Joe asked as he stood.
"Of course not!" Penny said, looking offended. "And you better come back, because I feel like we're not done here."
"We will, don't worry," Lauren said absently, still looking at the text. Glenbrook Ravine. That was where Tracey went Wednesday night. Since then she'd been wondering if it was Jordan, but the confirmation still came as a shock.
"Come on," Joe said, putting on his coat. "We need to call Sunny in private."
Lauren put her phone in her pocket and put her coat on. "Thanks for seeing us today," she said to Penny. "You've given us a lot to think about."
Penny didn't get up to see them out. She was still a little stunned by the new development.
They hurried to the parking lot, and Lauren climbed into Joe's truck, where they sat without it running, and Lauren called Sunny back on speakerphone.
He answered on the first ring. "That was fast," he said.
"What the fuck, Sunny?" she asked.
"I hope I didn't interrupt you," he said.
"We were having a counselling session," Joe said, "but we adjourned early when we saw your text."
"Oh, hey Joe, are you there too? You didn't have to leave early on my account."
"Don't worry, we were kind of in a disagreement with the counsellor," Lauren said. "Your text gave us just the excuse we needed to leave."
"Why were you in a disagreement with the counsellor?" Sunny asked. "Wait, sorry, don't tell me, that's confidential. I'm just being nosy."
"Yes you are, but we love you anyway."
"Aw, thanks, buddy."
"So how did you find this out?" Joe asked.
"Tracey and Goncalves came to see me. As Naira told me, I'm the last known person to have had contact with him."
Sunny had called them yesterday and let them know about Naira's little taxi ride after the rest of them had left, and Lauren had informed him that they'd run into Birinder at the police station. Lauren wished she could have been in two places at once, because she wanted to meet this woman, the subject of so much speculation. She was almost jealous of Sunny for being the only one of all of them to see her; even Tej had had to follow behind them in their car, the woman was either nervous about meeting new people or paranoid about being spotted.
"Oh, God, do you think she knows?" Lauren asked.
"She hasn't texted me since that night; for all I know she's still looking for him."
"If only she'd told you from whom she was hiding," Lauren said, "and how she and Jordan came to be on their radar."
"Did they say how Jordan was killed?" Joe asked.
"No. But, come on, why would he be in the ravine, unless he fell in by accident."
"Have you ever been there?"
"I haven't. I'm thinking about paying a visit, though."
"Let's go tomorrow," Lauren said. "I have it off. We can go during the day and see it clearly."
"It will have to be during the day, because I have an event in the evening," Sunny said. "There's a nice trail through it, I hear, why don't we bring the kids and have a nice walk?"
"Perfect! What's your event tomorrow?"
"The Arts Council, over at Centennial Lodge in Queen's Park. Actually, the ravine isn't far from there, we'll just time it so I can go straight there."
"You're going to bring Tej and the kids to the Arts Council thing?" Joe asked.
"Yeah, why not? Tori told me I should bring the family to at least one more stop before election day. Actually, this will be a good one, they're having a silent auction to raise money for local art student scholarships. Maybe we can pick up a painting or two, let the kids pick something."
"Do you think you'll get a good reception?" Lauren asked. "You know, after Wednesday?"
"Ugh, you know that was in the Record? The firm has the front page posted in the staff room as a joke. My stunned mug at the podium while the lady was screaming at me. I didn't even notice the press was there."
"Did they mention the fight?"
"They did, but got no names."
"I have a court date coming up," Joe said. "Mr. Randhawa is negotiating a deal."
"It should be fine. The other guy threw the first punch, everybody saw it. Now I just have to hope nobody at the Arts Council was at the debate or has a high opinion of May Day."
Lauren snorted laughter. "It's tradition! Tradition!" she exclaimed bombastically. "Somebody, please, think of the children!"
Joe snickered, and Sunny chuckled on the other end of the line. "You're lucky you only had to do one May Day," he said, "because you were in Richmond for all but Grade Seven, and you didn't even have to dance in your year."
"Do you remember I got to sit out the dancing?" Joe asked. "My parents considered May Day a pagan festival and refused to allow me to participate."
"Damn it, I wish my parents had thought of that!" Sunny said. "Too bad our faith isn't judgy of other faiths, well, aside from the fact that it sprang out of rebellion against the Hindu caste system."
"Maybe I should have run for May Queen," Lauren said.
"You?!" Joe and Sunny both said in stereo.
"Fuck off!" Lauren said, chuckling. "Do you think I wouldn't have had a chance?"
"You'd have tanked your chance by saying fuck at some point in your audition speech," Joe said.
"Yeah, you're probably right."
"Rachel never ran, either, if it makes you feel any better," Sunny said.
"She wouldn't have done anything if there wasn't money in it," Lauren pointed out. "Plus she'd have made a pretty soiled May Queen, not at all the image of the vestal virgin Regan mentioned."
"Anyway," Sunny said. "Tomorrow, then?"
"I'll talk to Rachel and see if she and Al are in," Lauren said. "This will be fun!"
"Great," Sunny said. "I'll let you go. See you then."
They said their goodbyes and hung up. Lauren looked up at Joe and said, "I guess I should go."
"Unless..." Joe said.
"Yes?"
"We have a little time left over from the session, and no one's expecting us yet."
She smirked and asked, "What are you suggesting, husband of mine?"
"We could always go back home and do what Penny suggested."
"Oh, I see," she breathed, climbing on to his lap and kissing him hard. "Because, you know, we have to build trust back, and for that we have to do it on our own."
"That's right," he croaked, and she could feel him stiffen underneath her. "And then we have to communicate about having done it."
"I hope you won't be disappointed if Rachel doesn't join us this time. You know, because her presence prevented us from communicating about having done it."
"You're my priority, babe. You're the one I love. Rachel's the cherry on the sundae, a nice addition but not necessary. You're the ice cream."
"Uh-huh," she said into his ear, making him shiver. "Are you saying you want to lick me like ice cream?"
"Lick you all over," he agreed.
She could feel herself getting wet already. She looked him in the eyes and said, "Race you back."
Thanks for reading this far! Things are taking a darker turn now that Jordan's body has been discovered. If you liked what you just read, hit "Vote" to send this title up the ranks. If anything doesn't ring true about the marriage counselling process, leave a comment; I strive for authenticity.
To read about what the LSDC discover in Glenbrook Ravine, click on "Continue reading."