The Hero Next Time: A Novel of the Terribly Acronymed Detective Club (Book 4)

Chapter Sixty-Three: Lauren, Friday and Saturday

Session four.

"What the fuck happened to you?" Penny Watson exclaimed, half rising out of her armchair.

"Nice to see you again, too," Lauren said, a little irritated at the woman's brusqueness, as Joe took her crutches and helped her onto the couch.

"Jesus Christ, are you okay?" she asked, sitting back down.

"Oh, yeah, just got in a little car accident," she said, waving dismissively.

"You have a leg in a cast and your neck in a brace. It doesn't look like it was a little accident."

"My arm was in a sling, too, because I dislocated my shoulder, but it's pretty much better now. The brace can come off soon, too, but I'm being more careful about that. Whiplash is sly and subtle, the doctors tell me; if you're not careful, it can come back with a vengeance."

Penny shook her head in bemusement. "You didn't have to come today if you weren't feeling well."

"I'm fine as long as I have help getting around. I have my crutches, and Joe's been a great help too, now that he's home." She squeezed Joe's hand and said, "And anyway, I made a promise to him to keep to our sessions, because you were right; we have a little more work to do."

Penny removed her glasses and hooked one of its arms in her bottom lip. Lauren couldn't help noticing, over the weeks, that she was very expressive with her glasses, and was once again reminded of Sandra Bullock in Speed; she didn't wear glasses in that movie, but she had that look, those legs whose inner thighs Lauren wanted to run her tongue along. She was randy, and she couldn't really do anything about it with her injuries. It would be a long, dry season until she healed because, ironically, Joe was finally back in her bed but was too afraid to do anything to her for fear of hurting her worse.

"I take it you arrived at some new insights in the last week?" she asked.

"Lauren was pregnant with Al's baby, and seduced me to make me believe it was mine," Joe said.

The matter-of-factness of his statement jarred her, even though it was the truth, and she felt the need to explain. "I had fully intended on telling him, but when Joe saw Rachel with me, there to support me, he mistook her presence for an invitation to a threesome."

"Ah," Penny said, putting her glasses back on and writing something down in her notebook. "Now the threesome is explained."

"I'm not proud of what I did," Lauren said. "I took the easy way out, because I was so afraid of what his reaction would be when I told him. I thought, well, why not just have a little fun with him and with my best friend and lover instead? We were all into it, so why not?"

"Except you were going to let him believe the baby was his," Penny said. "We're all about telling the truth in these sessions, and that was a lie, at least of omission." She wrote a little more down and said, "So, how did the truth come out?"

"The accident," Lauren said. "I lost it, but I'm not sure if it was because of the accident, or because I've had a history of miscarriages."

Penny looked up, and her face dropped. "Oh. I'm so sorry."

"So, they told Joe about it because he's my husband, and, well, of course they thought it was his."

Penny looked cosmically sad. "Joe, my God, that must have been a horrible way to find out."

To Lauren's surprise, Joe's voice cracked with emotion. "Yeah, it was no picnic. At first I did think it was mine, but then I thought, wait, if it was already detectable, it was too far along for me to have conceived it."