This was not something that I could tell Julia. She would think that it was some sort of maneuver and I would lose any hope of convincing her that he wasn’t right for her.
“I’m not here to tell you that your feelings don’t matter. All of you have been in the same shoes. I get this feeling that you might have daddy issues. There’s no reason to get up in my face. I’m just telling you how I see things and you can obviously refute my claim. Let me tell you what I have learned about him so far and maybe that will change your mind.” I took her hand gently, showing no animosity and led her to where she was sitting shaking like a leaf.
“I know exactly what he’s like and I don’t need you to tell me. I’ve always been a good catholic girl. I’ve never strayed from the flock. I’ve done what I’ve been told and I’m through with it. If I want to be with him, then why should I listen to any of this?” It was a good question and one that I was prepared to answer because I had gone over it in my head a hundred times since talking to Lillian.
“I understand where you’re coming from. I’ve been there myself and it’s hard to see what is right in front of you. I have some insights that you might want to hear. Can you at least listen for the next 20 minutes? If after what I have to say nothing changes, then I will gladly give back the money and we can all go our separate ways.” She was fuming, but at least she wasn’t tearing out of here with the water works on display.
“I need to say something.” Tina was sitting in a gray chair with her legs folded wearing a summer dress which was a little unusual for this weather. “Marshall does have some good qualities. He shows compassion, but it’s only an act and I’m ashamed to think back on the things that I did with him. I have a boyfriend and after looking myself in the mirror, I realized that he was the devil in disguise. I told my boyfriend and he was understandably upset, but he reminded me that we weren’t married. We are still together, but it was a rocky road for a time. This man does not deserve your respect.” Tina was soft-spoken and there wasn’t an ounce of hatred that seeped into any words that came from her mouth.
“I don’t see what difference that makes. I doubt that he told you that he was looking for love and didn’t know how to recognize it until he met me.” Her voice was echoed as all three of them mimicked the very same sentence verbatim. I could tell that Julia was stunned. She thought that she was special enough for him to treat her differently than others.
“We’ve all heard that before and it’s his way of lowering our guard. I fell for it myself. I look back and I think how stupid I was to give him that kind of power over me. Don’t you see that he has learned to weasel his way into our lives? You can’t be that out of touch with reality that you don’t understand that he’s a loser. He only needs to give us one look and we follow him like he’s some sort of pied piper. I don’t blame you for feeling this deeply and I still do in some regard.” It was nice to see that they were talking and not screaming at each other. Lillian had now lowered her register and was touching Julia’s hand. She was giving her a reason to grieve for a relationship that never was.
“You all took a huge risk by coming to me for help. My plan was to meet him and then strike up a conversation, but things didn’t go exactly as I intended. He followed you and then confronted me where I worked.” I could tell that they were not happy with this new set of circumstances. “I convinced him that you were all there to warn me about him. I had to do some fancy footwork, but I let him know that I would be responsible for how I perceived him. I told him that I would not allow anybody to run his name through the mud.” They listened intently without saying one word.
“I knew that there was a reason why we came to you. There’s no way that either one of us could have done any better than what you did. I think that it goes without saying that we need to be united. If there is a weak link, then we need to either fix it or forget this whole thing.” It was obvious that her comments were meant for Julia.
We all turned and looked at her at the same time, putting her in our cross hairs and giving her a reason to throw her hands up in defeat. “I don’t see how you are going to make me forget about how nice he can be. There’s no way that you can take away how gentle a lover or how he brought the woman out of me too many times to count.” They had similar stories and I was running high with a temperature of 101 between my legs. I could see myself testing their theory and seeing if it held true.