Missing Pieces Read Online Free PDF

selfish losers? Who exactly are you punishing here? Are you really going to keep cutting off your nose to spite your face?
    “What’s going on here?” a voice asked sleepily from somewhere beside us. I turned around as Sara slouched into the kitchen, her feet bare, her Amazon’s body slipping in and out of a navy silk teddy and boxer shorts.
My
navy silk teddy and boxer shorts, I realized, understanding now why I hadn’t been able to find them in several weeks. Her eyes barely open and all but hidden by her long tangled hair, elegant arms extended in front of her, groping for the fridge like a blind woman, she opened the fridge door and extricated the carton of freshly squeezed orange juice, raising it to her lips.
    “Please don’t do that,” I cautioned, trying not to scream.
    “Chill,” she said, one of those delightful teenage expressionsI’d like to wipe from the face of this earth. “Get a life” is another.
    “There are glasses in the cupboard,” I advised.
    Sara lowered the carton and opened the cupboard, careful to make sure that I caught the disdainful roll of her eyes as she reached for a glass. “So, what were you two making such a racket about before? You were laughing so loud you woke me up.”
    For a minute I couldn’t imagine what she was talking about. It seemed so long ago.
    “Your mother actually said something funny,” Jo Lynn told her, reducing me instantly to the status of humorless crone. “About PMS. What was it again?”
    “Well, I can’t really take the credit for it,” I qualified. “I heard it on a sitcom once.”
    “So, what was it?” Sara filled the tall glass with orange juice, downed it in one noisy gulp, then put both the carton and the empty glass on the counter.
    “Uh-uh. In the fridge.” I motioned. “In the dishwasher.”
    Another roll of the eyes as two sets of appliance doors clumsily opened and closed. “Never mind,” she said, walking across the room, glancing down at the newspaper spread out across the kitchen table. The President, the priest, and Colin Friendly stared back. “He’s cute,” Sara said, heading back toward her room.
    “I’m gonna marry him,” Jo Lynn called after her.
    “Cool,” Sara said, not breaking stride.

Chapter 3
    M onday arrived. I had clients booked every hour from eight through six o’clock, with forty-five minutes off for lunch.
    My office, in the heart of Palm Beach, only blocks from the ocean, consists of two small rooms and a smaller waiting area. The walls of each room are soft pink, the furniture predominantly gray. Stacks of recent magazines fill several large wicker baskets on either side of two padded benches that sit against the walls in the waiting room. I’ve made a point of keeping the magazines up to date ever since one of my clients walked tearfully into my office clutching a copy of
Newsweek,
asking if I knew that Steve McQueen had cancer. At this point, Steve McQueen had already been dead many years.
    An eclectic group of pictures hang on the walls: a black-and-white photograph of a polar bear hugging a baby cub; a muted watercolor of a woman reading under the shade of a giant banyan tree; a bright reproduction of a well-known poster by Toulouse-Lautrec—Jane Avril, kicking up her leg to dance. Classical music plays in the background, not too loud, but hopefully loud enough to cover up the sometimes raised voices that emanate from behind the closed doors of my inner office.
    Inside, three upholstered gray-and-white chairs sit grouped around a rectangular glass coffee table. More chairs can be brought in when required. There are some potted plants that look real but are actually replicas, since I have no talent with plants whatsoever, and I got tired of watching the real ones wither and die. Besides, on a symbolic level, dying plants seemed to reflect badly on my ability as a therapist.
    On the coffee table sit a small tin of cookies, a large notepad, and a giant box of tissues. There is a video camera