Excerpt: In The Grand Scheme Of Things

“Do you believe in love?”
Jan Wade looked up from her pad of paper to her client, Thomas Miller, a 19-year-old who dropped out of college after the first week because of a mental breakdown. The question caught her off-guard. “Pardon?”
“Do you believe in love?”
Jan cleared her throat. “What brings up this question?”
Thomas shifted his glance to the corner of the room. “Nothing,” he mumbled. “Just wondering.”
Jan sighed and placed her pad of paper on the coffee table in front of her. “Thomas, you can’t just bring up these questions and not have some sort of motive behind them.”
Thomas kept his eyes on a smudge on the wall. “I was just wondering if you believed in love,” he mumbled again.
“Why do you want to know?”
Thomas took a deep breath and said, “Well, I mean, I think I’m in love with this girl, but I don’t want to say I’m in love if there’s no such thing as love, y’know?”
“Thomas, whether or not I believe in love shouldn’t affect how you feel about this girl. Do you believe in love?”
Thomas hesitated, then: “I don’t know.”
Jan leaned back in her chair and picked up her pad. “Tell me about this girl,” she said.
Thomas could feel his face warm up. After a moment of searching for words, Jan looked at her watch. “We’ll have to save this for our next session, Thomas,” she said. “What do you think we accomplished today?”
Thomas shrugged. “I learned that my anger is under my control, and that I should work to keep it that way,” he recited.
“What else?”
Thomas looked into Jan’s eyes. “I also learned that you’re good at dodging questions,” he said.