Page 21 of Dear Debbie

“There was a woman who wrote to you, talking about a problem with her husband,” he reminds me. “And this is the advice you gave her…” He picks up a printed copy of the Hingham Household off his desk, which is already dog-eared on the offending page. “You said, ‘Your husband is using money as a way to control you. You don’t need his permission to get a job. You don’t need his permission for anything! My advice is that you should speak to a divorce lawyer.’”

I remember the column well. I don’t often tell women to leave their husbands, believe me. I’m not a licensed therapist, and I certainly can’t offer that kind of advice based on the tiny snippet presented to me in letters from readers. At least half of the women write in with complaints about their husbands, and I can never tell them what I really think, although I’m always itching to do so. But what that woman was describing was so egregious, I couldn’t help myself.

“Yes,” I say. “The financial abuse guy.”

“Well, she left him.”

I nod, pleased. “Good.”

“Not good.” Garrett looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. “Debbie, what were you thinking? You can’t tell complete strangers to leave their husbands.”

“Isn’t my job to give advice?”

“Right, about gardening or getting stains out of shirts.” His voice is completely exasperated. “You can’t tell a woman you’ve never even met to get a divorce!”

“I can if he’s so clearly abusive!”

“You don’t know that…”

“He wouldn’t let her have her own credit card.” I tick off the man’s sins on my hands. “He put her on an allowance even though she’s a grown woman. He wouldn’t let her get a job of her own. What sort of decent husband treats his wife that way? Would you treat your wife that way?”

“It’s none of your business, Debbie.”

“None of my business!” I burst out. “Garrett, I write an advice column. That’s what I do. People ask me for advice, and I give it to them. It’s up to them if they follow that advice.”

“Not anymore you don’t.”

I stare at him. “What?”

Garrett lets out a long sigh and massages his temples. “The husband is threatening to sue us. This guy means business. The only way he would retract the lawsuit is if I fired you. And Bernice.”

Well, that explains Bernice’s empty desk.

“Why did you have to fire Bernice?” I feel terrible about that most of all. She’s a single mother with a daughter in college. At least I have Cooper’s income to lean on. “I’m the one who wrote the column.”

“It was Bernice’s decision to print the letter,” he says. “She knew what she was doing.”

“It was good advice.” I clutch the hem of my skirt in my fists, which have suddenly grown sweaty. “That woman needed help, and I told her the truth. You’re really going to fire me for helping a woman who was being abused?”

“This is a family-oriented paper,” Garrett reminds me. “That’s what our advertisers expect. You can’t tell people to get a divorce. You just can’t, Debbie.”

“So you’re just going to give this asshole everything he wants so he doesn’t sue you?”

“Actually, I agree with him. You should not have gotten involved. If Bernice had shown me the column, I would’ve told her not to print it.”

I’m sure Bernice did show him the column, but as usual, my lazy boss didn’t bother to look at it. Now that Bernice is gone, he’s screwed. Who will put the paper together? I doubt he even knows how. But I’m sure he’ll find some other sap to do all the work while he sits there pretending he’s important.

Garrett rises from his seat, his spine abnormally straight. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave now. Sierra will escort you to the door.”

“Escort me?” That buzzing in my head starts up again. I take a deep breath, trying to calm myself. “What do you think I’m going to do?”

He doesn’t answer that question. What I really want to say is that if I did want to stir up some shit, I doubt scrawny little Sierra could stop me. Luckily for him, I plan to go quietly.

I have a desk in the office, although I’ve barely got anything in it. Sierra babysits me while I grab a legal pad out of the desk and a few pens. I also have a color photograph of Cooper with the girls in my desk drawer. Nobody offers me a box, so I just carry everything in my arms.

“I’m sorry, Debbie,” Sierra says, looking uncomfortable, “but I have to ask you for your key.”

I had forgotten I even have a set of keys, but I check my key ring, and sure enough, there is a mystery key that I suspect opens the door to the office. The buzzing in my head grows louder as I work it free and hand it over to Sierra’s waiting hand. She goes through the rigamarole of testing it to make sure it’s the correct key and that I’m not giving them a fake one. As if it wouldn’t have been super easy to make a copy if I wanted to.