Deleted Scene from ‘Meet Miriam’

This scene was originally scheduled to appear at the end of the chapter. However, my beta and I agreed that the chapter was already too long and this didn’t necessarily add anything you didn’t know, so I’m sharing it as a Deleted Scene. Enjoy!

veiland


Miriam’s POV

I pour my glass of wine and kick back. Shelby sticks her head through the door. “I’m headed out. You OK?”

“Fine.”

She waves and closes the door behind her. I call Roberto and check on him. He’s done with his homework and he and Arturo are doing father-son stuff tonight. In other words, ordering a pizza and watching wrestling.

Fine. As long as that homework is complete.

I slip off my espadrilles and get comfortable, then queue up the fourth recording. Stephanie Plum. Now that was a surprise. I wasn’t prepared for the woman I met today. I expected another soldier, another guarded, terse individual I’d have to squeeze to get details from.

The first RangeWoman? I was expecting an elite solider.

What I found, staring at the Wolf Khan print I picked up two years ago, was a slight, curly-haired brunette with an almost manic energy and bright, intelligent eyes. Someone who sized me up as fast as I was sizing her up. Someone who looked ready, almost eager, to get started.

Good job, Robert. I’m glad you didn’t tell me anything about her because I was completely off-base. I had to wipe away my pre-conceived ideas and listen, truly listen, for the first time in a very long time. By the time I ordered her to breathe, I realized I would not be taking notes during that session. She needed someone to listen to her and just listen. Someone who wouldn’t end the conversation by telling her what to do or think.

I sit and start the recording, occasionally pausing it to make notes. Robert’s gotten a better assessment because it typed her perfectly. I retrieve the assessment I had her take, which agrees with Robert’s but puts her firmly within the PTSD scales.

Poor girl but not. She’s no one’s poor girl. What she is is largely normal, a mass of contradictions hiding the personal demons she fights. Everyone has their own and she’s fighting hers valiantly.

By the time she walked out of my office I felt wrung, but I understood why Ranger’s in love with her.

She’s strong. I don’t know if I’ve met anyone with her list of diagnoses who went as long as she did without cracking under the strain. Besides him. She’s done a great job of hiding her issues. I wonder how long she’s been depressed because she’s hidden it well.

Stephanie Plum is a strong woman who knows her own mind but she doesn’t trust it. Because she doesn’t trust it, she can’t trust anyone. Well, except Ranger. She trusts Ranger because he validates her decisions. He validates her mind, the one thing she doesn’t trust, and he’s done that since the moment he met her.

She’s emotionally dependent on him for the trust she doesn’t have in herself, so without him here, who is she trusting for validation? She didn’t mention anyone, but there has to be someone. Someone is validating her, even if she doesn’t believe it. My first guess would be Robert, Lester and Tank, but she’s so angry with them right now I hesitate to say it’s them.

Although … it fits the scenario perfectly. She was dependent on their validation because Ranger wasn’t available and when she realized they ran a psyop on her, it blew her trust in them.

A friendship in peril because of a plan.

I pull my hair out of its tight French roll and let it drift around my shoulders. It was starting to give me a headache. Quick press of a button and the lush trills of Maria Callas fill the room. I get comfortable on my chaise and relax, thinking about her words, her gestures. She looked nearly wild, pacing back and forth, almost desperate to release the words pent up inside her. Who does she talk to? Her girlfriends? Her parents? Who? I’ve never seen any woman in my room that desperate to talk to someone.

Who does she depend on now? Someone’s missing in this little grouping. There’s someone else she hasn’t mentioned. Or is Ranger back in the picture?

And Lester is involved? I chuckle and head back over to my desk, for my pad and my wine. I’ll bet this little plan was Lester’s idea. Then again … no, this has a whiff of Tank to it. Yes, I can almost see how he typed this: impressionable young woman who needs a guiding hand, like his sisters. And she’s in a pseudo-relationship with his partner, his brother?

Tank’s idea, but Lester signed on.

Sigh. Those two know just enough to be extremely dangerous.

I set up my portable table next to the chaise and place the pad and pen on top. I grab the remote to my sound bar and the remote to my portable Bluetooth speaker and lie back again, staring at the ceiling. I grab the wine glass off the table and twirl, watching the legs of my Merlot appear and disappear as Maria threatens to shatter the glass.

What’s interesting is that they managed to convince Robert. I’ll bet they dragged him into this kicking and screaming. I smile at the thought. Robert is not the kind of man to want to run this kind of plan. Robert is Mr. ‘Don’t give me your bullshit and excuses’, the kind of man to verbally beat you down and leave you to figure out how to save yourself. She would never respond to that … except she did.

She asked for therapy after Robert gave her a tongue-lashing. At least that’s what she told me the first time we talked, her voice full of anger and hurt at him. At the time, I wondered if I’d hear from her again, because what I heard in her voice the first time we talked was a lot of anger and general annoyance with Robert. It wasn’t the first time; Robert has a unique way of stripping people of their fantasies that leaves them bruised but honest with themselves. Not everyone can take it though. I thought that perhaps time, and a cooler head, would calm down the hurt and perhaps I wouldn’t be needed.

And if I know Robert, I’m sure he’s thinking If they’d just let me deal with it, we could have saved a lot of time!

And Ranger. Mr. Anti-label? I snort. Ranger is Mr. Anti-Involvement, but she managed to crack his defenses. He left her alone, willing to allow the situation to play out however long it took. And if it took another three years, he would have continued to wait, following his path of non-involvement. Non-coercion, except why? His partner and his cousin are his coercive weapons. If the situation had continued much longer, I’m sure he would have let his cousin off the leash …

I close my eyes, a smile tugging at my lips.

Those four. They can’t be without each other.

That plan could only have been run with his permission. Ranger allowed both Lester and Tank off the leash once she threw herself at him and they dragged Robert into this. I wonder what that plan was meant to do. Truly cut her ties with the other man? Give her a taste of his life, so she knew what she was getting entering into a relationship with him?

Probably. Based on what she said about living his life, I can see that as an objective and an objection. He had her, after years of waiting, and then he allows his brothers to run a risky plan? The payoff had to be a big one for him to gamble like that. She definitely objects to the reality of his life and now, having lived it, she questions whether or not she wants him. She loves him but she can’t see herself accepting his life because it would inhibit hers.

Knowing Ranger as I do, knowing he had no intentions of ever marrying or settling down with any woman, if he were going to make that leap he would want to ensure that the woman he settled with understood and accepted what she was getting. Given his past and his company, there’s not a lot of wiggle room for him to carve out. A woman in a relationship with him has to accept the secrecy, the company, and his three partners. He’s a full plate by himself and he comes with baggage!

Yes, I wonder what the goals for this little plan were. I sit up and make a note to get all the details she can give me and I may need to call Robert for additional info.

I refill the wine glass and switch to a more mellow aria, my mind mulling over some of the details she gave me. As interesting as the bits with ‘the Four Shades of Death’ were, they’re ultimately less important than some of the other details she glossed over, avoided, and sidestepped. Previously married? Most women talk about their ex-husbands at length, either to try to convince me he was the world’s biggest jackass and they’re over him or … no, that’s usually the story. She barely mentioned him. The ex-boyfriend got much more time.

The ex-boyfriend she dated while in love with Ranger.

That’s a minefield right there. Clearly, she’s not over him and the way he dumped her hurt, except I don’t think she understands that she dumped him. She told the man, post-coital, that she didn’t love him. That relationship was over at that moment. I can’t wait to point out that if she’d asked the same question and his response had been “No, I’m just fucking you until someone better comes along,” she would have had the same emotional response he did.

I glance at my wine glass. In vino, veritas? I believe it and I’d add whatever the Latin is for The truth will be told at dusk and dawn.

Joe Morelli. The boyfriend. We’ll probably spend some time there too. A three year relationship with one man while in love with another? A man for whom she cannot recall any of the loving, tender things he ever told her? He had to have told her at least one or two, even as a lie to sleep with her.

She didn’t trust herself. She didn’t trust her heart to let that one go.

The family dynamic. The father now coming forward to tell her what he thinks of her and she notes the timing. Perceptive of her and it’s not just her father. The chief of Police also, so I’m sure there are more. She did say ‘everyone’. They tell her what they think of her when Ranger is no longer there, when her ‘protector’ is gone. ‘Everyone’ waited until Ranger was no longer around to tell her that she was OK, that her decisions are OK, to hit her emotionally. Purposeful? Or … hmm. I take another sip of wine and make a note to ask about him.

The grandmother who believes she’s a feminist but isn’t. Amusing. Ms. Plum is judging her grandmother on today’s standards. Not every feminist had the ability to be independent. The first wave feminists didn’t but what matters is that they campaigned to get women the right to vote. It sounds, however, like Ms. Plum is calling her grandmother a hypocrite and that’s interesting.

The ‘critical’ mother and sister? Maybe, maybe not. I only got few snapshots of them, not enough to get any real impression. Then again, no. She mentioned her mother quite a bit. I rewind the recording to the beginning and listen carefully. Yes … she’s desperate for her mother’s approval of her choices. She wants her mother to accept her life and she feels her mother doesn’t. That’s normal, very normal. Can’t think of a single woman I know who hasn’t felt that at some point in her life. What’s interesting is she’s in her thirties and still looking for her mother’s approval.

Yes, some of those tidbits were interesting, very interesting. I start making notes. Her homework is going to be hard because it’s truly all about her and if she really wants to change her life, it’s going to hurt. She sees herself as not having any power in her world. No one can force anyone to do anything without their consent, but she doesn’t see her life that way.

I stop and rewind to the very beginning of the recording and listen. “I can’t take an order, at all, no matter how it’s made. I have problems with authority. All authority. I don’t want my life to be another way for everyone to get what they want.”

I slap my pen down and laugh. This woman is in love with the wrong men! A cop, an ex-soldier, what was the ex-husband? I don’t think she mentioned. Parents are natural authority figures! Her grandmother, both an authority figure and a woman who rebelled against authority. So the family dynamic is really important here. So she worked as a bounty hunter because … I wonder how bounty hunting is structured. Did she have a boss? Or is it more an independent contractor thing?

Problems with authority and she’s surrounded by it. She works in the field and is in love with a former soldier. Whew! Ms. Plum is bringing me a case study feast! I think we’ll start with the Plum family first. Based on what she said about her father and grandmother, I bet I’ll find a lot of the issues right there.

9 comments

  1. Molly9429

    I love this. I agree about deleting this. THe chapter had a great deal even with the dreaded mall trip again. , but it is all little details that I love. I love hearing her talk about the the Four Shades of Death and figuring out how the op went down. She voiced my concerned for her lack of support or talking partners. THanks.

  2. Molly9429

    I can’t stay away. Miriam’s comment about “I snort. Ranger is Mr. Anti-Involvement,” My first thought was of Steph’s father not getting involved with his wife or daughters. He sat at the table and grunted for food and left. She fell for a guy just like dear old dad.

  3. Selene Aduial

    Very informative, but I understand why you took it out of the chapter. Perhaps this should be in the side-stories?
    I can’t wait to see what else Miriam comes across in their sessions.

  4. Allyssa

    I’m glad you shared the scene! I agree that the length of the chapter was uber long, lol. But this is informative. I have to wonder if it’ll be healthier for Steph to resign from RangeMan, but at the same time, it’ll be interesting to see her thrive there even more since she told Ranger she wants to stay.

  5. Guynell

    I am so glad you shared this part of the story so we can see what Miriam is thinking. Steph may not be able to call the LC out on some of their crapola, but Miriam can. I love this character and would like to talk with her myself.

  6. Sabrina

    I always love the extras and deleted scenes. I think it could have gone either way, I love long chapters, but I didn’t feel like the first therapy chapter was missing anything, it was chock full of goodies, too. I like your Miriam, she’s sharp and sees the forest Steph cannot see for all the trees. I think after the whirlwind and anxiety and excitement and every other emotion the reader experienced from your work, this therapy thing may be a little cathartic for us all:)

  7. K

    Loved this deleted scene! Thank you for sharing it! Miriam will be very good for Steph. Her comments on the guys was fascinating. I am looking forward to the therapy sessions. As always great work V.

  8. K

    Loved the deleted scene. Thank you for sharing it! I found her comments on the 4 guys fascinating and am looking forward to seeing Steph’s therapy. Excellent as always V! Looking forward to reading more. Hope all is well with you!

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