The Secret Between Us

by Barbara Delinsky

  “Your choice, sweetie. You want me, you call.” He hung up.

  If Deborah had any doubts, they were gone. Hal was a two-timing bastard.

  But Grace was staring straight at her with terrified eyes. “It’s not over, is it,” she said. “It won’t ever be over.”

  “It will,” Deborah vowed. Pushing her hair back, she tried to think straight. “We always knew this was a possibility. The widow is angry. She feels she has to do something.”

  “Tell them,” Grace whispered.

  Deborah went to her, but when she would have taken her daughter’s hand, Grace crossed her arms. Deborah felt the loss. She was the one who had needed the comfort of a human touch.

  Feeling on the edge of a panic that she could not let her daughter see, she asked, “What good would telling them do? It won’t change the widow’s case. She doesn’t care who was driving, Grace. She’s saying that John didn’t do a thorough job investigating, but the state team investigated, so she doesn’t have a case. The D.A. will never press charges.”

  “Like Mr. McKenna won’t die?” Grace asked and quietly turned away.

  Deborah didn’t know whether it was mention of the name McKenna, or simply a natural progression of thought, but having told off both the detectives and Hal, her focus settled on Tom. Her anger built slowly, almost without her realizing it, simmering all through Lívia’s dinner and the ride home. She didn’t know if Tom was a friend, but she felt betrayed. It was absurd, she knew. But there it was.

  Dylan fell asleep. She tried to talk to Grace, using Jill’s pregnancy as an icebreaker, but Grace gave dismissive, one-word answers, finally pleading that she had to do homework, study flash cards for her PSATs, and cram for a biology AP exam. If she’d had more strength, Deborah would have discussed Grace’s terseness, because there had been accusation in the listing.

  But she was tired of fighting. Leaving Grace alone, she climbed into bed, but sleep wouldn’t come. After an hour of tossing and turning, she kicked back the covers, went down to the kitchen, and made tea. When that did nothing to soothe her, she turned on a light in the den and tried to think who she could call. She didn’t want to wake Jill, and Karen didn’t answer. In desperation, she called Tom.

  He had been asleep. She was upset enough not to care. Nor did she care about pleasantries. She had lived her life on pleasantries, and, like so many other things lately, they seemed a waste of time. As soon as he said that groggy hello, she said, “I trusted you.”

  There was a pause, then, “Deborah?”

  “I trusted you,” she repeated, suddenly on the attack. She was angry. And hurt. “I told you things I shouldn’t have about my family. I actually thought we were friends, but now I’m wondering why a pair of detectives confronted me with all the information I told you last night. Were you working with Selena all along? Is that what the conversations we’ve had were about?”

  There was silence, then a quiet, “No—”

  “Maybe it was my fault,” Deborah interrupted before he could say more. “Maybe I imagined a bond where there wasn’t one. I mean, we were both agonizing over family crises, and even though they were different, I thought we understood each other. Was I wrong? Was I seeing something that wasn’t there at all?”

  He started to speak, but she raced on. “And besides, why would I have ever thought we could be friends? One look at you, and my daughter freaks out. We just want this over, Tom. But now, another investigation? You know there was no crime committed. Dragging things out won’t bring your brother back.” With the worst of her anger spent, she added, “I trusted you. Maybe I was a fool for that. I thought the trust was mutual.” When he didn’t reply, she said softly, “Are you still there?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re not saying anything.”

  “You needed to vent.”

  “See?” she cried. “That’s what I mean. Why are you being so nice?”

  “Was I wrong?”

  “No. But your reaction is very misleading given everything that’s happened. Do you think I’ve tried to cover up anything? Are you helping Selena?”

  “No to both.”

  “But you didn’t stop her from going to the D.A.”

  “I didn’t know she was going.”

  “Does she know what the report says about Cal?”

  “She knows,” he said with feeling.

  “And what does she say? I mean, his behavior was bizarre. Doesn’t she see that there was no way we could have avoided hitting him if he just darted out of the woods in front of us?”

  “She can’t admit that. She’s too emotional.”

  “Well, so am I,” Deborah cried, because, when it came down to it, Cal’s behavior was too suspicious to ignore. “Your brother sounds disturbed. Maybe he caused the accident.”

  “Don’t you think I’ve asked myself that question?” Tom burst out.

  “We can come up with lots of other theories, like that Cal was disoriented by the glare of my headlights, or that he wasn’t feeling well, or that he had a bad reaction to some other medication his wife didn’t know about. When you put all the clues together, though, they suggest your brother was suicidal.”

  “You don’t think I’ve wondered about that, too?” said Tom loudly. “I can’t do this on the phone,” he muttered almost to himself, then asked, “Can we talk tomorrow? Not on the phone, in person?”

  “You’re suing me,” Deborah reminded him.

  “I’m not. I have nothing to do with it, but we have to talk. I do trust you, Deborah. That’s why I keep speaking with you. You understand what I’m saying. I need your help with this.”

  Put that way, what could she say?

  Once they agreed to a time and a place, Deborah ended the call and returned to bed. She awoke Thursday morning to the sound of Dylan’s keyboard. “Mr. Tambourine Man” was so lighthearted after the dismal news that had come the day before that she smiled all through breakfast.

  Then she drove the kids to school, with her daughter as distant as ever, and she felt like a fraud again. She could yell and scream all she wanted on the phone, but if the issue between Tom and her was trust, she was abusing his. He didn’t know about Grace.

  Chapter 17

  Deborah left the bakery with a warm sticky bun and the desperate wish that her father lived two hours away. Being thirty-eight years of age didn’t seem to count for anything when it came to fearing a parent. Parking behind his car, she entered the house quietly. His coffee was ready, his bagel set out. She put her bag on the table and was mustering the courage to go looking for him when she heard him come down the front stairs.

  He gave her a brief glance—more uncomfortable than angry, she realized with some relief—and went straight to the coffee urn. “You have yours?” he asked without turning.

  “I’m all set.”

  He fixed his coffee and took the bagel to the table. Once seated, he saw the bakery bag. “Is your sister all right?” he asked quietly.

  Curiosity was a good sign, Deborah decided. Subdued was better than belligerent. “She’s fine. Not happy, though. I forbade her to go downstairs for at least one more day.”

  “And she’ll listen to you?” he asked with a wry twist of his mouth.

  She took the question for the rhetorical one it was and said, “Dad, I need your help this morning.”

  “Don’t ask me to call her. I’m the last one she’ll listen to.”

  “Not Jill,” Deborah said. “It’s something else. I need to take off for a couple of hours. It’s about that call you received yesterday.” As succinctly as she could—while his humor held—she told him about the suit the widow wanted to bring, the detectives from the district attorney’s office, and what the report said about Cal running out of the woods in front of her car. She ended by telling him about Tom.

  Drinking his coffee, he listened without interruption. When she was done, he asked, “Why meet with him?”

  “Because he asked,” she said simply, then added, “He kn
ows his brother was suicidal. He’s trying to deal with that.”

  “Throwing oneself in front of a car doesn’t guarantee death.”

  “For a Coumadin user, it might.”

  “Was he depressed? Did he leave a note?”

  “No note. And Tom doesn’t know if he was depressed.”

  “Was he under unusual stress?”

  “I don’t know. Tom might. I’d like to ask him.”

  “Would he tell you the truth?”

  “Yes. We have a good rapport. I think he sees me as a resource. When he learned his brother was on Coumadin, he asked me lots of questions about it.”

  “Think it’s a setup?”

  “No. I think he likes to bounce things off me.”

  “Why you?” her father asked. “There must be other people in his life.”

  Deborah was sure that there were, but whether Tom confided in them was something else. “I think it’s just that I live in the town where his brother lived. My daughter had him in school. Tom says he trusts me.”

  Michael arched a brow. “His sister-in-law is suing you.”

  Deborah didn’t need the reminder. “He says he didn’t know she was. He hadn’t met her until last week.”

  “That’s odd.”

  “It’s an odd family. Or was. Tom is all that’s left. He’s struggling with what’s happened.”

  “That’s natural,” Michael granted. “But should you be the one helping him?”

  “It feels right to me.”

  “Like redemption?”

  “Maybe,” she acknowledged. Whatever was proven about Cal’s intentions that night, the fact remained that he had been hit by her car.

  Her father swallowed the last of his bagel. “I think Hal should go with you.”

  For the first time in the discussion, Deborah disagreed. “Hal would inhibit the conversation.”

  “It’s not like this guy’s your friend. What if he’s wearing a wire?”

  “He won’t be,” Deborah said. “If we’re discussing his brother, he has more to lose than I do. He won’t want any talk of suicide on tape. Suicide would jeopardize a life insurance payment. Besides, he is kind of a friend.”

  “A friend who gives redemption.”

  Deborah didn’t know whether Michael was being facetious, but chose to take him seriously. “I can talk with him. He listens.”

  “Hal should be with you.”

  “I trust Tom.”

  Michael was quiet. Then he raised guarded eyes. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “I need you to cover for me this morning.”

  “You could have called. Or walked in here and said you had a conference with one of the kids’ teachers. You could have just not shown up, like yesterday.”

  She felt duly guilty. “I’m sorry for that. I didn’t have much advance warning.”

  “And today you do? I think you want my blessing for this, but I can’t give it, Deborah. You walk in here talking about being sued, and now you’re going to meet with the man who’s suing you? That’s crazy.”

  “Is it?” she asked, because there was a very practical side to her meeting with Tom. “He’s not the one suing me. The widow is. He may be able to control her.”

  “You said he barely knows her.”

  “But if anyone can influence her, he can. He’ll tell her the down side of a suit. I need to do this, Dad. Grace and I won’t rest easy until the case is resolved.”

  He stared at her for a minute. “It doesn’t matter what I say. You’ll do what you want.” Turning his back on her, he went to the sink.

  Deborah sat for another minute. She had come for her father’s approval, but suddenly that seemed sad. “I’m an adult,” she said. “I have instincts. Sometimes I have to follow them.”

  “What do you want from me then?”

  She stood. “Respect. Acknowledgment that maybe what’s right for me wouldn’t be right for you.”

  He half turned. “You girls exasperate me.”

  “We can’t always live up to your expectations, but that doesn’t necessarily make us wrong. Times change. I need you to understand why I’m doing what I am.”

  “I’m trying, Deborah, but it’s hard.”

  “It’s hard for me, too,” she replied. The hollow feeling inside wasn’t new, but finally she had an inkling where it came from. “You keep saying you miss Mom, but don’t you think I do, too? She was always in my corner, and I’m in a tough place right now. I need you to support me. If she’d been here…” Throat tight, she stopped.

  Gruffly, Michael said, “Well, she isn’t. You’re right. Times change.”

  Deborah’s eyes filled with tears. “She was a good listener,” she managed to say, but that was all. Leaving her father at the sink, she returned to her car. She had driven barely a block when she pulled over, put her forehead to the wheel, and wept.

  She missed her mother. Thirty-eight years old, and she might have been five, but too much had happened in her life of late. Deborah hadn’t even cried like this when Ruth died. She’d had to hold things together for her father and everyone else then. Now she sobbed until she ran out of tears.

  That made her late for her meeting with Tom at the park. His black car was the only one in the dirt lot. As she parked beside it, she spotted him standing by a stream some thirty feet away.

  Putting on sunglasses to hide her eyes, she crossed the grass. “I’m sorry. I meant to be here on time.”

  “I thought you’d decided not to come,” he said. “Your lawyer must have advised against it.”

  She waved dismissively and looked down at the stream. The soft sound of its movement was soothing. “Funny. I have no problem with water like this. I love the ocean. Love lakes. Love taking a shower or bath. It’s just rain that upsets me.”

  For a minute, he didn’t reply. Then he said, “You sound like you have a cold.”

  So much for wearing dark glasses. “No. I just had a long crying jag.” There seemed no point in denying it. “That’s why I was late. I just sat there on the side of the road crying. Totally helpless.”

  She could feel him studying her. “What caused it?”

  She shrugged. “Life. It overwhelms sometimes.”

  “But you cry and recover. Some people don’t. Why is that?”

  She looked up at him then. He wore a wrinkled shirt, tails hanging over his jeans. His hands were in his pockets. His eyes met hers.

  “I could say we are born with survival skills,” she said, “but it’s experience, too. Life treats each of us differently.”

  A pair of chickadees flitted by. She watched them disappear into a willow on the opposite bank.

  “But what about the person who refuses to acknowledge his emotions?” Tom asked.

  “Is that what Cal did?”

  The birds were joined by others in the tree, loudly calling to each other.

  “Pretty much,” Tom admitted. “I was talking with Selena after we saw the medical records. She kept asking how he could have had those little strokes and still risked her life by driving with her in the car, like she was expendable. She kept asking how he could have kept so much of himself from her, as if he didn’t need her at all. But Cal always hid what he felt.”

  “Always?”

  It was a minute before he said, “My parents didn’t encourage emotional expression. My mom didn’t like crying, and once we were old enough to take care of ourselves, she just wasn’t there. What’s the point of crying, if there’s no one to hear?”

  Having just stopped sobbing herself, Deborah said, “Catharsis.”

  He shot her a look. “You know that and I know it, but Cal? He never saw the point, I guess.”

  “Why wasn’t your mom there? Did she travel with your dad?”

  “That was the official story, but the truth was, she was off doing her own thing. I never knew what that was, only that she didn’t like being tied down any more than my father did.”

  “But they chose to have children,” Debo
rah argued and would have said something about the responsibility inherent in that if he hadn’t spoken first.

  “They didn’t actively choose to have us. She used to tell me that we were both little surprises. I always believed she was relieved when Cal came along, so that she wouldn’t feel so guilty leaving me alone. By the time I was in high school, it was just Cal and me for days at a time.”

  “Where was Social Services?” Deborah asked in alarm.

  “Not at our house.” He qualified that. “In fairness to my parents, we had food and clothes and heat. We never lacked in the physical sense.”

  “Only in the emotional. But why would it take a greater toll on Cal than on you?” Deborah asked, because Tom was clearly steady, solid both physically and emotionally.

  Taking his hands from his pockets, he said, “Maybe I was a lousy parent to him.”

  Deborah wondered if that was why he didn’t have a wife and kids of his own. “You were a child yourself.”

  “I was old enough. I saw how normal people lived. I had friends. Their parents showed me kindness and warmth. Cal never had those kinds of friends. People never reached out to him.”

  “He was very good-looking.”

  “But he didn’t smile. He couldn’t converse easily. He didn’t have friends like mine, so I tried to give him what those parents gave me.” His eyes met hers. They looked haunted. “I did what I could. I guess it wasn’t enough. Cal closed himself off so he wouldn’t have to feel—at least, that’s what I chose to believe. It was easier for me to think he didn’t feel anything, than that he was in pain.”

  He began to walk along the bank, eventually stopping at a bench. It had been green once, but was faded to a soft gray. Deborah doubted he even saw it. He was preoccupied.

  She followed him along the shore. When she reached the bench, he said, “Cal fell in love once. He couldn’t have been more than twelve, but he was crazy about a girl in his class, and for a couple of weeks, she was crazy about him. For the few weeks they were together, he was a different kid. Then she fell in love with someone else.”