Rocky Road

by Josi S. Kilpack

  His shoulders slumped slightly, and Sadie prepared herself to hear something she’d find disappointing. But at least it would be the truth. “Okay, we met at a conference about a year before she came to work for the foundation.”

  Their initial meeting, then, was somehow scandalous enough that they had hidden it—which meant it wasn’t a purely professional interaction. This change fit easily into the basic timeline Sadie had developed Tuesday night.

  “You were still married when the two of you met.”

  “It’s not something I’m proud of.”

  “And it’s something you worked hard to keep quiet,” Sadie said, recalling what Lori had told her Tuesday night about Dr. Hendricks’s unquestionable fidelity. It was hard to keep her judgments to herself, but it was imperative that she do so. “Lori doesn’t even suspect anything.” At least Sadie didn’t think she did. She remembered Lori’s expression as she watched Anita give her comments at the memorial service. Had she figured it out?

  Dr. Hendricks continued. “We worked hard to make sure no one found out—it would have ruined me. But I was very vulnerable when we met, and she took advantage of that.”

  “Is that truly a fair reflection of what happened?” Sadie couldn’t keep herself from saying it—as much as she wanted to remain neutral.

  He looked back at the dirt, and Sadie hoped she hadn’t pushed him back behind his wall of reserve. “No, I should have been a better man, a better husband.”

  Sadie accepted his comment and moved the conversation forward. “It sounds like you and Anita had a good marriage, though, for quite a while. What changed six months ago?”

  He stirred his salad. “Last November, I agreed to be interviewed for a research paper one of my patients was doing on cancer foundations for a college course. I knew so little about how the foundation was operating that I decided to familiarize myself with the details so I wouldn’t sound like an idiot.

  “In the process of the research, I discovered that the boutique wasn’t part of the nonprofit and that in the previous two years, the foundation had donated less than ten cents of every dollar to actual research. The dollar amounts we donated were going up, but our percentages were going down. The other ninety percent had gone to salaries and overhead.” He met Sadie’s eyes. “I didn’t even know I was making a salary from the foundation—I thought the time I spent on it was a donation, but apparently I’d made just under a hundred thousand dollars a year, and Anita and Dr. Waters had made the same amount. I also learned the boutique was making money—good money—none of which was going to research as claimed.”

  Sadie lifted her eyebrows. “You didn’t know any of that?”

  He shook his head. “Doctors aren’t particularly known for their business sense. Anita has run the clinic, our household, and the foundation for the last four years. I sign whatever papers she asks me to sign. I was just relieved that I didn’t have to worry about it. But when I tried to talk to her about my concerns last fall, she patted me on the head and explained it away. But I was nervous about what I’d learned. I did some more digging and learned things I didn’t know I didn’t know—for instance, if members of the board of a nonprofit make less than a hundred thousand dollars a year, it doesn’t need to be reported—each of us made $96,000, and we’d been making that amount for three years.”

  Sadie did the math. Three years with three salaries of almost a hundred grand was nearly a million dollars. In salaries. Not research.

  “That didn’t count what we paid Anita’s assistant, the receptionist, building expenses, printing, marketing, and a dozen other expenses that were approved for nonprofits but seemed extremely inflated beyond our needs. I learned that the foundation had loaned Anita the start-up capital for the boutique—and that the profits were substantial but were not paying back the loan. She’s funneled nearly three and a half million dollars away from the foundation in one way or another over the last four years.”

  “Where did it go?”

  “I didn’t figure that part out before Anita discovered what I was doing. She tried to explain it away, but when she realized she couldn’t, she reminded me that it was my name on everything. She said that if I really wanted to make a big deal about this, it would take me down, and she would do everything in her power to help me sink.”

  Sadie raised her eyebrows, imagining what it would feel like to hear your spouse issue that kind of threat. Dr. Hendricks continued. “Remember how I said that her dream was to be the director of a nonprofit?”

  Sadie nodded.

  “I had no idea that my role in her life had everything to do with that goal and nothing to do with me.”

  “Why was being a director her ultimate goal?” Sadie asked. It was a question she’d asked before and found no answer for. “Why a nonprofit foundation?”

  “Everyone loves a philanthropist. Everyone admires someone who’s making the world a better place, and all her work on other foundations had taught her how to get rich doing it. She got power, admiration, fame, respect, and money. Who doesn’t want that?”

  Sadie didn’t, but she knew there were plenty of people who did. “So after the two of you had it out, then what? You said you wanted a divorce?”

  He nodded. “She threatened to destroy me if I pursued it—divorce was not in her ten-year plan for the foundation. She threatened to charge me with abuse, which would destroy my professional reputation, and then she’d take me for everything I had. She’d tell Lori the truth about how we met, which would threaten my relationship with her and, ultimately, my kids—Lori has a heightened sense of morality that, even though we were split up, would—”

  “I’m not sure expecting fidelity is ‘a heightened sense of morality,’” Sadie cut in. “I think most spouses expect it—you said yourself that Anita’s flirting with Dr. Waters put you over the edge.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” he hurried to correct himself. “I just mean that even with us being divorced, she wouldn’t take it well, and I couldn’t afford to put anything else in the way of my relationship with the kids.”

  “And so you did nothing about the fraud you’d discovered?”

  “I prayed,” he said with a soft smile and an even softer tone. “For the first time in years. I begged for help to know how to get out of this. I stopped signing the paperwork she gave me—that’s when I noticed her laughing more at Jake’s jokes, touching his arm a little longer than usual, asking for his help with things. I tried to learn more about the intricacies she’d built into the foundation, but she limited my access. She changed passwords on all our accounts, on the foundation’s computers—even the alarm system for the foundation suites. I was effectively locked out of my own life, and I couldn’t figure out how to get back in without exposing her and, in the process, myself.”

  “And then she was diagnosed with cancer?” Sadie wanted to make sure he didn’t jump too far ahead on the timeline. From what Sadie had read, Anita was diagnosed at the start of the year.

  He shook his head. “She didn’t have cancer, what she had was a really great marketing tool and one more way to own me. How would the community react to my leaving my wife right after her diagnosis?”

  Once again, Sadie’s eyebrows went up. “How could she fake cancer?”

  “She’s smart. She handles all the billing and records at our clinic. She went to an oncologist in Vegas that I’ve never heard of—or at least she said she did. She said she didn’t want to use the local doctors because of conflict of interest. Who, other than me, is going to investigate and make sure she’s telling the truth? And if I can prove she’s making it up, then what? I expose her, and me, and risk everything all over again?” He shook his head. “And, from what I understand, the foundation took in as much in donations in the first quarter of this year as we did in the first three quarters of last year—due to her campaign to use her own situation as proof of how important early detection is. The woman’s a genius.”

  “And you didn’t tell anyone the trut
h?” She tried to keep the censure out of her voice, but knew she wasn’t very good at that. What about the ethics of his medical practice? How could he not expose Anita for what she was? Surely some agency somewhere could help him. There had to be more options than just to stay or to leave.

  “I alerted different watch groups. I notified the Better Business Bureau—I did everything I could do anonymously to try to get some attention on the foundation. I never heard back from anyone. I fell into a depression—I was barely getting through the work day, and I could feel myself slipping in my work, in my ability to focus, in everything. Which I think was also part of her plan.”

  “How so?” Sadie asked, wondering why, if he’d sent these alerts, nothing had shown online.

  “In March, she made me a proposal.”

  “For divorce?”

  “Eventually, yes. In the meantime, I was to remain as the head of the foundation, but I had to guarantee a personal loan to build a stand-alone cancer facility that she would run. I was to bankroll the enterprise, support her publicly, and endorse the growing services that this facility would offer. In exchange, she agreed that after the facility was up and running and financially stable, she would grant me a divorce based on ‘irreconcilable differences.’ She would not slander me or interfere with my medical license in any way. She would agree to a reasonable divorce settlement and do everything in her power to keep my relationship with Lori and the kids intact. She couched it as an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

  “So you refused it by leaving?” When Sadie had first met Dr. Hendricks a few hours earlier, he’d said he should have killed himself when he had the chance. But he’d thought he was meeting Kyle Edger at that point. When had suicide felt like a reasonable way out?

  “After Anita’s proposal, I contacted Kyle Edger. I couldn’t retain him because Anita had tight reins on the finances, and she couldn’t know what I was doing. But Kyle was willing to help me figure out what my options were. He told me he would do some searching to verify my information. When I realized Anita was tracking my phone calls, I started communicating with him via a new e-mail address I used only on public computers, like at the library or Internet cafés.

  “A few days before I went on that backpacking trip, I got an e-mail about meeting him at the cabin. He’d found something he wanted me to see—and he felt we needed to talk in person. I left Friday and came here—well, to the cabin. I waited all night and then all day Saturday for him to join me. By Sunday morning I didn’t know what to think, but I went to the motel and used their computer to check my e-mail. There were no new messages, so I called his home and found out about the aneurysm and that his funeral would be held on Monday. When the woman on the phone asked me who I was, I hung up.”

  Sadie wanted to ask more questions, but she was worried about interrupting him. Twenty seconds later, she was rewarded for her patience.

  “Mentally and emotionally, I just crumbled when I heard what had happened to Kyle—I couldn’t live in my life for another day. I couldn’t endorse Anita when I knew what she was doing, and I couldn’t stop her on my own without being pulled down with her. And now the one person who could help me was out of the picture.”

  Sadie watched him, thinking about what he was telling her. “You planned to kill yourself.”

  He looked back at the picture of his children on the ground. “I figured if I made it look like an accident, maybe it wouldn’t hurt my kids so much. So I drove back to the Chuckwalla Trailhead Sunday evening. It was the third spot I checked—the other ones had cars in the parking lots. I left my phone on the seat, put on my pack, and headed up the trail. I walked for hours in the dark, trying to come to terms with the life I was leaving and what a fool I had been to let it come to this. I finally hiked up to a place where I was certain a fall would kill me, and ...” His voice trailed off, and everything was silent, except for the wind in the trees.

  “You changed your mind,” Sadie finally said softly. He looked at her from across the fire pit, holding her gaze. “You found some hope, and you changed your mind.”

  He nodded. “It took me four days to hike back here, using a compass and map I’d packed when I thought I was bringing Joey with me that weekend. It rained that first night, which I realized would wipe out any trail I left behind. I figured that the cabin was a place where I could plan my next step and weigh my options.”

  “And did you come up with a plan?” It had been two months. What else could he have been doing?

  “Not yet, but I’ve felt more peace than I have in a really long time. I’ve come to realize just how depressed I was—I slept for most of those first two weeks. It took time for me to be able to think clearly, and even now that I’m feeling better, this life up here is so ... free. I’m not accountable to anyone, and the longer I’m away, the less important any of the foundation garbage feels.”

  “But your kids,” Sadie said, unable to wrap her head around that part. How could he abandon his children?

  “If I’d stayed, I’d have had to either go along with Anita’s plan or expose her and take the fall. It’s my name on everything, not hers. I’d lose everything—and it’s hard to imagine that my kids wouldn’t be a part of that loss, and they didn’t deserve that any more than I did.”

  Sadie wanted to argue with that, but could she honestly do so? She could imagine the future he had seen. He could lose his medical license. He could come under federal investigation that might lead to prison or huge fines. He could become an example of a do-gooder gone bad, and Anita would cry to reporters, saying how she was defrauded, and move to another state somewhere to, most likely, try again. And yet, Sadie pictured his children’s heartache at the memorial service, and that hurt her own heart. He had chosen not to take his life, and that meant he had to figure out how to move forward. His children would have to come to terms with this one way or another, and hiding up here was saving them from nothing and creating a different type of trauma.

  “You said you contacted watch groups and nothing came of it—how? How could the investigation into your disappearance not show the truth—even if it’s your name on the chopping block, why don’t the police know about this stuff?”

  Dr. Hendricks shrugged. “I keep thinking they’re going to figure it out, that something will come to the surface during their investigation of me—every week when I go to the motel, I look up any new information about my case, but I’ve seen nothing. I’ve both dreaded them figuring it out and hoped for it—I know I can’t live like this forever.”

  “You’ve been watching the case,” Sadie summed up from his comment.

  Dr. Hendricks nodded. “I go in once a week and search for new articles, follow threads about me on hiking forums, monitor the watch groups, and try to keep up with my kids.”

  “With your kids? How?”

  “I created a fake Facebook profile, and my daughter friended me. She thinks I’m a girl named Emily and that I go to another school. I never comment or dialogue, just read about what’s going on with her.”

  “And she has no idea it’s you?”

  He shook his head.

  “What prompted you to call Lori yesterday?”

  Dr. Hendricks paused for a few seconds, and then he looked up. “Kenzie posted that she was staying with Anita after the service. The idea of my kids staying with her terrified me, and I realized that with the memorial, the case was likely closed, or at least pushed to the side.”

  “Did you talk to Lori about turning yourself in?” Sadie said, trying to get a sense of what his plan was.

  “I didn’t say it like that, but I asked her to contact Edger’s office about finding proof that I’d been working with him, which I hoped would buy me some credibility. And I told her to keep the kids away from Anita, to get back to Vegas, and stay there until I contacted her again.”

  Sadie thought back to how Lori kept checking her phone at the service and then her message that morning about her need to talk to Dr. Hendricks. Sadie imagined Lori going out
of her head, knowing he was alive but having no additional information. “Lori left me a message on my phone this morning. She wants to talk to you.”

  “She went back to Vegas like I told her to, though? Right?” Dr. Hendricks asked.

  “She didn’t even stay after the service long enough to say goodbye to anyone. Judging by her message, I think she’s been waiting for you to call her back since she talked to you that first time.”

  “I don’t know what to tell her when I haven’t decided what to do yet,” he said, and then he looked up at Sadie. “How was ... the service?” He looked embarrassed to have asked and stared at the ground. “I hope my family can forgive me.”

  “It was a nice service, but very sad.” What a strange conversation this was. “Your brother read your obituary and your mother gave a beautiful tribute.” She wasn’t sitting close enough to him to know if this caused him pain, but she imagined he was thinking of the people who loved him. She wondered how he would ever truly explain all of this to them. “Anita spoke, too,” Sadie said. He gave her a wary glance. “It was my first clue that something wasn’t right. It sounded like a campaign speech.”

  “Leave it to Anita to use my funeral as a stepping-stone.” He took a deep breath and let it out, returning his salad to the ground. He looked up at Sadie and rested his forearms on his knees. “So—you said you could help me before I told you all of this. Do you still think you can?”

  It was Sadie’s turn to look down at her salad. She’d nearly forgotten about it while she considered what Dr. Hendricks had told her. Was it trustworthy information? Could she believe what he’d said? If it hadn’t been for the little things she’d uncovered already, she’d have been less certain, but his information fit what she already knew. It made sense of things that hadn’t made sense before. After a few contemplative seconds, she looked up at him. “I think so.”