PAROLED!

by Paula Detmer Riggs

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  Contents:

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

  Epilogue

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  * * *

  Chapter 1

  ^ »

  The screams started around midnight. Caitlin Fielding had been deep sleep. Now wide-awake, she was sitting on the side of her daughter Kelsey's bed, trying to calm the screaming child.

  "Kelsey! Wake up. Now!" she ordered in voice loud enough to penetrate the deepest dream state. Kelsey's eyelids fluttered open, but her eyes were unfocused.

  "It's just a dream, sweetie," Cait soothed. "A bad dream."

  "M-mama Cait?" The child's voice was thick with confusion.

  Soon to be nine, Kelsey Caitlin McClane had known Cait for most of those years as her adored aunt and her mother's older sister. And then, almost a year ago, Crystal Fielding McClane had been killed when her candy-apple-red Porsche had gone out of control on a rain-slicked San Francisco hill.

  Kelsey was Cait's child now, legally adopted after Crystal's will had given her custody. They were a family, just the two of them.

  "Yes, baby. I'm here. Everything's going to be all right."

  As a practicing child psychologist, Cait had been increasingly aware of the telltale signs of distress in her daughter. Mood swings. Tantrums. Sulks. And now nightmares.

  Still cradling Kelsey's shaking body against hers, Cait settled against the headboard. Instantly Kelsey twined her thin arms around Cait's waist and pressed close like a frightened nestling huddling for warmth against a dangerous world.

  Beneath Kelsey's soft flannel jammies, her heart pounded hard enough to shake her small body, and her fair skin had a porcelainlike transparency, revealing fine blue veins close to the surface.

  "Do you want to talk about your dream?" Cait was careful to keep her tone calm and nonthreatening.

  Kelsey shook her head. A small whimper escaped her throat, and her fingers clung even tighter.

  "Is there some little thing that's bothering you? Something we should talk out before it gets to be a big, awful thing?"

  Kelsey's throat worked as she swallowed a sob. "Mama Cait, is … is my daddy really in prison?"

  So that's it, Cait thought. The past coming back to haunt both of them.

  "Yes, Kelsey, he is. Your mommy and I explained that to you after the trial, remember?"

  After Dr. Tyler McClane had been led away in handcuffs and shackles, sentenced to six years in the California State Penitentiary at Vacaville for felony molestation of a minor.

  The judge had been particularly rough on him because of his status as a pediatric surgeon, and because the child he'd been convicted of abusing was his own daughter. That had been four years ago. For all Cait knew, he was still in prison. He certainly deserved to be.

  Kelsey raised her head and looked up at Cait. Her eyes, a rare shade of smoky topaz, were swollen and shadowed.

  "Mama Cait?"

  "Yes, sweetie?"

  "Why is my daddy in prison?"

  Cait took a slow, even breath. She'd known that sooner or later this would come up. She had hoped it would he later.

  "When you were five, your daddy did things to you that he shouldn't have done. Remember when you and I and your mommy went to talk to the nice policemen and Mr. Lamont, the man who asked you questions in court? After that, the judge and jury decided that Daddy had to be punished, so they sent him to prison as part of that punishment. Remember? We talked about that a lot, too."

  Cait made herself speak calmly, even though her stomach was quivering. Just thinking about Tyler McClane made her sick inside.

  "Sarah's step-daddy said that prison is an awful place where they put bad people. People get killed there."

  "Sometimes, but that's not your fault. Your daddy is in prison because he hurt you."

  "But … but maybe if I hadn't told the judge those things, he wouldn't've had to go to that awful place."

  Cait's fingers trembled as they gently cupped the little girl's chin. "Kelsey, listen to me," she declared firmly. "You did absolutely the right thing when you told the truth about your daddy. It's always right to tell the truth, no matter what happens. And none of this is your fault. Not what your daddy did. Not the trial. Not the prison."

  Kelsey sat up and began playing with the top button of Cait's nightshirt. Her eyes were downcast, revealing glistening tears clotting her eyelashes.

  "I … I saw this TV show at Sarah's house the last time I slept over." The thin little voice was barely above a whisper, and Caitlin had to lean forward to make out the words.

  "What was the show about?"

  "About telling the truth and what happens sometimes if you don't."

  "And that … upset you?"

  Kelsey's face crumpled. Tears streamed down her face.

  "I didn't want to l-lie. My Sunday school teacher always said it was wrong, and Daddy told me once when I told a fib that it would make people not trust me, but I was so s-scared. I wanted to be with Mommy."

  Lie? Cait went still. With the instinct of a trained therapist, she kept her expression blank, but she felt the blood draining from her face. She had trouble breathing normally.

  "What did you lie about, sweetie?"

  "D-daddy."

  Cait felt chilled through and through. All of a sudden she couldn't seem to get enough air into her lungs. Careful, she cautioned herself. Don't put words into her mouth.

  "You told the judge that you were afraid of your daddy. Was that the truth?" Her voice was calm. Only another therapist would hear the sudden panic she was concealing.

  Kelsey shook her head very slowly, as though she were afraid of Cait's reaction.

  "You weren't afraid of your daddy?"

  Again Kelsey shook her head. "I was never scared of him, but he … he wasn't home very much. Mostly he worked at the hospital, making other little boys and girls better when they got sick. Once, when I had a bad temperature and couldn't sleep, he told me stories, and he used to sing to me sometimes. I liked that a lot."

  Cait inhaled slowly, willing the air to fill her starved lungs. "Think very carefully, Kels. Did your daddy ever touch you in ways that scared you or hurt you?"

  Kelsey shook her head.

  "Did he ever do things when he tucked you in at night that made you feel funny inside?"

  "Uh-uh."

  "Never? Not even once?"

  "Uh-uh. Mostly he wasn't there when I went to bed. Sometimes, though, he kissed me on my bangs and tucked the covers in tight, so I wouldn't fall out."

  "Then why did you tell the judge that Daddy did bad things to you?"

  Kelsey dropped her gaze and chewed her lip.

  "Kels? Why did you say those things if they weren't true?"

  "’Cause Mommy said I had to." Her voice was subdued, almost inaudible.

  "Mommy told you to lie?" Cait asked without a hint of inflection in her voice.

  "Uh-huh."

  "Do you know why Mommy told you to lie about your daddy?"

  Kelsey's throat worked as she swallowed a sob. "’Cause of the divorce."

  "Your mommy and daddy's divorce?"

  Kelsey bobbed her head dejectedly. "M-mommy said he didn't l-love me and that's why I had to tell the judge that he did bad things, so me and her could be together always and always."

  Kelsey clung to her, thin legs drawn into the fetal position against Cait's midriff. Tears wet Cait's neck. Kelsey's shudders shook her, as well.

  "It's okay, baby. Cry it out." Cait gathered her closer and began to rock her with the age-old rhythm that all mothers seem to know instinctively. Gradually the child's sobs subsided to an occasional whimper. Still Cait held her, her own gaze unfocused now and glazed with shock.

  Sometime later the distant shrill of a sir
en gradually sliced into the turmoil in Cait's tired brain, drawing her gaze to the impenetrable blackness beyond the windowpanes.

  Outside, Sacramento was settling uneasily into another sweltering summer night. Sheltered by the old house's thick walls, the cheerful room lovingly decorated for a happy child suddenly seemed filled with ghosts.

  Crystal Fielding McClane, brittle and beautiful, as always.

  And Tyler McClane. Darkly powerful, ambitious, the man Cait had hated for four years.

  There had been many nights since the trial when she'd lain awake, suffering from tormenting regret. Regret that she had once trusted him. Regret that she had ever introduced him to her younger sister.

  Cait had been a psychotherapy intern at Stanford Medical and he'd been a surgical resident specializing in pediatrics when they had literally bumped into each other in the staff lounge.

  Tyler had apologized and offered to refill the coffee cup his clumsiness had sent flying from her hand. After that, it had seemed the most natural thing in the world for them to sit together. Over stale doughnuts, the two normally private people found that they had surprisingly a lot to talk about.

  Surprising, because she and Tyler couldn't have been more different. Her background was middle-class and genteel. His was hardscrabble blue collar. She'd always lived in Marin County, an upper-middle-class suburb of San Francisco. He'd grown up on a scrub ranch near Placerville in the Sierra Nevada foothills. She'd gone to school on the money from her trust fund. He'd borrowed and scrimped and worked two jobs as a wrangler every summer to pay for his.

  When Cait had first noticed the reserved resident, he'd still been range tough, even after years of college and medical school. Endless summers of hand labor under the omnipresent California sun had layered his skin with color until it had taken on a burnished bronze stain. His thick hair, streaked a half-dozen shades of blond by that brutal sun, always looked as though it were permanently wind whipped.

  A healer with the body of a rodeo champion and a raw-boned face right out of a rough-and-tumble western movie, that had been Tyler.

  Normally impervious to handsome men, she had never tired of looking at him, especially when his sensitive gray eyes burned as he talked about his plans for the future. He intended to make a difference in the world of suffering children. It was the only thing he'd ever wanted, the only thing that mattered. Cait had believed every word that he'd said. Then.

  Her vision blurred suddenly as she gently wiped Kelsey's hot cheeks with the lacy edge of the sheet. Kelsey whimpered. Her swollen eyelids were closed, her breathing heavy with exhaustion and thick with unshed tears.

  "Sleep, baby," Cait whispered. "Mama Cait is here. I'll always be here."

  Kelsey settled more firmly against her. Cait's throat stung from a need to cry, a need she couldn't gratify. She had three degrees, including a doctorate in clinical psychology, a dozen citations from various child abuse foundations and a gratifyingly long list of successes with her small patients. Yet suddenly she felt as helpless as the child in her arms. She had to do something, anything, to ease Kelsey's suffering.

  And Tyler, a voice prodded. Don't forget his suffering.

  The shadows shifted and darkened until the memory of Tyler McClane's tormented eyes bored into hers. Caitlin squeezed her eyelids tight, but the memories remained.

  It was so long ago. It was yesterday.

  Kelsey had been five. Precocious. Mischievous. An adorable chatterbox. She had been living in the Bay Area where Tyler was a junior partner in a prestigious surgical corporation and Crystal cultivated the "right" people to advance her husband's career.

  Their marriage had been rocky from the start, but they had both doted on their little imp. Her Aunt Cait, too, had delighted in spoiling her on the few occasions when Kelsey had visited Sacramento. And then, shortly after the divorce suit was raised, everything had changed.

  Kelsey began to throw tantrums. Her playmates' mothers complained that she was becoming a bully. Crystal asked for Cait's help.

  "You're a shrink, Caitie. You know what makes kids tick. God knows, I don't. Kelsey is driving me bats with her whining and screaming and kicking."

  So Cait had had a quiet talk with the child. It took several tries and a large measure of patience before Kelsey had begun to talk.

  Her daddy was hurting her, she'd said with a haunted look in her big gray eyes. He was doing things that made her feel bad. To Cait's horror, she realized that Kelsey was speaking the unspeakable.

  When Cait had confronted her sister, Crystal had burst into tears and admitted, through her sobs, that the child was telling the truth.

  "You don't know him, Caitie. He's not really the nice guy he pretends to be around you. He's … he's so cold, like all his feelings are all frozen up inside."

  It had been storming that terrible night when Cait had confronted Tyler, Kelsey's halting accusations and Crystal's corroboration still fresh in her mind.

  "How could you do such a thing?" she had raged in white-lipped disgust. Tyler had turned ashen, his gray eyes nearly black with pain.

  "I wouldn't hurt my daughter, Cait, I swear. This is all Crystal's doing, to make sure I don't get custody. You have to believe me."

  If it had been a choice between Crystal's accusations and his denial, Cait would have been inclined to believe him. After all, since childhood Crys had been known to twist the truth for her own purposes.

  As for Tyler, he loved children. He'd devoted his life to caring for them. Cait had seen him with his patients, seen the way they responded to him. She'd seen him with Kelsey. For all his reserve and toughness, he clearly adored his only child.

  But Kelsey had been too young to carry off such a deception. Or so Cait had believed with all her heart. Trained to discern truth from lies, reality from fantasy, she had seen only truth in Kelsey's eyes, heard only truth in her wavering voice, sensed only truth in her body language.

  Cait had taken action without hesitation. She'd gone with Crystal to file charges against Tyler. She'd supported both Crys and Kelsey through the police interview, the medical tests, the district attorney's questioning.

  When Tyler was brought to trial, Cait took a leave of absence and moved in with her sister and niece. Both depended on her. Both turned to her. She had been their rock.

  On the stand, sitting on two telephone books so that she could reach the microphone, Kelsey had testified to despicable things that had made Tyler's face grow whiter and whiter and Cait's stomach knot.

  Looking beautiful and tormented in designer linen and silk, Crystal had tearfully corroborated her daughter's story. Cait had seen the belief in the eyes of the jurors and known it was reflected in her own.

  Tyler had seen it, too.

  Now Cait slumped against the headboard, and her arms tightened protectively around his daughter.

  Her gaze shifted to Kelsey's latest school photograph on the bureau. Kelsey's resemblance to her father had grown stronger over the years. Her thick wheat-blond hair curled rebelliously at the ends the way Tyler's had when he'd forgotten to get a haircut. Her gray eyes, so like his in color and expression, were framed with the same dark blond lashes. Her stubborn chin was a dainty version of her father's strong jaw.

  But the delicate, almost ethereal bone structure had come from the Fielding side of the family. And her laugh, too, carried the same infectious lilt that characterized Cait's.

  Nowadays, however, Kelsey's expression was usually solemn. The corners of her mouth were touched with sadness. The eyes that should be filled with childish sweetness were older than her years. Much older.

  What about Tyler? Cait wondered. What would she see in his eyes now?

  Even though there had been no medical evidence of abuse of any kind, the jury of seven women and five men had taken less than three hours to agree on a verdict of guilty.

  "There's something particularly heinous in a pediatric surgeon victimizing his own daughter," the foreman had later declared with righteous indignation to t
he press.

  Moving slowly, she eased Kelsey from her lap. The little girl whimpered but didn't waken. With gentle fingers, Cait wiped the last of the tears from Kelsey's cheeks.

  "No matter what, I'll make everything right for you," Cait whispered. "I promise." But the suffering eyes she saw in her mind belonged to Tyler McClane. The only man she had ever loved.

  * * *

  The dinner hour was long past. The streetlights had been on for hours. The North Sacramento Mental Health Clinic was closed. Doctors, nurses, receptionists, bookkeepers—all had gone home. Every office was empty—except one.

  Cait was still in her book-lined retreat on the second floor. Her friend and colleague, Dr. Hazel O'Connor, was there as well, curled into a chair opposite the desk.

  On the sunny side of forty, Hazel had a freckled face, a happy-go-lucky smile and naturally curly auburn hair worn in a slapdash tangle that made her look like Little Orphan Annie most of the time. But her mind was the keenest Cait had ever encountered, and her heart the kindest.

  The pizza Cait had ordered lay cold and uneaten in the soggy box. Cait's soda had grown warm at her elbow. Hazel had taken only a few sips of hers.

  For the past hour Hazel had listened without interrupting as Cait poured out the story of the trial and Kelsey's present emotional distress.

  "So that's why I called you in," Cait finished in a tired voice. "Kelsey needs treatment, and I can't treat her."

  "Have you talked with her teacher?"

  "Actually, Mrs. Eddington called me a few weeks ago. She said Kels couldn't seem to concentrate, and when she did try, she couldn't seem to retain anything she heard. That's when I started to suspect a problem of some kind."

  Hazel nodded before saying in her slow, deliberate way, "From what you've told me, I suspect she's suffering from delayed posttraumatic stress, exacerbated by repressed guilt. That TV show sounded like the perfect catalyst to release the lid on a pot of simmering emotions already close to boiling over."

  "I agree."

  Cait slumped in her chair. Beneath her summer tan, her muscles were knotted with tension. Across town, the sitter would have Kelsey snugged into bed under her own special quilt. Would she get through tonight without sobbing herself awake? Or would she toss and turn, transforming her blankets into a constricting cocoon?