“I’ll be the social secretary.” This Karan could do. Not only could she do this, she could excel at it. Charles would absolutely feel bad for being so mean. “This is perfect, Rhonda. My assistant drafts my correspondence at home, of course, but I approve absolutely everything that has my name on it.”
“There you go.” She smiled. “I’m rather pleased with myself, I don’t mind saying. I bolted up in bed at two o’clock this morning with the inspiration.”
“I’m sorry to have disrupted your sleep. But I am relieved for your inspiration. I don’t mind admitting those three hundred and forty-some odd hours still looming in my future have been looking pretty bleak since Saturday.”
“Even after our session the other night?”
“Afraid so.” Karan would never be so rude as to admit that their latest session—official session as their first had been more of a meet and greet to address the Charles situation—had felt more like a chatty interview than some sort of epiphany-inspiring mental health analysis by a professional.
But she liked Rhonda, so Karan had decided to keep her mouth shut and reserve opinion. Therapy might only work if someone needed it, and she really didn’t have any frame of reference beyond Susanna’s firsthand accounts of visits to a grief counselor after Skip’s death.
If nothing else, Karan would go along for the ride, taking the path of least resistance, because she absolutely refused to dig in her heels and waste another minute of her life stewing about how stupidly unnecessary and unfair this part of her alternative sentence was.
She would not give Wannabe Jenny the satisfaction.
Rhonda dug through the box to point out brochures and flyers from the various events that had been held to benefit New Hope along with corresponding lists of the organizers.
“I can’t tell you what a relief this will be to get these dealt with,” she said. “That’s what disrupted my sleep. Had nothing whatsoever to do with you and everything to do with feeling pressured and behind. These letters have been hanging over my head and instead of getting a handle on them, I keep adding to the pile.”
Karan didn’t bother to ask why she hadn’t recruited her codirector for help. Thank-you notes always seemed to fall into the realm of women’s work. And, she supposed, that was as it should be. Most men didn’t have a clue about the complexities of social niceties, and she happened to know well that Charles was more clueless than most. With New Hope’s livelihood dependent upon outside funding…well, Rhonda had certainly come to the right place for help.
“I’ll get busy then. What would you like me to do with everything when I’m finished?”
“Just print copies of each and drop them in my box. If I make it back tonight after my appointments, I’ll grab them. If not, tomorrow.” Rhonda’s smile, a smile that reflected appreciation and confidence for Karan’s ability, went a long way to make the thought of the hours ahead bearable.
After Rhonda headed to work, Karan commandeered the administrative assistant’s desk and sat down with purpose. She sorted through the contents of the box, scanning brochures and flyers and rosters of volunteer names to familiarize herself with what had been taking place.
The list was fairly comprehensive.
Domestic-violence-awareness walks through town.
Luncheons to rally community volunteers.
Dinners with high-ticket tables and illustrious guests.
The typical buffet of fundraising efforts that Karan was quite familiar with even if they were a variation on the usual theme.
Taking a stand against domestic violence.
She read through a pamphlet from an organization that sponsored a successful women’s conference and found the presentation topics more than a little sobering. Warning signs of an abusive relationship. How to be an effective bystander. How to help families victimized by domestic violence.
Every shred of literature was branded with New Hope of Bluestone Mountain, Inc. proudly serving Catskill communities since 2011.
Okay, the date wasn’t so impressive, but the campaign had to start somewhere. She forced herself to move on, to create a document of names, titles and specific functions.
All helpful people who needed to be thanked.
She inputted names, read about the various contributions, all incredibly generous in some not-so-obvious ways. Of course there were those who donated significant sums of money, without whom Karan suspected the events wouldn’t have taken place. But there were others who had contributed vast amounts of time. Specific expertise in coordinating an event. Gifts of meeting-room space in buildings. Food from a local grocer. In one instance the linens, tableware and centerpieces that had been used during a catered luncheon.
So many people working to make New Hope possible.
Including Charles.
Karan drafted several versions of a recognition letter and saved them as separate files as she mulled the possible reasons why Charles would be so involved with New Hope. She shouldn’t be interested, but she was. For a man who spent the bulk of his time at the hospital, serial dating or fishing, the fact that he helped run things around here seemed significant.
She couldn’t remember anything that hinted at a nature that championed causes. She wasn’t even entirely convinced he’d gotten into the medical field because some streak of compassion made him care about helping people.
Karan let out a huge sigh. Okay, that was totally unfair. No matter how hurt and angry she was at the man for a variety of reasons, she couldn’t deny how much he cared about his patients. That would be a total lie as she’d witnessed the effect of his caring more times than she could recall. That much hadn’t changed about him. Or the fact that he liked to be in control. Give him a scalpel and the ability to influence life and death and Dr. Disdain was in his element. Put the two together, and she supposed directing this place did make some sense.
Not that she’d admit that aloud to him.
Her mind drifted from Charles to another puzzle that she had yet to solve—Amy, the schoolteacher who reminded her so much of Susanna as a soccer mom and a career woman. Karan couldn’t reconcile that image with what she was reading in these brochures:
Domestic violence is a pattern of assaultive and coercive behaviors, including physical, sexual and psychological attacks, as well as economic coercion, that adults or adolescents use against their intimate partner.
The sort of nightmare stuff the media thrived on feeding the public.
So how did a seemingly normal woman like Amy get involved with a man who acted that way? For that matter, why would any woman in her right mind become involved with this sort of man?
Karan couldn’t help but wonder because none of these flyers and brochures provided answers about that. She thought about LaShanna so close to giving birth…what kind of man would threaten or abuse the woman who was sacrificing muscle tone to bear his children? She was still mulling the answer when a name caught her eye.
Greywacke Lodge.
Well, well, well. Here was another surprise.
Karan scanned the flyer. Greywacke Lodge had been one of the sponsors for the first annual Return to Peace Brunch. She supposed she shouldn’t be surprised to see the place on the list. After all, the woman who ran the retirement community was none other than Frankie Sloan née Cesarini. Who knew, this very room could have been once been the place where fuzzy-haired Frankie had concocted all her crazy schemes and nasty retorts that had earned her such renown in high school.
She’d be getting a generic form letter.
Karan redoubled her efforts, thoroughly annoyed with herself for her wandering thoughts.
By four o’clock, she had a dozen separate files saved with clearly recognizable names, each containing a recognition letter that thanked a recipient for some specific contribution. The grammar was textbook, the wording flawless, the sentiments gracious, New Hope’s biographical information exact.
Karan was quite pleased with herself.
Until she attempted to print the d
rafts.
The action should have been as simple as clicking Print, but she kept receiving error message 12—whatever that meant.
She manually checked the equipment, a huge printer/copier combo, half as tall as she was, clearly meant for industrial-size printing jobs. Yes, it was on, and that was the extent of her hardware knowledge. Karan had actually purchased one to place in her former husband’s practice after she’d remodeled his office, knew this machine had easily cost five grand if it cost a penny. Definitely not a piece of equipment she wanted to tamper with.
Not after Saturday’s incident.
Karan went in search of help. The therapist on duty was in group session with the kids, and though it was the middle of the afternoon on a business day, the only people she could find to help were Margaret the cook in the kitchen, Deputy Doug in the sheriff’s substation and Tammy, the registered nurse on duty in the triage center. Unfortunately, no one knew a thing about the printer.
Karan returned to the office and sat at the desk with a frown. She was ready to head home, had been staring at this computer for hours. But Rhonda was expecting these drafts, and Karan didn’t want her to make a special trip over only to find they weren’t in her box as promised. No, Karan was going to see this job through to its completion, if for no reason other than to prove she could.
There was another computer station in the office, this one tucked away at a corner desk with a separate printer, scanner, fax combo. She had a similar setup at home.
Would it be possible to print from there? It was only twelve letters, not as if she’d burn up the ink cartridge. Although she wouldn’t mind replacing one of those, if necessary. Karan went to take a look and found the system in hibernation mode.
This computer was set up with medical software, but after a little bit of scrolling, she found it still had all the basic office software and internet access. The printer was even on. While she didn’t have a flash drive, she could email the letters to herself. At the main desk, she attached the documents to an email and sent them to her online email account.
Once at the other computer, she launched a browser, logged into her email and accessed the files. She opened each one and hit the print button. No problem. While the printer churned out her flawless letters one after the other, she scanned her messages, read one from a sales associate at her favorite high-end department store alerting her that new merchandise had arrived from one of Karan’s favorite designers. That was a pleasant little surprise. Maybe she could talk Susanna and Brooke into an outing to the city this weekend.
The last letter ground out from the printer and Karan grabbed the stack of warm paper and delivered it to Rhonda’s box that hung on the wall beside the director’s door.
Perfect.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHARLES SAT IN THE FIRST PEW, leaned forward and closed his eyes. With effort he focused on the silence of the hospital chapel, tried to drown out the frantic beeping of diagnostic equipment, the urgent whispers of his surgical team, the rushing throb of his own pulse as adrenaline kicked in.
He came in here often. Not because he was religious. In fact, the hospital had taken such pains to be nondenominational that the place was rendered fiercely generic. The stained-glass window depicting a woodland scene was at the front of the room where an altar might have been. The glass was lit from within, barely bright enough to chase the shadows into the corners. Yet somehow, the sheer lack of aesthetics lent to the purifying effect of the place.
Not today.
Charles had met the ambulance. A tear in the aortic isthmus. Maybe if the paramedics had detected the trauma earlier…but there had been no specific symptoms and diagnosis had been complicated by the presence of multiple other serious injuries from the accident. It had taken emergency personnel time to discover the partially torn blood vessel.
The adventitia had been intact and, with the nearby structures, had prevented bleed out long enough to get the patient onto the operating table. But not long enough for Charles to repair the damage.
So he’d had to explain to the shocked parents why their eleven-year-old was dead.
“He was riding his bike home from school,” the father had said over and over, as if that somehow made a difference.
The boy’s mother hadn’t been able to speak.
Charles massaged his temples as if he might somehow erase the memory of their shock, his own sense of failure.
If he’d gotten the boy on the table sooner.
If the paramedics hadn’t had so much trauma to deal with.
If the driver of the SUV had been paying closer attention.
If the boy hadn’t been riding his bike home from school.
Endless recriminations that didn’t make one damned bit of difference to parents whose son was on his way to the morgue.
Or to the driver of that SUV, who would live knowing that one split second of distraction had cost a child his future and permanently changed the lives of everyone left behind.
Charles wasn’t sure how long he sat there. He only knew that when his cell phone vibrated, he hadn’t even come close to making peace with the events of this afternoon.
He glanced at the display, recognized New Hope’s number. Connecting the call, he brought the phone to his ear but didn’t speak until he’d left the chapel.
“You there, Dr. Steinberg?”
“What’s up, Deputy?” Charles wasn’t sure why he couldn’t talk inside when he was the only one in there. For some reason he didn’t feel comfortable.
“Got a situation here you need to know about.”
Exactly what he didn’t want to deal with right now. Another situation. “What’s going on?”
The deputy explained about a frozen computer system and a phone call to a service tech, who had networked in and discovered a malicious program. “I called you because I know Dr. Camden is on the way to her office for night appointments and you’re on your way out of the hospital. Can you swing by? The tech guy needs someone with administrative access to purge the system otherwise you’re going to have a big mess on your hands.”
A big mess. As if this day wasn’t one already.
Despite the traffic, Charles made it to New Hope in decent time. He was glad he was on emotional autopilot when he pulled into the lot and saw Karan’s car.
She was the last thing he wanted to deal with tonight and he couldn’t even fault her since he was arriving unscheduled. He headed straight for the substation, where he found Deputy Doug still on the phone with a tech. And Karan.
The instant he saw her standing beside the deputy, looking fresh and stylish and so goddamned poised, he felt that peace he’d been looking for. It washed over him like a wave. Death didn’t touch Karan’s world. Nothing did. Everything skimmed right across the surface. She didn’t deal with death. If she didn’t like the headlines in the newspaper, she cancelled the subscription. If she didn’t like the tragedy blasting in sound bites, she turned off the television.
Karan didn’t deal in real life. Only in indulgence. In the things that didn’t make a bit of difference.
She wouldn’t have known what the parents of his patient were living today. Wouldn’t have had the first clue how powerless Charles felt because he hadn’t been able to save a young boy who should have had a full life ahead of him.
Karan didn’t let anything get under her skin.
Not even their marriage when it had unraveled. She’d wished him well and moved on to her next husband.
Charles never wanted to live with someone like that, unfeeling, clueless about what she was missing. He didn’t want to live like that. And he wasn’t. Not with her. Not like her.
Peace.
“Hey, Doc,” the deputy said. “Appreciate you coming.”
He only nodded. Karan was looking at him strangely, and he didn’t have to deal with her. She was Rhonda’s problem, and right now he was only tackling one problem at a time. He was glad when she left the room without a word. He hoped she went home.
The deputy covered the receiver with a hand. “Tech says he’ll tell you what he needs but, so you know, we’ve got a problem.”
This one was his to deal with. Taking the portable handset, Charles greeted the tech on the other end and walked to the director’s office so he could log on.
With the tech guy’s direction, Charles ran through a series of functions on the computer, screen after screen popping open then closing. He focused on the instruction, still unclear about the trouble, but unexpectedly grateful for anything to wrap his brain around, something to give his scattered thoughts an anchor.
“So what’s going on?” Charles asked during one of the long silences while he waited for the system to work through some function he didn’t understand. “I heard malicious program.”
“Spyware,” the tech said. “And a worm.”
For a moment, Charles could only stare at the computer display, at the bar registering the progress of the program.
Working…working…working.
“How did this happen? Shouldn’t the firewall have caught anything that tried to get through?”
“You’ve got a secure system, sir. You’re safeguarded against pretty much everything and the protection updates automatically twice a day.”
“It’s functioning properly?”
“Absolutely. That’s why the system went down—to prevent the spyware from collecting your data and sending it back to the source. In this case the hacker who wrote the program. Not a real sophisticated one, but it would have done the job.”
The Husband Lesson Page 9
