Whittaker 03 The Secrets We Keep

by Donna White Glaser

  When I called Mary back, I made sure she understood that I was only meeting with Caleb for the purpose of referring him to a colleague. When she asked how much a session cost, I told her I wasn’t planning on billing for it, anyway, so not to bother about it. Since my schedule had been cleared for the day, I suggested a 2:00 appointment, half-hoping the short notice would dissuade her.

  It didn’t.

  FORTY FOUR

  Mother and son were sitting in the lobby promptly at 2:00, having gotten there the recommended fifteen minutes early to fill out paperwork. Even a non-paying session meant an inch-high stack of forms to fill out. After all asses had been dutifully covered, I approached the pair. When she caught sight of me, Mary’s posture morphed into instant perky, a wide social smile spreading like butter over her face. She was working hard at keeping up appearances. Caleb slumped in his seat, glaring out the window—a not atypical greeting from an adolescent dragged into therapy. But there were ways to address that.

  “Caleb? Would you like to meet with me alone or would you prefer your mother come with us?” No teenager on the face of the earth wants mommy to come with them to therapy. Mary clinched the deal by leaning over and patting his leg.

  Thou shalt not pat sixteen-year olds.

  Caleb popped off the couch like his butt was spring-loaded and stomped off down the hall. I smiled reassuringly at Mary before strolling after him. We were off to a fine start.

  Fun fact: he had no clue where to go or which room was my office. The same thought must have occurred to him about halfway down the hall. He slammed to a halt, “allowing” me to catch up. Glowering, he treated me to a regal silent treatment, apparently expecting me to scurry ahead or tell him where to go.

  So tempting.

  But I refrained from smart-assery—this was work, after all—and simply waited for his next move. He was attempting to control the session, so fine. Control it.

  “Which one?” The mumble was almost indistinguishable.

  “I’m sorry, what?” I knew full well what he’d said, but decided to push the point a bit. Full sentences wouldn’t kill him.

  Giving one of those big, theatrical teenage sighs, he capitulated. “I said, which one is your office?”

  Hiding a smile, I glided past him, opening the door to my lair. However, my tiny victory was quickly stripped away. Disregarding the loveseat, Caleb snagged my armchair, missing, or more likely, ignoring the obvious signs—clipboard, coffee mug, pens placed on the side table—that it was my usual spot. My office is carefully arranged to allow a straight escape route out the door, should I need it. And there have been times, one in particular, when I had.

  Normally I’d overlook the situation, especially with a new client. But not today. I pointed to the loveseat. “That’s where you sit.”

  His eyes tightened in annoyance, but then a dazzling smile—an echo of his father’s—flashed across his face. Making a show of complying, he flopped onto the small couch, spreading his arms along the back as though laying claim.

  I took my time filling out the top of the progress note form.

  After a few minutes, Caleb began to fidget. His eyes darted everywhere, checking out the office, lingering on the few personal articles I had displayed. Crossing his ankle over his knee, he assumed that triangular, open-crotch pose men can get away with, but women can’t. His dangling foot jiggled like a piston.

  Relenting, I took a deep breath and smiled. “Okay, Caleb—”

  “I don’t have to stay here,” he said.

  “No. You don’t.”

  His eyebrows furrowed. He’d been expecting a fight on that one.

  “In fact,” I went on, “I’m not getting paid for this, so it would be helpful if you decided right now if you’re planning on using this time.”

  “Use it how? You gonna ‘straighten me out’?” His mocking tone emphasized the last few words for dramatic effect.

  “That’s highly doubtful.” I kept a smile in my voice to lighten the comment, and went on to explain. “Since I know your parents from the church, I can’t see you for therapy. It’s called a duel relationship, and it’s not ethical. The reason for our meeting today is for me to provide you with a referral for another therapist—one that doesn’t have that dual relationship and one that, hopefully, you might work well with. Didn’t your mom explain that?”

  “No. She told me I was going to the dentist.” Caleb laughed, but the timing seemed off, leaving me to wonder. Some parents did trick their kids into coming in.

  As I made a note, Caleb’s eyes fastened on the paper, watching my pen scrawl across the page. He wiped a hand across his mouth, then arched back in another exaggerated stretch.

  Pulling a form from the clipboard, I handed it to him.

  “Before we go any further, I want to make sure you understand how confidentiality works in this context. Even though this isn’t a therapy session in the truest sense, you’re still entitled to the same rights as though it were. Confidentiality is one of those rights. There are a few exceptions that you should know about, such—”

  “Let me guess. My folks are paying for this, so they get reports, right?” He folded his arms across his chest, tucking his hands under his armpits.

  “No. They won’t be.” I paused to make sure he heard that. “And remember I’m not getting paid. There are specific circumstances, however, that would require me to break confidentiality, most of them have to do with safety—yours and others. The form I handed you spells them out in detail. Let me know if you have any questions, and then sign the bottom, please.”

  Unlike most clients, he took the time to carefully read the Client Rights form. A smile flitted across his face. Relief? Or… amusement? When he finished, I handed him a pen, and he signed his name with a flourish. As he handed the pen back, he gave me an appraising look reminiscent of the sexual leer he’d treated me to when we’d first met.

  “So, Caleb, how about we start by looking at your mom’s concerns?”

  He shrugged, looking away, but a smile tugged at his lips.

  “This is only going to work if you’re honest,” I said. “Otherwise we might as well stop now.” I felt pretty safe about offering to end the session. Unlike the palpable resentment he’d exuded moments ago, Caleb now radiated an undercurrent of coy excitement that told me he was fully involved in the conversation.

  “All kids party,” he said. “It’s no big deal. She’s just… You know, it’s the whole preacher’s kid thing.”

  “You think you’re mom is overreacting.”

  He smiled guilelessly and shrugged.

  “When did it start?” I asked.

  “Last summer, I guess.” The smile vanished, and his body tensed.

  I waited. His foot started jiggling again. When he saw me take notice of its frenetic pace, he slammed it to the floor. Still slouched, his legs stayed spread in a crude posture that seemed too calculated to be natural.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” he said. “You know what happened last summer. You know what he did. Everybody does.” Looking away, he mumbled something else.

  “I’m sorry… ‘They don’t know anything?’” I kept my tone matter-of-fact, but this time I wasn’t sure I’d heard correctly.

  “I said they don’t know everything.” He met my gaze, waiting for me to ask the obvious question.

  I didn’t. Caleb obviously had something to tell me, but this wasn’t therapy. Even if it had been, he was jumping into deep waters awfully quick. And why was he suddenly so eager to open up? From reading his body language, he had nothing but scorn for me. I decided to give him a chance to pull back. “Your father’s affair must have triggered a lot of feelings for you. Of course, it will be important to understand how the incident affected you, but we need to remember that you’re only here for a referral. I don’t you to start sharing these difficult feelings just to have me send you to someone else. How about we just concentrate on getting a better understanding of the big picture, so to spea
k?”

  His gaze dropped to the floor, and for a moment I thought I’d lost him. After a period of silence, he heaved another sigh and nodded as though coming to a decision. Lifting his head, he stared deeply into my eyes. Too deeply.

  Despite complete ignorance in what hackles were, I felt mine raise.

  “But I trust you,” he said, turning the last word into an auditory caress. The accompanying soft smile was designed to be sincere—or possibly seductive—but with his bullshit-brown eyes still boring into mine, it left the lower half of his face discordant with the upper.

  Way creepy. And also a little ridiculous.

  “Why?” I asked.

  Surprise, followed immediately by anger, suffused his young face. He squelched them both and faked a laugh. “Why not? I trust Kris, and you’re her sister, so…”

  My turn to squelch my reaction. I hated that he brought up my sister. And how did he know… ?

  “Besides,” he continued. “You can’t tell anybody what I say in here, can you? So, I can tell you anything and it’ll be our little secret.” He laughed again, this one genuine. Made me shiver.

  “Look, Caleb, I understand you have legitimate reasons to be angry with your dad. And with Trinnie, too. Therapy can help you sort all this out. I have a colleague, Kyle Channing. He works over at the Wellness—”

  “Everything was fine until he started banging that skank. And right there in the office! Are you freakin’ kidding me? So, why am I the one in here, huh? He’s the asswipe who needs therapy, not me.”

  “Maybe he does. That’s not for me to say. But you’re here for your own reasons. Your mom is very concerned about—”

  “He hated her, you know.”

  “Your mom?”

  “No, Trinnie. He hated Trinnie. He keeps telling my mom that she seduced him. He keeps going on and on about temptation and demons and all that B.S. Every night, I’ve got to listen to him tell me to be careful of ‘womanly wiles.’” Caleb snorted. “I mean, God forbid he should just admit he wanted a little tail. He blames everything on her, especially when he found out about…”

  I knew I was being led, but I played along. “About?”

  His eyes toggled back and forth—almost like an awake REM state. Too slight a movement to be called shifty, but it told me his brain was rapid-firing thoughts as he selected an answer.

  Caleb dragged his eyes to mine again. And again, I had the weird sensation that he was presenting two different emotions: the top layer, troubled and anxious, but underneath, calculating.

  “You want to know the truth? She was my supplier,” he said.

  “Of?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Point is he blamed her for corrupting me, too.” Another smile, this one filled with alert expectancy.

  This wasn’t about Caleb. It was about what Caleb wanted me to know about his father.

  I felt caught between my professional duty to Caleb and the need to uncover Trinnie’s murderer. Plus, there was the added burden of trying to sort through what was lies and what was truth. I tried shifting the focus back on Caleb and his behavior. “Doesn’t your father understand you make your own choices?”

  He looked at me as though I’d just peed on his foot. “Are you that stupid? Don’t you get it?”

  Oh, I got it, all right. I sighed. “What do you want to tell me, Caleb?”

  He relaxed. “We had a fight that night. A pretty big one.”

  “Which night?”

  More peed-on-foot attitude. “That night. The night Trinnie died. I’ve never seen him so… And then he took off. I don’t know where he went.”

  “You’re telling me you and your father fought over your… relationship with Trinnie, and then he stormed off?”

  Head down, he nodded sadly. Right.

  “Are you telling me he killed Trinnie?” I asked.

  His head snapped up. “I didn’t say that. I just… I don’t know. I didn’t know who to tell. I mean, he’s my dad, you know?”

  “Caleb—”

  Somebody knocked, startling me. I rose and cracked the door open. Mary Gibson stood on the other side, biting her nails. Guiltily, she snatched her finger out of her mouth, hiding it in the fold of her skirt.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just… You said it would only take an hour and, well, I have to get Caleb to the orthodontist in a few minutes.”

  I checked my watch. We’d gone over by nearly half an hour. “No, Mary, I’m the one who’s sorry. I didn’t mean to keep you.”

  Caleb materialized at my side, sliding through the door to join his mother. He handed me the confidentiality form I’d had him sign. “Here you go,” he chirped. “I signed it, just like you asked. Can I have a copy?”

  “Of course,” I said. I was unsettled, almost disoriented by the abrupt shift in tension. “I’ll walk you up front, and then we can discuss your next step.”

  “How about I give you a call, Letty?” Mary inserted. “I’m sorry, but we really are running late. Thank you, though. I’ll get back to you right away.”

  Caleb tossed a smile over his shoulder as they walked away.

  FORTY FIVE

  By Tuesday morning, I still hadn’t heard from Kris and neither had my mother. That plus the session with Caleb had my stomach feeling flippy, and my shoulder muscles in knots more complicated than a macramed plant holder. Tension defied gravity by flowing from my neck up to my skull—a dull, creeping pain that threatened to explode at any moment. Passing a dead deer on the side of the road, a sight so common in northern Wisconsin that it usually blended into the background, almost made me throw up.

  No way I could call in sick, either. After missing the day before for the window glazier, I had back-to-back clients. I’d used the mostly true excuse of a migraine the night before in order to avoid talking to Eli and Beth. While I hated keeping things from them, there wasn’t anything I could share about Caleb, or my suspicions, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to hide my unease from either one of them.

  Even my desire to bury myself in work was thwarted. Reverend Gibson called the clinic that afternoon wanting to “consult” with me. Hoping that didn’t translate to “murder you dead in your office,” I carved fifteen minutes out from in-between a couple of client sessions to accommodate him. Besides, I wanted to see him, too.

  Without getting into details, I let both Lisa and our new clinic director, Sally Webster, know I’d be meeting with a potentially violent client. Sally offered to sit in, but I was juggling enough issues and told her that wouldn’t be necessary.

  Gibson was as prompt as his wife had been.

  After another run-through about confidentiality as it pertained to Caleb, I started with the usual opener: “What can I do for you?”

  Gibson sat across from me dressed in business casual: khakis with a light blue, short-sleeved shirt. “You have such a lovely voice, Letty. It has a lilt in it that must cheer your patients every day.”

  I stayed silent, a blank, unreceptive look plastered on my face.

  “Uh, yes… well… I wanted to thank you for your interest in my son. We—my wife and I—have been quite concerned. I’m sure Mary filled you in.”

  “To an extent,” I said. “But I hope she also explained that I can’t see Caleb as his therapist. I’ve given her the name of a colleague I trust; Caleb will need to—”

  “I understand,” Gibson interrupted with a hasty assurance. “And I appreciate that. I just hope he’ll be as understanding as I know you would be. Honestly, I considered myself lucky when I discovered you were a therapist. Perhaps, at a later date, you’d let me consult with you professionally.” His sly smile turned a perfectly reasonable request into a lewd invitation.

  Running an internal self-check, I realized I wasn’t as scared as I would have expected given the whole sitting-with-Trinnie’skiller situation. Instead, I just felt… icky. I made a show of checking my watch, a rude behavior I’d squelched years ago out of deference to my clients, but we didn’t have time for smarmy pro
positions.

  “Of course, of course,” he said in response to my silent message. “I know we only have a few minutes. But I did want to ask for your expert opinion. I just… I know I’ve put my son through a rough time, and I wanted to ask what I can do?”

  “What you can do?”

  “To make it up to him.”

  I swallowed hard, shoving disgust down my throat, hoping stomach acid would break it down to manageable pieces. This is how ulcers start.

  “You can’t ‘make it up’ or make it go away. Caleb will have to deal with the repercussions from the incident just as you do. Kyle Channing will help him with that. Have you and Mary considered seeing someone?”

  At my question, Gibson huffed an annoyed sigh. Enough. I shifted, preparing to rise and end the meeting.

  His eyes darted to mine, almost begging. “I suppose he told you about our quarrel?”

  For the first time, fear glided into my heart, causing it to thump dully. A light sweat dampened my hair line. I glanced at the door. “I’m sorry; I can’t go into detail.”

  Gibson laughed—the first genuine emotion I’d seen during the conversation. “What’s wrong? You don’t think I killed—”

  Suddenly, his whole expression blanked out like someone had hit the DELETE button for his face. His gaze slipped somewhere off to my left, eyes toggling back and forth in rapid thought. Like father, like son. His whole body stilled while he processed the implication.

  “Reverend?”

  He jumped as he came back to reality. “Did he tell you that I…” He stalled again, then cleared his throat. “Ah, you mentioned confidentiality earlier? Does that apply here, too?”

  “Here? I’m not sure—”

  “Because my understanding is that it would apply. For me, I mean. I suppose I could check with my lawyer on that.”

  I hated lawyer references. “Do you foresee a need for a lawyer?”