A Conflict of Interest

by Anna Adams

  “I’m thinking forty dollars is way too much.” To her shame, she found herself wishing she could add forty dollars a week to the meager lines in her household budget. “How about twenty?”

  “I like thirty.”

  “Twenty-five?”

  “Thirty, or I’ll know you’re just showing an old woman pity.”

  Maria hesitated. She’d prefer not to mug a woman who had both a need for digitalis and a fixed income. As if to help her decide, Madden and Montana yanked at their leashes and bolted.

  Maria ran after them and their mistress, a little concerned the “babies” might have jolted Helen’s shoulders out of their sockets.

  “Deal,” Maria said, swooping around Helen to take the dogs in hand. If they didn’t cost her thirty dollars’ worth of effort, she’d give the extra to Jake and force him to take it back to his aunt. “I’ll start right now.”

  “Excellent.” Helen handed over the leashes with alacrity. “I’ll walk with you today, and you can tell me about Griff Butler.”

  “I’d rather not.”

  “I’m a fixture in this community. I can help you.”

  “I don’t need help.”

  “Don’t kid yourself. You and Jake would both be hot topics around the water coolers if anyone still had them. No, Griff is the subject we need to discuss. You certainly didn’t seduce that young man?”

  “Hell, no.” Maria looked down. “Sorry. I mean no, I didn’t.”

  “Your first answer works for me. It’s just the way I would respond. How did this happen?”

  Helen seemed to assume she had the right to know about Maria’s personal life. “I don’t mean to offend you, but we hardly know each other, and I don’t need thirty dollars enough to talk about Griff Butler.”

  “Nonsense. We’ve been nodding to each other on the sidewalk for over a year. You need a friend.”

  “A paying one?” Maria asked.

  “I know you haven’t seen my nephew in two days, because he told me he doesn’t want to expose you to more ridicule.” Helen touched Maria’s hand. “Perhaps you miss him?”

  “I don’t want to,” she said, her heartfelt admission husky with emotion.

  “Jake also says you’re reluctant to talk about the things that matter to you. You have that in common with him. He’s staying away to give you time and respectability, but he believes you’ll think he’s avoiding you to regain his dignity.”

  “He doesn’t sound reluctant about talking.” Unlike Jake, she didn’t plan to confide her deepest, darkest secrets to his candid aunt. “My sister is staying with me right now, so I can tell her everything I don’t want to say to you.”

  When Helen laughed, the dogs began snapping at each other. Maria used their leashes to steer them apart, and they quickly fell into companionable step again.

  “I’ve annoyed you, but let me tell you what Jake’s feeling.”

  “Did he hire you to act as his matchmaker?”

  Helen turned, her face alight as if they’d shared a moment of pure understanding. “That was my idea, but he asked me to stay out of the personal matters between you. Still, he doesn’t always know best, so I’ll tell you what I think he would say if he could. That he hasn’t stayed away because he doesn’t want to see you. That the only thing he wants more is not to hurt you.”

  Maria watched her own feet scuff down the sidewalk.

  “You know I’m safe to talk to because my nephew has shared his heartfelt secrets with me.” Helen smoothed the scarf at her throat. “Well, in all honesty, he didn’t say those things out loud, but I know what he’s feeling. That boy has been like a son to me.”

  Boy? Maria kept walking.

  “Maybe I should guess at your feelings for him, as well?”

  Oh. No. “Why do you want to know about Griff?”

  Madden intervened again, veering toward a holly bush strewn with lights that barely sparkled during the day.

  “Someone’s going to have an impressive power bill.” Dragging at Madden’s leash, Maria hoped to distract Helen. The dog got back into step with Montana.

  Helen would not be deterred. “Let’s talk straight. I don’t know what you did with that boy Griff, but I love my nephew, and I think he’s getting involved with you.”

  Staying at her side, Maria crunched through a few steps of frozen snow in silence. She cared for Jake, more than she was willing to say. More than she was willing to discuss with his aunt, for sure.

  “I won’t do anything to hurt Jake.” She looked into the other woman’s clear gray eyes. “And I know I’ve hurt Leila by letting myself get—” She couldn’t come up with words to describe what was going on between her and Jake. She’d never felt so attached so quickly. She’d never been so physically involved, but she hadn’t totally lost her mind. She’d made love with him despite her commitment to Leila, and that was out of character. “I should have put her first.”

  “I went straight to her when Jake told me how fed up she is with the pair of you. While I wish you’d both realized she had prior claims on both of you, I think you did her a favor. She might finally be angry enough to get better.”

  “You knew she was ill?”

  “Not the extent of it, but she was obviously troubled after her parents’ divorce. Kate was too self-absorbed to notice, and I think Jake was too frightened to stop being blind.”

  Maria didn’t want to know anything else about Jake’s failed marriage with the infamous Kate, but she was anxious enough about Leila to trust Helen’s judgment. “You’re sure she’s not putting on a front for you?”

  “I’m checking in with her often.” Helen reached for a length of Montana’s leash when he went for a blowup Santa. “I know you don’t know me, but you need me, too, Maria. What you should have done from the start was approach some member of the community to act on your behalf.”

  “A PR move?” Maria asked, smiling despite her confusion at Helen’s whirlwind recitation of solutions to all her problems.

  “I don’t think it’s too late for me to do you some good. Tell me about Griff.” Helen put up one hand in her creamy, knit glove. “Jake tells me you’d rather eat dirt than accept help. It’s time to get out your fork and spoon.”

  Somehow Helen the Maelstrom worked up enough patience to wait while Maria found the courage to speak, but Maria had underestimated the relief she’d find in pouring out the whole story.

  Helen didn’t judge. She walked along, making appropriate shocked noises when the time was right. “You cannot blame yourself for what’s happened with this boy, or even for the—hopefully—temporary loss of your clients. What would you do differently if you could go back and do it again?”

  “That is a damn good question, Helen.” She stopped. “Oh, sorry for the language.”

  Helen gave an eye roll that would have done a teenager proud. “Please, young lady. As if I never heard that word before. I say it every time I try to find my glasses in the morning. Go on with your thought.”

  “I had no choice with Griff. I hope all my clients are seeing other therapists and moving ahead, but I wouldn’t have let him get away with murder just to be available for the others.”

  “At last you let your halo slip long enough to be annoyed with that kid.”

  “I’ve got no halo,” she said indignantly. Helen merely laughed, and Maria found herself laughing, too. The sound ricocheted between the snowy houses.

  “So your only option now is to move forward, as well.”

  “I’m trying, but I’m running out of money, and I miss my work. I have no idea how long the board’s going to take with their investigation.”

  “I’m suggesting you stop hiding out with paper routes. Take dog walking or any other job until the community is willing to forgive.”

  Maria knew good advice when she heard it, though its rightness made it no easier to follow. “I’ve just embarked on my dog-walking career. And even though almost no one in this town will hire me, I’ll find other things. I have to.”
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  “Try not to worry,” Helen said. “Isn’t that what you’d suggest to anyone who came to you for help with similar issues? You’re looking for work. You’ve done all you could to help that boy. Time is the only certainty you can count on to help you.”

  “I don’t know, Helen. You’re a bit of a Christmas present.”

  A WEEK AFTER he’d last seen Maria, Jake came up with a plan. Helen refused to share the gist of her conversations with the woman who occupied most of his thoughts and all his sleepless nights. The most she’d let slip was Maria’s preoccupation with foreclosure and financial ruin.

  He wasn’t allowed to interfere with the board’s investigation, but he made up his mind to find more work for Maria.

  Without telling Helen what was on his mind, he shoveled her walk, and then he took care of three of her closest friends’ snow, as well. After he finished each job, he knocked on the owner’s door.

  Janet Loomis and Delilah Cantrell showed amazing restraint in not interrogating him about his recent newspaper fame. They even agreed to let Aunt Helen persuade Maria to take over the snow-shoveling job. Strong-arming them into letting him pay Maria through them was tougher, but he could hardly let them foot the bill for his own bright ideas.

  Sam Burke, on Helen’s other side, proved testy when Jake suggested Maria could shovel his walk, too. “Isn’t that the girl who blamed the Butler boy for killing his parents?”

  “She’s the woman who was treating him for his problems when he confessed to her,” Jake said.

  “I’ve known the Butlers forever. They don’t have that kind of blood.”

  “That’s not the way it works, Sam.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not sure I can betray the family.” He looked Jake up and down. “No matter what you’re getting out of the deal.”

  Jake considered shoving his aunt’s senior citizen friend headfirst into a snowbank. Hardly the right thing to do.

  “Sam, you won’t betray anyone if you let me pay Maria for shoveling your walk. For all we know, it may not snow again, and the question won’t come up.”

  “That’s true,” said Sam Burke, still good-old-boyish enough to fall in with another of Honesty’s oldest families. “I reckon you have a soft spot for that girl?”

  “Woman,” Jake said. “Doctor. I mean, Sam, it’s none of your business.”

  “Son, you’ve made it everyone’s business.”

  “Which is why I’m trying to make amends. Do you know anyone else who needs some odd jobs done around the house?”

  “I saw Pete Donelly out chipping at his birdbath the other day. You know, he’s in that house catty-corner behind mine.”

  “I know Pete.” And he just had time to stop by before he went to Leila’s town house and begged her again to talk to him.

  Maybe the Fates would be kind. After all, he was trying everything to make reparation for his sins.

  WITH NO WARNING AT ALL, Maria found people calling her to do their chores. They must have seen her walking Helen’s dogs. And she was able to do all the jobs—filling bird feeders and cleaning a birdbath, rebuilding a doghouse, even painting a mailbox, out in the open like any other citizen of Honesty. She never met one accusing eye.

  Unlike Jake, whose every case seemed to be under review in the paper and on each unguarded tongue.

  Maria heard about this case being rethought or that charge being re-argued while she was working. She’d been in the feed store, picking up birdseed when she’d overheard the two men in front of her at the checkout discussing a burglary case.

  “I heard there were questions about the evidence. Maybe he sided with one of the defendants in that case, too.”

  “She wasn’t a defendant. She just should have been.”

  “I’d put myself through law school if I thought someone would present their case to me the way she’s doing with him.”

  As the men had shared horselike snickers, she’d eased her bags back onto the shelf and left to buy her birdseed at the discount store on the edge of town.

  Every day, she tried a little harder to let the future take care of itself. Her job prospects sucked, but present conditions, if she didn’t count an uncomfortable, ungovernable, constant ache for Jake, were looking up.

  Helen knew everyone in town, and she’d apparently hit them all up for their small jobs. None of it would pay the cable bill, so Maria had turned off the cable, despite Bryony’s certainty that her creativity would dry right up if she couldn’t watch reality programs on MTV, fix-it-yourself shows on several home-oriented channels and cooking on nearly all the others.

  Working should have kept Maria’s mind occupied, but Jake inveigled his way into every other thought. Jake, worrying about Leila, who wouldn’t speak to either of them. Jake, promising never to cause her pain, and yet never showing up again—though Helen had pointed out a sudden prevalence of police patrols on their street.

  After a typical day of delivering papers, shoveling walks, walking dogs and facing down any angry citizen who frowned at her, Maria went home and showered off the grime.

  The phone rang as she was drying her hair. She checked the caller ID, shamelessly hoping to see Jake’s name, but it was A. Hammond.

  Maria barely got out a hello before a woman began to spew.

  “Thanks to that picture and the foul way you live your life, I’ve just made sure you’ll never hurt another child. Or an adult, for that matter. The only license you’ll get is one you print yourself. And I wouldn’t put that past you.”

  Her hysterical voice sent a shiver down Maria’s spine. “Who is this?”

  “Angela Hammond. And another thing, I want you to keep that judge away from my house and my family. If he comes near us again, I’ll have him picked up by his friend the sheriff.”

  The judge? Jake. “Angela Hammond? Griff’s aunt?” The pieces began to mesh, though she couldn’t believe Jake would take matters into his own hands after she’d begged him not to. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.” Worse than that, she didn’t want to believe Jake still didn’t know when to stay out of a situation he couldn’t fix.

  “Don’t try to play me. I made an appointment with that review board the day Buck Collier told me he’d reported you. Then your photo with the damn judge on Griff’s case landed on my doorstep. I’ll see you in hell or in jail before you ever treat another person in Honesty. I told those other doctors everything they needed to know about you and your lover boy.”

  A knot of anger toward Buck and Angela and every other narrow-minded soul in this town made speech difficult. “You talked to the board.” Surely they’d recognize her poison for what it was.

  “I told them everything.”

  “Everything Griff told you.”

  “Exactly. I gave them the truth, and about damn time someone did.” Mrs. Hammond finished the conversation by calling her several names that Maria prayed she’d used with the investigators so they’d realize the woman was grinding an ax as sharp as her temper.

  While Maria was gathering a breath to ask when Jake had visited their home, the other woman slammed down the phone. The metallic thud echoed in Maria’s ear. She hung up and dropped into an armchair.

  Jake hadn’t helped with his good-intentional meddling. But the board couldn’t take the word of a woman so obviously biased. Surely she’d be offered the chance to defend herself.

  No wonder Jake had avoided her. He’d done exactly what she’d asked him not to, and he’d pushed her several steps closer to ruin.

  Maria stood and yanked the living room curtains shut. Jake couldn’t help himself. If his perception of the right thing required tearing down the world, he pitched in with both hands, and to hell with the fallout.

  She slumped onto the love seat’s ottoman, her head in her hands. Forcing herself to breathe slowly, all she could see was Jake at his most remote, bent on doing what he deemed best, no matter what she asked of him.

  She picked up the phone again, uncertain whether she wanted him to offer an
acceptable excuse, or warn him that Griff’s aunt would probably find someone willing to censure him, as well.

  Maria set down the phone. This conversation would be better held in person. She hurried to her room and changed, before grabbing her keys and running for the car. She’d never been inside Jake’s beautiful brick house on the hill above Honesty. She rang the bell, her heart thumping.

  He answered, his face darkening in a way she already recognized. “God, I’m glad to see you.”

  “You won’t be.” Landscaping shielded them from the quiet street at the end of his curved driveway. “May I come in?”

  He scooped her inside with one arm, all but lifting her off her feet. His mouth brushed hers, and she lifted her arms before she remembered the reason she’d come. “Angela Hammond called me.”

  He caught her hand as she tried to twist away from him. “I thought she might,” he said. “I should have called you first.”

  “You must have been busy.”

  “Why are you angry, Maria?”

  He shut the door. It echoed in his long, arched hallway. Cold from his marble floor all but crept through the soles of her boots. Unless it was the cold drifting down from her heart. Jake’s bewilderment was in character, but ridiculous. He actually thought they could pick up where they’d left off, even though he’d been avoiding her since the newspaper debacle.

  “How could you talk to Griff’s family?”

  “I’ve read his police file, and the school counselor got in touch after she saw that newspaper article. She thought you and I might be on the same side, so she told me I should talk to the principal. Griff has bullied some younger children, vandalized a couple of classrooms. He stole computer equipment he didn’t even need. His parents and his aunt found excuses for him. For your sake, as well as his, someone had to talk to his aunt about his propensity for violence.”

  “You were the wrong choice,” Maria said. “And I begged you not to.”

  “Come into the study. Sit down and I’ll bring you something to drink. We’ll talk.”

  “No.” She put a round marble-topped table between them, ignoring all the doors set into the paneled walls. “When we get too cozy—” could anyone get cosy in this stuffy house? “—I start trusting and stop thinking. I’m beginning to wonder if you’re always planning your own strategy, even as you tell me what I want to hear.”