The Next Ten: Beginnings Series Books 11 - 20

by Jacqueline Druga

  Bang.

  Ellen cried. Her head hung low, her shoulders heaved, and she cried. “I’m sorry. I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to kill her. I never would have killed her. All I wanted was Andrea’s name to be cleared and . . . the name of the insider. I . . . . I didn’t mean to kill her, Joe.”

  Joe’s hand covered his eyes.

  “I didn’t mean to kill her,” Ellen whimpered.

  Dean slowly stood up and made his way to Ellen. He stopped when he saw Frank approach her.

  “El,” Frank’s voice cracked as he moved into her.

  “Frank.” Ellen raised her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  “I would have done anything to stop this moment. I would have . . .” He grabbed onto her. “I would have done anything for you.” His huge arms wrapped tightly around her,

  Ellen buried her face into Frank and felt not only him, but Dean as he walked up behind her and leaned his body and being into her for comfort. Then with the exasperation of an ending, emotionally and bodily weakened, Ellen folded.

  ^^^^

  A half an hour of time was given and the other suspects returned. The courtroom was quiet as they were all gathered back inside. No one looked at anyone. They all stared forward.

  Judge Grace called attention. “We’ll proceed.” She lifted a sheet. “Dr. Ellen Hayes, could you step forward please.”

  Robbie’s eyes closed. He prayed that Dean had covered. His prayers were futile. He felt the comfort of Hal’s hand as it laid on his and gave an assuring squeeze.

  “Dr. Hayes,” Grace said. “You have confessed to this court for the murder of Beverly Hadley. Is that correct.”

  “Yes,” Ellen replied softly.

  “I have reviewed your testimony and accounts of the night and found that the act of murder was not committed maliciously. You do understand that sentence must be handed down.”

  “Yes, I do. I’m fully willing to accept it. I committed the crime.”

  “Very well,” Grace nodded. “Because the health and welfare of the community comes first and because we are desperately short handed and behind in the clinical aspect, I am issuing a suspension on the sentence for one month so that yourself and Dr. Hayes, in the best interest of the community, can place the medical aspect in order. Is that understood?”

  “Yes.” Ellen nodded sadly.

  “It is my obligation, Dr. Hayes, to inform you, under popular vote of the citizens, that following the suspension, you will be ordered to leave the providences of both Beginnings, Montana and New Bowman. You will take provisions of personal items only. Nothing else. You will have no contact and in no way are you to try to contact your home. No help will be issued to you and no protection. You will be excommunicated for a period of no longer than six months and no shorter than two. At which time, if you choose, you are free to return.” Grace gave a tap of her gavel. “The murder of Beverly Hadley is officially closed.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “Obviously, he wasn’t the one that made the phone call,” Danny Hoi explained to Joe in Joe’s office. “Forrest said because of the series of operations, Jess is out of commission for another month. We won’t be able to talk to him at least until tomorrow.”

  “I see.” Joe peered at the information. “Well, the guards on the door were a good move.”

  “For Jess’s protection as well. This other insider may try to get to him now.”

  “That’s why we’re publically exposing Jess as Bev’s killer. With a guard in the room and at the door, he’ll be safe and so will . . .” Joe exhaled. “Ellen. On that note.” He closed the folder. “Can I put this in your hands, Danny? Really, I don’t want to deal with anything right now.”

  “Without a doubt, Joe. Mind if I use your office for a little bit to finish up some thoughts I want to jot down.”

  “Help yourself.” Joe walked across the office. “Are you going to the Hall tonight, Danny?”

  “Yeah. After all this, I need to. Will I see you there?”

  Joe whistled. “After I go grab something to eat . . . without a doubt.” He opened his office door and saw Robbie standing there. “Robert.”

  “Is it true?” Robbie asked. “Did that Doyle guy name Jess?”

  “Robbie, walk with me.” Joe started moving. “Doyle said that Jess was a deliberate defector set up to infiltrate and watch us from the inside. He didn’t say whether Jess was doing anything as of yet . . .”

  “Maybe he confused Jess with someone else?”

  “No. He personally handpicked Jess for the job. We’ll talk to Jess tomorrow.”

  Robbie nodded then stopped. “Dad. One other thing. Ellen.”

  “Robert.”

  “Dad. Listen. You can’t . . . you can’t let them kick her out.”

  “Robbie, come on,” Joe sounded desperate. “Do you think I want that? Do you? No. My hands are tied. She killed Bev.”

  “Then you can’t let her go out alone.”

  Stopping, Joe dropped his voice to a whisper. “I have no plans on letting her out in this world alone.”

  “So someone can go with her? Will that get her in trouble?”

  “Nope. Grace and I discussed this issue before we even knew who the killer was. They would be able to help Ellen, but they couldn’t do so through Beginnings. Whoever leaves with her may not suffer a loss of ranking, but they will have to be gone as long as she is.”

  “You know I want to be the one to leave with her,” Robbie stated.

  “I figured as much and I’d be disappointed if you didn’t offer.”

  “So you’ll support me on this?” Robbie asked.

  “Absolutely. One hundred percent but . . .” Joe stopped walking. “I don’t quite think it’s going to matter. Do you honestly think your brother Frank is going to let her walk out of these walls without him?” Joe shook his head. “I look for him to leave us no choice to who goes. But that will be after, and only after, he and Dean wade through this very short month.”

  ^^^^

  “We tried! We failed!” Frank’s blasting voice played in Dean’s memory, an argument so fresh in his mind. “So now there is no other choice!”

  “I will not sit back and watch you make plans to leave, Frank. Not with Ellen.”

  “Who else is there, Dean?” Frank asked sarcastically.

  “Me.”

  “Right. The kids will lose their mother and father for two months?”

  “What about you?” Dean questioned. “That means they’ll lose you too.”

  “Dean, not only am I the only one who can do this, I am the only one who will do this. End of argument.”

  “It’s not end of argument. She’s my wife!”

  “For as smart as you are, it’s not gonna mean squat in that world out there.” Frank took a second to calm down. “Look. This isn’t getting us anywhere.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “We shouldn’t even be having this fight now. We have a month.”

  “We do. A lot can changed.”

  “Let’s just agree on one thing right now. No matter what, she’ll be fine.”

  Dean agreed.

  They parted shortly after on better terms. They both needed time to think, cool down, and calm down before joining back up that night. They both needed and wanted to speak to Ellen and they would when she returned from the clinic. She told Dean she needed some time alone. To think of nothing but work. Dean projected the air of not having a problem with that, but the truth was, he did. He regretted letting Ellen out of the house, even for an hour, because he knew once she was gone, he’d wish with all his heart for that hour back.

  The silence in the house was painful and Dean found himself actually wanting Frank to come back, even if it was to argue. It wouldn’t allow him time to think. The more Dean thought, the more his heart broke.

  The picture of him and Ellen was slightly bent between his folded hands as he sat on the edge of the bed. He kept rubbing the end of the photo across his forehead, rocking, thinking, and feeli
ng so lost. He remembered so vividly the fateful night that brought them to that point.

  The footsteps. The fast running footsteps woke Dean. He was concerned that perhaps one of the children was sick. He jumped from the couch, half out of it, but not that out of it that he didn’t see the bloody footprint on the carpet. He had barely made it into the hall when he heard the noise, wheezing breaths, fast and emotional. He followed the sounds. Every step he took was seemingly from a nightmare. The hall was darker toward his bedroom. The sounds and sight of his room came into a distorted sideways focus as if Dean were running through the tunnel of some amusement park ride. What had happened? He knew it was Ellen making that noise.

  He flew into his bedroom. The bathroom light was on and the breaths and pants were even louder. Scared, he ran straight to the bathroom. “Oh, my God.” He stepped into the archway.

  Ellen was between the commode and the tub with back pressed tightly against the wall. Her hands were raised to her ears, she was covered in blood, and she held a revolver in her hand. She was shaking.. Dean had never seen her shake so badly.

  “El.”

  Her shoulders raised and fell frantically. Her eyes were wide as she looked at Dean. Her muscles were tense and panic spewed across her face as she spoke through hyperventilated breaths that contained her tears and her fears. “Dean . . . Dean . . . I killed her . . . . I killed her . . . .” She wheezed out. “Oh. God. Oh, God.”

  “El.” He rushed to her.

  “I didn’t, didn’t . . . mean it. I swear. I swear. I killed Bev . . . I killed Bev.” With an entire body shudder, Ellen’s head flung back and she release a gurgling, painful cry as she slid down the wall to the floor. “God, help me,” she sobbed. “I didn’t mean to do it.”

  At that instant, Bev was of no concern and what had happened to her didn’t even matter. All that struck Dean, killed him, was what Ellen was going through. He hunched down before her, and reached out to her, not knowing what to say.

  Anthium. That was all Dean had in his house that night. A half a dose was all he gave her. It calmed her down enough to be rational, but not enough to take away the shock and sadness.

  “You promised me! You promised me, El!” Dean heard his emotional voice screaming in the courtroom. “You promised me.”

  Ellen had stopped crying. There was more of a blank stare on her face as she sat in the tub. The trickling water was the only sound for the longest time. Dean had cleanse her of all the blood. He emptied the tub and refilled it all while Ellen just sat there with her knees bent up and her arms across her legs.

  He brought the wash rag gently to her face once more. “I think we got it all.”

  “Please don’t hate me,” Ellen spoke, dazed.

  “No, El. I don’t hate you.” Dean dropped the washcloth. “Don’t even think that.”

  “What am I gonna do?” She moved her eyes to look at Dean. “What are they gonna do to me when they find out?”

  “They aren’t going to do anything because they aren’t going to find out.”

  “What?”

  “You’re not saying anything. I won’t let you.”

  “But, Dean. Dean I . . .”

  “No.” Dean stopped her. “No. You didn’t do anything. I’ll take care of the gun, your clothes, everything, but you have to promise me something. Promise me with everything you are that you will never, not to a single soul, ever tell anyone. It doesn’t get beyond you and me.”

  “Dean?”

  “Ellen.” He grasped her hand. “I will do anything to protect you. Give me that promise.”

  “I . . . I promise.” Ellen shivered.

  The promise. And Dean had his own, to protect Ellen at all costs. What extremes would he have gone through to keep that promise? Any. He would have carried that burden on his own and faced the consequences of it as well. He had every intention, but a part of him was grateful when Frank stepped into the picture. It was a night Ellen was in New Bowman, a simple evening when Frank wanted a drink so bad that he sought out Dean to talk him out of it. The evening that produced the reminder flask.

  Dean knew how hard it was for Frank to go to him and he knew Frank well enough to know that something other than the simple urge for alcohol was pushing him to that brink.

  Frank’s had such pain on his face when he swore Dean to secrecy. It was at that exact moment that Dean realized the undeniable bond of trust between the two men who had been mostly enemies since the day they met. Frank needed to purge his soul, release the burden, and release the desire to drink so much. He needed someone carry it with him, someone that would go to the extremes that Frank himself would go to. That someone was Dean.

  How far into the sentence did Frank get that night?

  ‘Dean., no one knows this but my Dad and Jason sent me through the time machine to see Bev’s killer. I . . .’

  Dean cut him off. Frank didn’t have to say it.

  “If you did that, Frank, you are protecting the killer,” Dean said.

  “With my life, Dean. I’m protecting that person with my life.”

  Dean unleased his burden as well. “So am I, Frank.”

  They had it figured out. Dean swore they did. How many times did he and Frank discuss every angle, every possibility, and every outcome? They swore up and down that should it ever come down to it, without a doubt, Dean was the killer and Frank saw him that night at Bev’s.

  They bonded on that. They trusted that. They even tried that angle. But they failed. Dean couldn’t stop wondering, why Ellen just wouldn’t let it go. Why she wouldn’t let Dean be named the killer. Surely she had to know if they suspended her sentence to get the clinic in order, Dean’s sentence would have been suspended indefinitely. Even if Dean had to leave for a month or so, it wouldn’t have mattered. He would have been able to handle that. What he couldn’t handle was the thought of having to watch Ellen leave Beginnings. If he couldn’t handle the thought, how was he going to handle the actual occurrence?

  The truth was, he couldn’t.

  Dean was crushed. There wasn’t a part of his body that didn’t ache with thought of all that had gone down. He was crumbling inside. There had to be a way to stop it. There had to be a way to stop Ellen from leaving and he had a month to figure it out. He had to do it because if Dean had to witness the love of his life leaving her home without him, then he knew, from that moment on, nothing would matter. His work would fail. His life would mean nothing. He would be nothing but a shell, empty and lost, and he would remain that way until the moment Ellen returned.

  ^^^^

  There were a lot of things on Ellen’s mind and she had vowed one of them would not be Johnny. She thought she had it all planned out. She would take a calming day, fear nothing, and then the next day approach Joe.

  How much had changed. She far from cruised through the day and it wasn’t calm either. Everyone’s demeanor toward her was ‘down’ as if she had some sort of horrible disease or something as if she were facing her death. Unless they weren’t telling her something, Ellen wasn’t going to die. She was merely paying for a crime she shouldn’t have committed. Killing Bev, whether intentional or not, no matter who she was, was wrong. And Ellen hadn’t just taken one life but two. In retrospect, weighing the scales of guilt, Ellen leaned more toward the innocent child that died at her hands. When did it dawn on her? It didn’t until right after they removed Bev’s uterus and then it all barreled down on Ellen. The true crime in the murder was the unborn child. The baby. Henry’s baby.

  Ellen knew deep down inside of her that played a lot in her decision to turn custody of Nick over to Henry. She took one child from him. She would not withhold another. Perhaps in some small way, whether Henry knew it or not, it was Ellen’s way of making up a little bit of his loss to him.

  Turning over Nick was still fresh and Ellen supposed once she sat down and talked to Frank and Dean they would understand her logic. Why couldn’t Henry raise his own child? What really gave Frank and Dean the right to determine
who would be his male role model? Though Henry showed no signs of paternal brilliancy, who was to say, once he realized he wanted to be a father, Henry wouldn’t be a great father?

  Ellen held strong beliefs that he would.

  Henry had changed in the course of the few weeks before she gave him Nick. He went from a man no one could speak to, to a man who started to smile again. Ever since his secret of Bev was lifted, Henry’s whole personality started to come back since the raising of a heavy burden from his shoulders. Ellen knew all too well how heavy a secret was to carry.

  She carried two.

  Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to lie to Dean on why she had to leave the house but Ellen was certain once she returned back home she would tell him the truth. All he did was stare. Frank did so as well. They shook their heads and told her they were sorry. No matter what she told them, they weren’t hearing her. They wanted to pity her, and themselves, for her having to leave Beginnings. Ellen disagreed. Had it been the old world and she committed the act of murder, in Ellen’s mind the punishment would have been far worse than just having to leave the sanctuary of her home for a couple of months. She wasn’t worried about it. She really wasn’t worried. She was ready to face the punishment, even if only for her soul.

  She told Dean she needed ‘alone time’ to sort out feelings and thoughts when in actuality Ellen just needed to get away from the gloom Frank and Dean projected and to take hold of the feeling that came upon her.

  Peace.

  Ellen felt a sense of rejuvenation. It was out. It was told. She no longer hid behind the knowledge that she had taken a life. Despite the front that she put on, there wasn’t a day that went by when she didn’t think of it, dream of it, or feel such a heavy amount of guilt that she didn’t think she could live with it. She knew those feelings of what she had done would always stay with her, but they wouldn’t be magnified by the fact that she was covering it up.