The Secret Between Us

Half a dozen customers waited in line; another dozen were seated around the shop. Head down lest one of them catch her eye, she continued on through the swinging kitchen door and went straight to Jill’s office. She had barely settled into the desk chair when her sister arrived with a tray. It held three coffees and three SoMa Stickies. “I take it I’m joining you?” Jill asked.

“Definitely.” Taking a mug, Deborah studied her. Pregnant? With her short blonde hair and freckles, and her cropped orange T-shirt and slim jeans, Jill looked like a child herself. “I can’t picture it,” Deborah said, oddly bewildered. “Are you feeling okay?”

“Perfect.”

“Are you excited?”

“Beyond my wildest dreams.”

Deborah reached for her hand. “You’ll be an incredible mom.”

“Then you’re not upset with me?”

“Of course I’m upset. It won’t be easy being up at night with a crying baby and no one to spell you. You’ll be exhausted, and it’s not like you can call in sick.”

Jill pulled her hand free. “Why not? Look out there.”

Deborah didn’t have to look. She was at the bakery often enough to know that there were three people at work behind the front counter, rotating deftly between coffee machines and pastry bins as customers ordered from tall chalkboards that listed additional specialties like SoMa Shots, Smoothies, and Shakes. Two bakers would be in the kitchen until mid-afternoon, producing fresh-from-the-oven batches of everything from muffins to croissants to sticky buns. And then there was Pete, who came to help Jill with lunch.

Deborah got the message.

Still her sister said, “I have a great staff that I’ve hand-picked and carefully trained. Who do you think was minding the shop when I was going back and forth to the doctor? I do have a life, Deborah. It’s not all work.”

“I didn’t say it was.”

“And I love what I do. I was back there kneading dough a little while ago. SoMa Stickies are my recipe. And SoMa Slaw? If you think I don’t get joy making Mom’s recipe every day, think again. Honestly, you sound like Dad some-times. He thinks it’s all drudgery and that I’m alone here. He doesn’t know Skye and Tomas, who get here at three in the morning to bake, or Alice, who takes over at seven. He doesn’t know I have Mia, Keeshan, and Pat. He doesn’t know about Donna and Pete.”

“He knows, Jill,” Deborah said. “People tell him.”

“And he can’t say the bakery’s a success? I did good at piano lessons when I was eight, so he decided I should be a concert pianist. I won a prize at the science fair when I was twelve, so he decided I should be a Nobel winner. Being me wasn’t good enough—he always expected something more.” She flattened a hand on her chest. “I want this baby. It’s going to make me happy. Shouldn’t that make Dad happy?”

They weren’t talking about childbearing, but about the larger issue of parental expectations. Jill might be thirty-four, but she was still Michael Barr’s child. “Tell him you’re pregnant,” Deborah urged, perhaps selfishly, but she hated having to keep this secret too.

“I will.”

“Now. Tell him now.”

By way of response, Jill asked, “Did you know Cal McKenna taught several AP sections?”

Deborah stared at her sister long enough to see that Jill wasn’t giving in. With a sigh, she took a drink of coffee. “Yes. I did know that.” So did Jill, since Grace had him for AP American History.

“Some of his students were in here yesterday afternoon. There was talk.”

Picking a pecan from the top of her bun, Deborah brought it to her mouth, then put it back down. “And that was before he died. I let Grace stay home today. Was I right to do that?”

“Dad would say no.”

“I’m not asking Dad. I’m asking you.”

Jill didn’t hesitate. “Yes, you were right. The accident itself was bad enough, but now it has to be even harder for Grace, who knew the man. Any word on why he died?”

“Not yet.” Deborah opened her mouth, about to blurt out the truth. She was desperate to share the burden of it, and if there was anyone in her life she could trust, it was Jill. But before she could speak, Hal Trutter appeared.

There was nothing subtle about Hal. Wearing a natty navy suit and red tie, he had LAWYER written all over him. Realizing that, Deborah guessed every one of the people out front knew why he was here.

He took a coffee from the tray on the desk and looked at Jill. “Witness or chaperone?”

Jill didn’t like Hal. She had told Deborah that more than once, without even knowing he had come on to her sister. It might have simply been her distrust of arrogant men. But in answer to his question, Jill folded her arms across her chest and smiled. “Both.”

Feeling marginally protected, Deborah pulled the accident report from her bag. Hal unfolded it and began to read.

Deborah was comfortable with the first page, a straightforward listing of the spot where the accident occurred, her name, address, license number, car model, and registration number. She grew more nervous when he turned to the second page, where there was a line labeled “Driver.”

Fighting guilt, she kept her eyes steady on Hal. He ate some of the sticky bun and read on.

Jill asked, “You’re not gooeying up that form, are you?”

Just then, Deborah’s cell phone chimed. Pulling it from her pocket, she read the message, swore softly, and rose. “Be right back,” she said and headed through the kitchen. “Yes, Greg.”

“I just got a message from Dylan. What’s happening down there?”

Deborah wasn’t surprised Dylan had called his father. She wished he had waited, but Cal McKenna would still be dead. Greg would have to know sooner or later.

Finding a spot in the shadow of a dumpster outside the back door, she told him about the accident. The questions that followed were predictable. Greg might have moved to Vermont to rediscover his inner artist, but to Deborah, he was still the CEO who had inadvertently micromanaged his business to success.

To his credit, the first questions were about Grace and whether either of them had been hurt in any way. Then came, What time did you leave the house, what time did you get Grace, what time was the accident? Exactly where on the rim road did it happen, how far was the victim thrown, how long did it take for the ambulance to arrive? What hospital was he at, who’s his primary doctor, was a specialist brought in?

“No specialist,” Deborah said. “He was doing fine. No one expected that he’d die.”

There was a brief pause, then, “Why did I have to hear this from my ten-year-old son? You were involved in a fatal accident, and you didn’t think it important enough to keep me in the loop?”

“We’re divorced, Greg,” she reminded him sadly. He sounded genuinely wounded, so much like the caring man she had married that she felt a wave of nostalgia. “You said you had burned out on your life here. I was trying to spare you. Besides, there was nothing fatal about it until early this morning, and I’ve been slightly preoccupied since then.”

He relented a bit. “Is Grace upset?”

“Very. She was in a car that hit a man.”

“She should have called me. We could have talked.”

“Oh, Greg,” Deborah said with a tired sigh. “You and Grace haven’t talked—really talked—since you left.”

“Maybe it’s time we did.”

She didn’t know whether he meant talking on the phone or in person, but she couldn’t imagine proposing either to Grace right now. The girl saw her father every few months, and then only at Deborah’s insistence.

“Now’s not good,” she said. “Grace is dealing with enough, without that.”

“How long is she going to stay angry with me?”

“I don’t know. I try to talk her through it, but she still feels abandoned.”

“Because you do, Deborah. Are you imposing your own feelings on her?”

“Oh, I don’t need to do that,” Deborah said with quick anger. “She feels abandoned enough all on her own. You’re her father, and you haven’t been here for the last two years of her life. Literally. You haven’t been down once, not once. You want the kids to go up there to visit, and that might be fine for Dylan, but Grace has a life here. She has homework, she has track, she has friends.” Deborah glanced at her watch. “I can’t do this right now, Greg. I was in the middle of something when you called, and I have to get to work.”

“That’s what did it, y’know.”

“Did what?”

“Destroyed our marriage. You always had to work.”

“Excuse me,” Deborah cried. “Is this the man who put in sixteen-hour days right up until the moment he dumped it all? For the record, Greg, I do go to Grace’s track meets and Dylan’s baseball games. I do go to piano recitals and school plays. You’re the one who could never make time for us.”

Quietly, Greg said, “I asked you to move up here with me.”

Deborah wanted to cry. “How could I do that, Greg? My practice is here. My father depends on me. Grace is in high school—and we have one of the best school systems in the state, you said that yourself.” She straightened her shoulders. “And if I had moved north with you, would it have been a threesome—you, Rebecca, and me? Oh, Greg, you made me an offer I couldn’t accept. So if you want to discuss what killed our marriage, we could start with that, but not today, not now. I have to go.”

Amazed at how close to the surface the hurt remained, Deborah ended the call before he could say anything else. Looking out over the yellow van with her sister’s logo on the side—a stylized cupcake, frosted into peaks spelling Sugar-on-Main—she took several calming breaths. When she was marginally composed, she went back inside.

Hal had finished reading the report. He was standing with his hands on his hips. Jill hadn’t moved.

“Is it okay?” Deborah asked uneasily.

“It’s fine.” He extended the papers. “If what you say here is exact, there’s good reason for us to know what the guy was doing out there in the rain and whether he was hopped up on booze or drugs. Anyone in his right mind would have moved to the side of the road when a car came along. So the big question mark is him, not you. I don’t see anything here that would raise a red flag on your end.”

Feeling little relief, Deborah refolded the papers. “I’m sending copies to the Registry and to my insurance company. Are you okay with that, too?”

“You have to do it. Just don’t talk with John again without me there, okay?”

“Why not?”

“Because the victim died. Because I’m your lawyer. Because I know John; John knows how to build a hand and hold it close. And, Deborah, don’t talk to the media. The Ledger’s bound to call.”

Of course they would, now that a death was involved. Deborah grew fearful. “What do I say?”

“That your lawyer advised you not to talk.”

“But then they’ll think I’m hiding something.”

“Okay. Tell them you’re stunned by Calvin McKenna’s death and have no further comment at this time.”

Deborah was more comfortable with that. Nervously, she asked, “You don’t see a problem, do you?”

“Well, you killed a man with your car. Was it intentional? No. Did it result from reckless driving? No. Was there negligence involved regarding the condition of your car? No. If the reconstruction team supports all of the above, you’ll be clear on the criminal side. Then we’ll just have to wait to see what the wife does.”

Deborah nodded slowly. It wasn’t quite the rosy, all-is-well picture she wanted, but a man was dead. There was nothing remotely rosy about that.

Chapter 5

Deborah was late reaching her father’s house. Hearing the shower, she put the coffee on and readied his bagel. When the water continued to run, she considered dashing over to the office to get ahead on paperwork, but the living room was too strong a lure.

A wingback chair stood in its far corner, upholstered in a faded rose brocade. Sinking into it, she folded her legs under her as she had done dozens of times growing up. Wingback chairs had been originally designed to protect their occupants either from drafts or the heat of a fire. Deborah had needed protection of another kind. She had used the chair to help her deal with her parents’ expectations, and it had delivered for her more times than she could count. Her parents had assumed she was strong, assumed she could take care of herself in ways that her younger sister could not. But even if she looked the part, she was often scared to death. Sitting in this chair was akin to wearing blinders. It allowed her to focus on one thing at a time.

One thing she could do. If she was dealing with Calvin McKenna’s death, she couldn’t dwell on Jill’s pregnancy, Greg’s accusations, or Hal’s betrayal of her best friend.

Pushing the last three from her mind, she relived the accident for the umpteenth time, trying desperately to see something she might have done differently. She replayed her talks with the police and, later, with Grace, but here there was no going back. Grace was her daughter, and she deserved protection. That’s what parents did, particularly ones who had made their kids suffer through a divorce.

Upstairs, the shower went off. Getting up from the chair, she started back to the kitchen, caught herself, and returned to the den for a highball glass and an empty whiskey bottle. She put the glass in the dishwasher, the bottle in the trash, and unfolded the newspaper.

Calvin McKenna’s death wouldn’t have made the morning edition. Tomorrow’s perhaps. But the local weekly would hit stands tomorrow, too. Deborah dreaded that. More, though, she dreaded telling her father that the man had died.

As it happened, he already knew. There was an impatience in his stride as he went straight to the coffeemaker. His white hair was neatly combed, his cheeks pale. The disappointment on his face made him look older.

“Malcolm called,” he explained, filling his mug. Malcolm Hart was chief of surgery and a longtime friend of Michael’s. “Looks like we have a problem.”

“Does Malcolm know anything more?” Deborah asked.

“About why the man died?” Her father drank from his mug. “No. The widow is fighting the autopsy. She doesn’t want her husband’s body desecrated. In the end, of course, she won’t have a say. Autopsy is the law after a violent death. She’ll just slow things down.”

“Doesn’t she want to know why he died?”

He shrugged, swallowed more coffee.

“But if she’s thinking of suing, she’ll need to know the exact cause of death,” Deborah reasoned, “unless there’s some reason she doesn’t want to know. Or doesn’t want us to know.”

“Like what?” Michael said, and in that instant, Deborah was grateful for Hal.

“Like alcohol or drugs. We’re insisting that they check for both.”

Her father seemed unimpressed. “If I were you,” he said, eyeing her over his mug, “I’d worry about insurance. Do you have enough personal coverage in the event that she sues?”

“Yes.” Insurance was one of the things that Greg, the businessman, had bought to the hilt.

Michael sighed and shook his head.

Deborah knew he was thinking that this would be a very public stain on the family’s reputation. Not wanting to hear the words, she said, “This is one of those instances when I’d do anything to turn back the clock.”

“And do what?” he asked kindly enough, lowering his cup. “What would you do differently?”

She should never have let Grace take the wheel in weather like that. Should never have let Grace drive. But to tell her father that, without telling the police, would be making him an accomplice, as unfair as what Hal had done to her.

So she simply said, “Go even slower. Maybe wear my glasses.”

He seemed startled. “You weren’t wearing them?”

“I don’t have to. There’s no restriction on my license.”

Her glasses were weak. Occasionally she wore them watching a movie, but that was all.

“Shouldn’t you have taken every possible precaution on a night like that?”

“In hindsight, yes.”

“Your mother would have worn her glasses.”

It was a low blow. “Did she ever have an accident?”

“No.”

But Deborah knew differently. Feeling no satisfaction, simply a thread of anger, she said, “Take a look at her personal checkbook for the year I got married. You’ll see a check she wrote for several thousand dollars, paid to Russo’s garage. While she was driving down West Elm, she was looking for something on the passenger’s seat and sideswiped a parked car.”

Her father made a face. “That’s ridiculous. I would have known.”

“Her car needed a tune-up. It had to be in the shop anyway. Ask Donny Russo.”

“Your mother would never have lied to me.”

“She didn’t lie. She just didn’t tell the whole truth.”

“Why would she do that?”

Deborah sighed. Gently, she said, “Because you want perfection, and we can’t always deliver. Is Mom less lovable because she sideswiped a car? Am I less lovable because my car hit a man? I was upset when we hit Calvin McKenna, and I’m crushed that he died. But it was an accident,” she was suddenly close to tears, “—an innocent accident, but I seem to be the only one saying that. I’m saying it to my daughter, to my son, to Hal, to the police, to my ex-husband, to you. It would be really nice if someone said it to me— because, here’s a flash, Dad, I’m not made of steel. And I’m not without feelings. Right now, I need support.”

Deborah hadn’t planned the outburst. But she didn’t apologize.

Michael eyed her strangely. “Did you tell me that about your mother so that I wouldn’t be angry about you?”

“It’s not about anger. It’s about understanding.”

“Then understand this,” he said and set down his mug. “I loved your mother. I was married to her for forty years, and during that time I never once had cause to doubt her. It sounds to me like you’re trying to find fault with her and with me to get yourself off the hook. You killed a man, Deborah. It might be best if you accept that fact.”

Deborah was startled by the attack and too long formulating her response. What she might have asked, had her father not left, was why he had endless compassion for his patients and none for her. The answer, of course, was that she was family, and that, for family, the expectations were different.

For patients, the expectations were always the same. Family doctors didn’t get sick, didn’t take long vacations, didn’t take Wednesday afternoons off to play golf or, in Deborah’s instance, to sit with Grace. Between ten in-office patients and four house calls, Deborah’s Wednesday was nonstop. Her very last patient, waiting for her when she returned to the office, was Karen Trutter.

“If the mountain won’t come to Muhammad …” her friend said with a small smile. She wore gym clothes stylish enough to blend with the diamond studs that were a gift from her husband and that she never removed.

Deborah closed the door, and, looking at Karen, was warmed by the history of caring that had been given and taken for eighteen years. “I’m sorry,” she finally said, crossing the small space to give her friend a squeeze. “You deserve better.”

“You’re busy.”

Deborah pulled up a chair and sat. “What I am, is running to get as much done as possible before the you-know-what hits the fan.”

“It was an accident.”

“Thank you. But still …” Deborah knew that even aside from whose responsibility the driving had been, there was the issue of deception. The fact that Karen knew nothing of it made it even worse.

“Danielle says Grace wasn’t in school.”

“How could I send her?” Deborah asked. “She’s distraught.”

“Maybe she needs counseling.”

“No. Just time. This is all so fresh. Have you heard about any funeral plans?”

“Friday afternoon. Here in town.”

“Here?” Deborah was disappointed. She was hoping the funeral would be far away. “I’m surprised. He hasn’t lived here very long.”

“They’re suspending classes so students who want to can attend. And there’ll be a memorial service at the school Friday night. Was Hal a help this morning?”

“As much as he could be. There are so many unknowns. My stomach churns when I think about it.”

“John Colby won’t charge you with anything,” Karen said. “He knows what you mean to this town.”

“That could backfire,” Deborah remarked. “He’s already been warned about a whitewash. Precisely because of who I am, he could go after me harder.”

“For what?”

But Deborah didn’t want to list the possible charges again. “I’ll let Hal tell you. He was very good to meet with me.”

“Why wouldn’t he? He loves you.”

For the second time that day with someone named Trutter, Deborah felt like a fraud.

Karen frowned, seeming ready to say something more— and, for an instant, Deborah feared Hal had confessed his feelings to his wife. Then Karen closed her mouth, cleared her throat, and said weakly, “I’m actually here on business. My elbow’s been killing me for two weeks. You said I should tell you if something lasts that long.”

“ ‘Killing you’?” Deborah asked, quickly concerned. “Which elbow?”

When she bobbed the right one, Deborah took it in her hand and began to press. “Hurt?”

“No.”

“This?”

“No.”

She prodded enough, without distress to her friend, to rule out a broken bone. Cradling the elbow, she took Karen’s wrist and moved it through a normal range of motion. This did elicit a cry. When Deborah repeated the offending movement, Karen protested again. Deborah probed the elbow again, this time focusing on the lateral tendon.

“There,” Karen said and sucked in a breath.

Deborah sat back. “How often have you played tennis this week?”

“Every day, but—”

“And not just for fun. Karen, you have tennis elbow.”

“Women on my team don’t get tennis elbow.”

Deborah chuckled with relief. “You have tennis elbow.”

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