The House Guests

by Emilie Richards

  “Apparently Mark was better at covering his problems than any of his colleagues guessed. But after you cornered Fletcher in Orlando, he began to wonder because of the questions you didn’t ask. Did Mark manage to keep you in the dark? It seemed impossible. But now, I guess we know.”

  Valerie stretched out her hand, as if to lay it on Cassie’s shoulder, but then she pulled it back, guessing, accurately, that it wouldn’t be welcome. “After he injured his back, Mark’s doctor prescribed opioids, Cassie. I don’t remember which ones. But surely you knew?”

  “Of course. That was the only thing that helped.”

  “Overuse of oxycodone and its little pals were more common then than they are now. For a while, the medical establishment believed they were absolutely safe. Now, there are new safeguards, but back then they were just beginning to come to terms with addiction problems nationwide. Do you remember how much pain Mark was in?”

  “He couldn’t get relief any other way, and the prescription only had so many refills,” Cassie said. “After he started the drugs, he could finally sleep, get out of bed, do some moderate exercises. Everything seemed to come together again.”

  “Only it didn’t, not really. I don’t know all the details. Nobody does, but it seems clear he was getting drugs a number of ways. We do know that early on he finished his first round and needed refills, so Fletcher wrote him a prescription. Easy enough to do. Apparently, then Mark asked his own internist for more and got another refill, but he was advised to start tapering off. Instead, he started going to a pain relief practice across town, which, in itself, should have been a clue. Unfortunately, the only thing Fletcher saw? Mark was back at work and functioning. Everybody assumed for a while that any behavior out of the norm was because he wasn’t fully recovered.”

  Cassie was trying to listen through a wall of denial. But too much of what Valerie was saying seeped through. “After those first few weeks I never saw him take a pill.”

  “Addicts are good at hiding problems, but eventually the addiction took over. Meds began to disappear from the supply closet, and then Fletcher got a call from a pharmacist in Brooklyn asking about a prescription he’d called in for Mark that the pharmacist was concerned about.”

  “Had he called it in?”

  Valerie shook her head. “At that point Fletcher took Mark out to dinner and told him what he suspected and what he had to do. Fletcher didn’t have hard proof, and frankly he wanted to keep it that way. So he told Mark he wasn’t going to report him. But he wanted him to check himself into the Grandy Rayburn—”

  “Drug Treatment Center,” Cassie finished.

  “You know about that?”

  Cassie saw no reason to lie. “Mark told me he was filling in there after their director passed away suddenly. He was gone for weeks, only coming home occasionally on weekends.”

  “The director is alive and well, and Mark was a patient, not a staff member, because Fletcher told him if he didn’t check himself in, he would report him for substance abuse and his license could be taken away. They have special programs that shield physicians from disciplinary actions and make sure treatment remains anonymous. If he’d gone to one, Mark would have been closely supervised and gotten the specialized therapy he needed. But Fletcher thought Grandy could turn him around, and then nobody would need to know about his problem. He thought he was looking out for Mark’s future.”

  Valerie must have seen her confusion. “I know this is hard to accept, but addiction in the medical field is much more common than we think. Something like one in ten physicians are addicted to either drugs or alcohol at some point, and it’s even higher for nurses. They have easy access to drugs, and their jobs are so stressful that getting away from them, zoning out for even a little while is too tempting. I’m guessing that a lot of physicians believe they can control their addiction, and then when drugs begin to control them, they don’t know what to do. Their families, their jobs, their income, the profession they worked so hard to achieve? All of it teetering on the edge of oblivion.”

  “You seem to know a lot about it.”

  “I know a lot more than I used to.”

  “I can’t believe this. If he had a headache, Mark usually toughed it out.”

  “But you do believe it. Because you lived with him.”

  Cassie knew that in the weeks ahead she would run through every moment of that last year of Mark’s life, play back what she remembered through this new and horrifying filter. For now, though, she had to move on. At least a little.

  “Grandy Rayburn didn’t work the magic Fletcher thought it would?”

  “For a while, things were promising. Mark seemed to be back in control. And there’s a high rate of success when a physician is treated correctly, although those statistics come from the specialized programs I mentioned.”

  “If any of this is true, Fletcher has a lot to answer for.”

  Valerie didn’t disagree. “He was trying to save Mark’s career. They were friends. Good friends. You and I were friends. He didn’t want to see your lives go up in flames.”

  Anger was beginning to outdistance disbelief. “I think Fletch didn’t want to see Church Street go up in flames. That’s it, isn’t it? He didn’t want the practice to suffer. He didn’t want the publicity that might have come from this. He didn’t want to lose credibility and income.”

  “Of course he didn’t. Would you have wanted the publicity, Cassie? For your family? For Savannah? If Fletcher had known the way this would turn out, he would have done things differently. But he’s not God. He took his best shot for everybody.”

  “And at the end?”

  “After Tom Wallings brought his concerns to the other partners, Fletcher finally told them what had transpired. He was nearly asked to resign because he’d withheld the truth initially and helped Mark on his own.”

  “Apparently they thought better of it.”

  “I think everyone there could imagine themselves behaving the same way. They discussed what to do and shared suspicions about other incidents. At the end they decided to confront Mark, an intervention of sorts, and if they suspected he was still abusing drugs, they would give him a choice. Either he could resign, or they would report him. If he resigned on his own, they would all move on.”

  “They let him walk away, probably to get another job somewhere else and do the same things? They thought he was a drug addict, and as long as he wasn’t their drug addict, everything was going to be fine?”

  “Nobody had hard evidence. They only had suspicions.”

  Cassie’s voice was rising, but she didn’t care. “Nobody was looking very hard, were they? They didn’t want to know specifics, so they couldn’t be held accountable.”

  “Trust me, I know the way the practice dealt with the problem was a cop-out and probably against the law. I’ve said as much to Fletcher and some of the others. Even without details, they should have reported him. But Mark was their friend, and more important their reputations were on the line. They backed away.”

  “When did you know all this?”

  Valerie didn’t whitewash the truth. “While it was happening.”

  “And yet, you were my friend, my closest friend, and you never told me any of it? You never warned me. You never told me so I could get help for Mark on my own.”

  Valerie looked away. “I had to choose, Cassie. I was told not to warn you. The doctors themselves were of two minds. Some thought you knew and didn’t want the truth exposed. Others were afraid when you found out, you wouldn’t accept their solution. If you exposed them, Fletcher and all his colleagues would have been in serious trouble.”

  Cassie was having problems fitting everything together, but one piece of the puzzle was conspicuous in its absence.

  “What did Ivy Todsen have to do with any of this?” she asked.

  Valerie looked as if she preferred not to answer. �
��What do you mean?”

  “I mean Ivy’s insinuated herself into my life. How was she involved?” When Valerie still didn’t answer, she leaned closer. “Were they having an affair?”

  “An affair?” Valerie looked shocked. “Do you know her well? She’s a thoroughly unappealing woman. Arrogant, unfriendly unless she wants something. Calculating. I would stake my life on this. Mark was never interested in her in that way.”

  “Did she want something from Mark?”

  “Her job.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “A few months before he resigned, the hospital wanted to fire her. One of the other nurses suspected she was stealing meds from the drug rehab unit. Nobody had conclusive evidence, but other staff members were concerned about her, too, and they were planning to conduct an investigation. Instead Mark made sure she wasn’t fired.”

  “Is she an addict herself? Is that why they thought she was stealing drugs?”

  Valerie gave a small shrug. “On the street, opioids sell for something like ten dollars a milligram. So an eighty-milligram pill sells for maybe eighty dollars, and once someone is addicted, they can and do take many each day. Anyone who sells them has a ready market and steady income. Considering the way Mark protected Ivy, Fletcher and the others believe she helped him procure drugs. He may have been addicted until the day he died.” She paused. “He may have been addicted on the day he died.”

  “He wasn’t.” That was something Cassie thought she knew for sure. “There was a routine autopsy. I’m sure they did a drug screen.”

  “Oxycodone is eliminated from the bloodstream quickly, as fast as twenty-four hours, or maybe he was attempting withdrawal by himself.”

  Cassie felt battered on all sides. She couldn’t think about that day now, or the possibility that Mark’s judgment had been altered by a struggle to stay clean. Instead she thought about the check to Ivy and the identical withdrawals the next two months. If one pill sold for eighty dollars, ten would sell for eight hundred dollars. She didn’t need a calculator to know that even thirty thousand dollars would buy a limited number of pills, maybe just enough for a month or two, depending on his needs.

  She wondered if there were other revelations to finish her off.

  “They did fire Ivy as soon as Mark went on his way,” Valerie said. “They got rid of her with a warning that if she protested, they would have her activities looked at more closely.”

  “So they did it again, only this time it was the hospital, not just Church Street. They got rid of her without reporting her, the way they got rid of Mark. What were they thinking? That with luck maybe her next employer, or her next, would finally stop her?”

  “You can be sure Ivy didn’t get a good recommendation.”

  “I’m guessing the possibility of drug theft wasn’t mentioned.”

  When Valerie didn’t answer, Cassie went on. “Ivy can go to any poorly served hospital, and they’ll snap her up.”

  “Do you want this made public, Cassie? If the authorities can dig up enough proof Ivy was stealing and selling drugs, don’t you think she’ll name names? Mark will be exposed. Do you want Savannah to know what her father was doing and why he really left Church Street? I wouldn’t, not in your place.”

  “Is there anything else?”

  Valerie shook her head.

  Cassie got to her feet. “Then we’re done.”

  Valerie got up, too. “I never wanted it to be this way. But I had to protect Fletcher. And in my own way I was trying to protect you.”

  “That was thoughtful.”

  Valerie looked hurt. “You never used to be sarcastic.”

  “I never used to be a lot of things.”

  “Are you heading back to Florida?”

  Cassie glanced at her watch. “No, I’m heading to New Jersey. Where Ivy lives.”

  “Do you really think—”

  “You don’t want to know what I really think. As for what I intend to do? I think I’ll keep you in the dark to protect you. Have a good life, Valerie.” She pivoted and started across the park. She thought Valerie called her name, but she kept walking.

  39

  SAVANNAH HAD GEN’S CONDO to herself. After work Gen had brought home takeout Chinese food, and they’d chatted over dinner, checking in on each other’s days. Savannah had actually had something to report. She’d hung out with the granddaughter of a doctor in Gen’s practice, and it hadn’t been the disaster she had anticipated. Pauline had driven them to an ice rink, which seemed like odd entertainment in a desert community, but Savannah had been glad just to go somewhere with somebody her own age.

  Tonight Gen was speaking at an information session for a local country club, and Savannah turned down the chance to join her for slideshows about breast augmentation and liposuction. She liked that Gen helped people who needed reconstructive surgery, but the cosmetic part made her wonder what Gen would change about her daughter’s face or body if Savannah asked her to.

  Good news for Gen’s budget. She wouldn’t be asking anytime soon.

  Unfortunately, while being alone meant she could lounge or wander unobserved, it also meant she was bored. Gen was home so seldom that she only subscribed to the most basic cable package, and network television was so yesterday. Savannah had signed up for a trial app for her tablet, which was supposed to be perfect for teens, and deleted it half an hour later.

  Upstairs in the-study-that-passed-for-a-bedroom, she was thinking about making the sofa into a bed when her cell phone rang. She was so bored, even if the call was a telemarketer, she might buy what they were selling, just to have somebody to talk to.

  “Savannah?”

  She fell to the sofa and stretched out her legs, flooded with gratitude. She hadn’t heard from Will in days, since he was still in school and working late. “What’s up? Everything okay there?”

  “Yeah. I’ve got the house to myself.”

  “Me, too. Are you as bored as I am? And where’s your mom?” Savannah knew Cassie was back in New York taking care of what seemed like interminable business related to Savannah’s father’s death.

  “She and Travis are out to dinner with some friends of his. And no, I’m not bored. Not a bit. Because I got my 23andMe results today.”

  Savannah sat up. “Really? Already?”

  “Pretty neat, huh?”

  “I thought it would be weeks.”

  “It probably depends on how many people are submitting samples at one time.”

  “Maybe nobody’s in the mood to spit right now. What’d you find out?”

  “I’m like all European from places like Scotland and England, with some French and German thrown in. Boring.”

  “I could have told you that, but at least you know, huh? Your father wasn’t a Martian. That was a possibility.”

  “I don’t have any big family health issues, either.”

  Savannah listened as he talked about traits, health and wellness, along with carrier status. As far as she could tell, Will was a walking, talking all-American boy.

  “Good job talking about all the stuff that doesn’t matter,” she said once he finished. “What about family?”

  He hesitated, and she wasn’t sure why. Then when he spoke, she realized the silence had come from being almost too excited to tell her.

  “I have an uncle. A real uncle. Not like four generations away. I’ve got some of those, too. But a regular uncle.”

  “Is he your mother’s or father’s brother?”

  “I don’t know. The thing is, my mother and/or my father would have to be tested, too, to line that up.”

  “I’m thinking Amber’s not going to be excited if you ask her. She could just tell you what she knows and save everybody money.”

  Savannah hadn’t been able to check for emails herself. Will had changed the password for the email address she�
��d set up for his fake identity, which was wise but annoying. She wished in some of her spare hours she’d done more research on DNA results.

  “So, what are you going to do?” she asked. “What can you do?”

  “I looked him up online.”

  “How?”

  “I have his name. You don’t have to put your name in your profile, but he did. Some people use initials. That’s what I did. His name is Darryl Hawken.”

  “So what do you know about him?”

  “I checked him out on Google. If it’s the same man, he’s a sheriff. He’s about the right age. Older than my mom, but not a lot. A year, maybe two.”

  “Nobody else with that name?”

  “A few, but no one else who seems right. A cricket player in Manchester, England. A couple of obituaries of old men with big, loving families.”

  “What did you find out?”

  “The sheriff lives in West Virginia. Mom and I never lived there that I remember.”

  Savannah had never considered that Will could move from simple DNA results to getting details about somebody on his profile. “Are you happy enough now to know that much and no more?”

  “Savannah... I saw his photo. I know he’s the right man. He looks like me. I’m sure he’s my uncle. Same color hair. Same long nose. Same chin.”

  “He’s that ugly, huh?”

  “What should I do? You always have ideas.”

  Savannah thought about the trip to Georgia. “Not necessarily good ones.”

  “Cassie says you’re coming back this weekend.”

  “Yeah. She and I are okay. Gen and I are okay, too. We’re going house shopping tomorrow so I’ll have more room when I visit. It’s all good. But I’m ready to come home.”

  “The Croville County website can’t say enough good things about Sheriff Hawken. They also didn’t mention anything about a family. Maybe he’s as alone as Mom and I are.”

  “The thing is, your mom’s not in touch with him, right? Let’s assume she knows who he is and where he lives. Maybe she grew up in West Virginia, too, but she’s not the kind of person who just goes off on somebody for decades for no good reason. She wasn’t truthful about that family feud thing in Georgia, but what if it was basically true, only in West Virginia?”