The Secret Between Us

by Barbara Delinsky

  “But there’s a black box warning on the label,” Deborah persisted. “‘Tell your doctor.’ How could she not know?”

  “Beats me. But it does explain why he hemorrhaged.”

  Deborah was incredulous. She and her father provided those of their patients who were on drugs like Coumadin with cards for their wallets, but that was only as good as the patient’s diligence in carrying a wallet. “Was there anything else in his blood? Drugs? Alcohol?”

  “No. Just Coumadin.”

  Chapter 6

  “What that means legally,” Hal interpreted, when she called him soon after sunrise, “is that there may be reasonable doubt that the accident itself caused his death. This is good news, Deborah. Hey, I’d have preferred that he’d been tanked. Then I could argue that he staggered out in front of the car and caused the accident himself. But Coumadin raises other issues—like whether there was negligence on his part or that of his wife in failing to alert the doctors at the hospital that there was a danger of bleeding. What do you think?”

  “As a doctor?” Deborah asked. “I think it’s frustrating. It was an unnecessary death. As a wife, I’m confused.”

  “Ex-wife,” Hal put in.

  “If my husband had been on any major drug,” Deborah went on, ignoring the remark, “I’d have made sure it was the first thing we told any doctor treating him.”

  “How do you feel as the driver of the car that hit him? Relieved?”

  She considered that for a minute. “No. A man died.”

  “But you didn’t cause it.”

  “I did. My car hit him. That started the whole thing.”

  “Couldn’t the hemorrhaging have been unrelated to the accident?”

  “You mean,” Deborah asked dryly, “couldn’t he have just happened to hemorrhage the day after he was tossed in the air by a car and thrown against a tree?”

  Hal didn’t yield. “That’s exactly what I mean.”

  “The timing is suspicious.”

  He persisted. “You’re a doctor. Medically speaking, is it possible?”

  “I don’t do trauma work.”

  “Deborah.”

  “Yes. It’s possible.”

  He sighed. “Thank you.” Satisfied with his cross-examination, he added a silky, “You’re a stickler for details, Deborah Monroe.”

  “Definitely,” Deborah said, reacting to the tone, “especially when it involves doing the right thing. Can I ask you something, Hal?”

  “Anything, sweetheart.”

  “You said you would have an affair with me. Have you had others?”

  There was a pause, then an amused, “What kind of question is that?”

  “One that’s haunted me since you first mentioned it.”

  “Are you considering my offer?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Then why ask me this now?” He was all business again. “I’m the best lawyer you’ll find, and, if it comes to a trial, I won’t even charge for my time, which will be considerable. By the way, I talked with Bill Spelling.” Bill was editor in chief of the local paper. Deborah had treated his children since they were born. “He’s keeping Grace’s name out of today’s piece. That’s the kind of thing I do for people I love.”

  “Coumadin?” Grace repeated cautiously when Deborah mentioned the word.

  “It’s a blood thinner, often used after a heart attack,” Deborah explained. “It prevents the formation of clots that could then cause another heart attack or a stroke.”

  From the kitchen door, Dylan asked a horrified, “Did Dad have a stroke?”

  Deborah hadn’t heard the child approach. “No,” she scolded gently, “Dad did not have a stroke. This is a medication Mr. McKenna was taking.” She held out an arm and pulled Dylan close. “Blood thinners can also cause excessive bleeding,” she said to Grace. “It’s possible that’s what caused Mr. McKenna to hemorrhage the other night. If the doctors in the ER had known he was taking it, they might have been able to prevent his death.”

  “How?”

  “By counteracting the blood thinners with other drugs. And by monitoring him closely.”

  Dylan looked up at her, his eyes huge. “My doctor’s doing that with me.”

  “Very different problem, sweetie. Your doctor is monitoring your eyes to make sure your prescription is right. There’s nothing remotely life threatening about your eyes.”

  “But what if my cornea keeps getting worse, and nobody knows it but me. What happens then?”

  Deborah felt a qualm. His glasses corrected for his farsightedness. The corneal problem was unrelated to that and would only be fixed by a transplant. “Do you feel something changing?”

  “No. But what if it did?”

  “You’d tell me, and we’d go to the doctor. Do you feel something?” she asked again, because it wasn’t like dermatitis, which was visible on the surface of the skin, or even like checking an ear for inflammation. She couldn’t tell what was going on with his cornea.

  “No, but what if we didn’t tell the doctor? What would happen then?”

  “You just wouldn’t be able to see very well.”

  “Would I go blind?”

  Deborah leaned closer. “Honey, are things more hazy?”

  “I’m just asking, Mom. Would I go blind?”

  “No. We’ve talked about that. In the first place, the lattice dystrophy is only in one eye. In the second place, as soon as you’ve stopped growing, we’ll completely correct the problem.”

  “Mom,” Grace interrupted sharply, “why was Mr. McKenna running if he had a bad heart?”

  Deborah looked at Dylan, who seemed marginally satisfied with her answer, then said to Grace, “People with bad hearts run all the time. Exercise is important.”

  “Like you at the gym?” Dylan asked. “What does Dad do?”

  Dad paces the floor, was Deborah’s immediate thought, but of course it was wrong. Since he had fled corporate life, he no longer paced. “Yoga,” she answered. She might have made a joke of it—it so fit the image of the new Greg—but she believed in yoga. She wished Grace would try it. Learning a relaxation technique might help with her nail-biting.

  Gently, Deborah pulled the girl’s hand away from her mouth, but she wasn’t sure Grace got the message.

  “Do you think Mr. McKenna was having a heart attack when he ran out into the street?” the girl asked. “Like, maybe he didn’t know what he was doing, or maybe was disoriented and was trying to get help?”

  “The doctors didn’t see any evidence of a heart problem.”

  “So what does it mean to us if he was taking Coumadin?”

  “It means,” Deborah said, grateful for this small thread of hope, “that we weren’t directly responsible for his death.”

  “Coumadin?” Deborah’s father asked over his morning coffee. Only then did he look at her directly. His eyes were bloodshot, and he’d tossed back a pair of aspirin before reaching for his mug. The bottle of whiskey in the den—a new bottle, apparently opened last night—was easily down by a third, and while that worried Deborah, redeeming herself was a more immediate concern.

  “The hospital is relieved,” she said. “This shifts the issue from why he died to why no one knew he was taking the drug. Everyone there asked the right questions, but they weren’t given answers. The patient wasn’t speaking, and his wife didn’t mention Coumadin. She didn’t even list the name of a doctor he sees.”

  “Coumadin isn’t OTC. Someone had to prescribe it. The wife must know who it was—unless the guy was hiding things from her, like you claim my wife did from me.”

  Taken off guard by the charge, Deborah hesitated. “I only told you that because you’ve put Mom on a pedestal that none of the rest of us can reach. She was human. People make mistakes.”

  “She’s dead. She isn’t here to defend herself.”

  “She wouldn’t want defending, Dad. She’d come right out and fess up, and you’d forgive her on the spot. So I’m fessing up. I had an acci
dent that I deeply regret. I wish I could be perfect for you. But I’m not.”

  “Oh, come on, Deborah,” he grumbled. “Have I ever asked you to be perfect?”

  “Not in as many words, but you have high standards. Take Jill. She can’t meet those standards, but she loves what she does, Dad, she really does, and it’s a great business. Couldn’t you drop in there one day and just…take a look? Or take Dylan. He may not be a super athlete, but he’d love it if you went to one of his games.”

  “I will. I will.”

  “He’s playing later today.”

  “Today’s no good. Another time.”

  Deborah was familiar with the day’s appointments and didn’t know why today was “no good,” but to ask it might just make Michael angry. “What about Jill? She’d love it if you stopped in. If you could see the people who wait in line—”

  “Right now,” Michael cut in, “I’m more concerned about you than about your sister. Have you talked with Hal about the Coumadin thing?”

  “Hal’s thrilled. He feels a case can be made that the drug, more than my car, caused Cal’s death.”

  Michael studied his coffee.

  “There’s a validation in it for me,” Deborah said. “I knew he wasn’t fatally injured when I examined him. At least, now I understand why he died.” When her father still didn’t respond, she added, “Hal’s in close touch with the police.”

  Michael lowered his mug. “That’s good. He’ll keep on top of them. The more answers we get, the better. Half of the patients I saw yesterday asked about the accident, and the Ledger hasn’t even come out yet.”

  By noon, the paper was on every driveway in town. Deborah saw it at lunchtime, face up on the white Formica counter in the office kitchenette.

  The article wasn’t as bad as it might have been. It was on the front page, but under the fold, which meant that it wasn’t the first thing people saw. Unfortunately, in a town as small as Leyland, most people read the Ledger cover to cover.

  The article focused on Calvin McKenna—when and why he had come to Leyland, where he lived with his wife, what he taught. Teachers attested to his intellect, citing him as someone who spent his lunchtime reading history in the cafeteria. Students talked about how smart he was. Everyone expressed respect for his ability, though no one used the word beloved.

  The reporter gave a rundown of the events of Monday night, a timeline, very cut-and-dried. Deborah might have liked mention of the fact that her car was going well under the speed limit and was in its proper lane, but the text stated simply that speed was not a factor, and that no citation had been issued. Funeral plans were much as Karen had said.

  The wife wasn’t quoted. Nor, thanks to Hal’s advice, was Deborah.

  The best part of the article, in her opinion, was that there was no mention of Grace. The worst was that with Deborah’s name front and center for all the world to see, the lie grew.

  Grace thought she would die. Her friends never read the Ledger, at least, not in the middle of school. But, naturally, since it was Mr. McKenna who had died, today was different. She didn’t even know where they got the papers, but wherever she turned, someone had a copy.

  “This is not bad,” Megan remarked with the rustle of newsprint when she finished reading the piece. “They don’t even say you were in the car.”

  That was beside the point, as far as Grace was concerned. Now the whole town knew it was her car that had hit Mr. McKenna. Half of the school was stopping her in the halls, saying stupid things like, Wow, your mom hit him? Like, did she know it was him? So when did you find out? Do you feel guilty or anything?

  The only person she might have wanted to talk with was Danielle. She respected Danielle so much. But that was the problem—how could she lie to Danielle? But how could she tell the truth when doing it would get her mother in trouble?

  So she held Danielle off with the same hand she held off the rest of her friends, and went to her next class with her head down, not that it kept people away for long. She spent the start of her lunch period fending off so many questions that she ended up picking up her tray, dumping most of her lunch in the trash, and hiding in the girls’ bathroom until the bell rang. But then they started texting. No one was supposed to be doing that in class, but people always did. They broke the rules, and no one cared. They broke the rules, and no one cared.

  She turned off her phone.

  Track was more of the same—so many questions that the coach brilliantly decided to have her make a short statement—and what could she say? It was an awful night—there was no visibility—we feel so bad. Just words. They didn’t come close to saying what she was really feeling, which was like a total liar. But there was no way she could tell the truth now without making liars of her mother, Uncle Hal, the police, the newspaper reporter, and whoever else was spreading word about what happened that night.

  She ran poorly. Her first interval was bad, her second was worse, and she did the 800—her event—so pitifully that the coach let her leave before she finished.

  She half walked, half ran to Sugar-On-Main and, with her phone still off, secreted herself—as in hid from view—in the bakery’s back office until anyone from school who was out front—anyone she might possibly know, who might start asking questions—was gone. She’d have stayed there until her mother came, if she hadn’t been starved. She devoured a brioche and two carrot muffins, washed them down with an espresso that she fixed when her aunt couldn’t see, because, forget espresso, Jill hated her drinking coffee, period, but if she was going to stay awake long enough to do homework and study vocab that night, she needed caffeine, right?

  Feeling guilty about going behind Jill’s back—but not guilty enough not to check out the front to make sure that no one who mattered was there before she went out—she looked around for a way to help her aunt. With closing time less than an hour off and the front mostly empty, the rest of the staff had left. Dylan was already wiping down tables, which was good, because Grace hated doing that. She liked checking credit card slips, but Jill was doing that herself. So she set to work consolidating what remained of the day’s pastries on a single tray. Squatting behind the display cases, she was hidden from anyone who might come in off the street.

  She kept an eye on the door. Dylan was doing the same, glancing worriedly there between swipes with his rag, but for a different reason. He had a baseball game at five and was worried their mom would be late. He was already wearing his uniform, and had asked Jill three times whether she would drive him to the field if Deborah didn’t get there on time. He had asked Grace twice whether she would watch the game if their mom couldn’t make it.

  Grace prayed she wouldn’t have to. There was no way she could stand in public view watching a bunch of ten-year-olds swing at balls that were way out of reach.

  She was lost in the horror of it, when her mother finally arrived and not from the gym, as Grace had thought, but still in her work clothes. She gave Dylan a hug, squeezed Jill’s arm, and made for Grace. Hunkering down beside her, she said quietly, “I kept trying your phone. How’d it go today?”

  “Fine, until the paper came out,” Grace said with a sudden anger—and yes, at her mom. Deborah had started the lie. “All the kids were looking over each other’s shoulders to see me. I felt like a criminal.”

  “They were reading about Mr. McKenna. It isn’t every day that a teacher dies.”

  “They were reading about you,” Grace argued in a furious whisper, “and when they weren’t asking me questions, they were looking at me funny, like they knew the truth. I barely made it through track practice. I mean, I botched my intervals and then didn’t finish the eight hundred, which sucks. The whole team was staring.”

  “You’re imagining it.”

  “No, Mom. They’re staring, and they’re talking about the funeral. They’re all going. I mean, what am I supposed to do? I had Mr. McKenna in class. Do I go, too?”

  “Do you want to?”

  “Omigod, no,” she
hissed, “it’d be a nightmare to be there knowing…knowing…” She couldn’t say it. “But everyone else is going, so it’ll look awful if I don’t.” She wilted. “This just gets worse and worse, Mom. It’s like…unbearable. If I still liked Dad, I’d go live with him for the rest of the year,” she threatened, inviting an argument. She knew how much her mother hated it when she talked about hating her dad.

  But her mother was looking out through the display case glass at Dylan. He had moved on to a new table and was wiping it with large slow strokes. Though he had his back to them, the up-and-down movement of his head suggested he was watching his hand. Even Grace knew enough about his eyes to be uncomfortable with that.

  She rose beside her mother, and for another minute, they both watched. Then Deborah went to Dylan and put a hand on his head. He jumped in surprise.

  “Everything okay, sweetie?” she asked.

  He nodded vigorously. “Everything’s good.”

  “You’re watching that rag pretty closely. Not blurring on you, is it?”

  He shook his head.

  “You’d tell me if it was?”

  “Mom. Nothing’s blurred. We have to leave soon, don’t we?” he asked and looked worriedly at Grace. “You’re coming, aren’t you?”

  “Oh, Dylan, I don’t think—”

  “You have to come,” he cut in, sounding desperate. “See, that’s why Coach never plays me, ’cause my family isn’t there. He doesn’t have a reason to do it.”

  “Wait a minute,” Deborah said. “I haven’t missed a game. Aren’t I family?”

  “One small part.” He looked at Grace again and pleaded, “Please come,” in a way that made her want to scream, because she couldn’t say no when he looked at her that way. He was her little brother, he had terrible eyes, and he was so bad at baseball that it was painful to watch. Grace didn’t know why her parents let him play.