The Secret Between Us

by Barbara Delinsky

  “Sounds suicidal,” Jill muttered.

  “—it means he shares the blame.”

  Grace wilted. “He can’t share the blame. He’s dead. Besides, why is it always someone else’s fault?”

  “Deborah,” Jill said loudly, clearly still stuck on the lie, “do you know what you’ve done?”

  “How could I not?” Deborah shouted. “But what was my choice? The repercussions would have been far worse for Grace.”

  “Like this is easy now?” Grace cried. “You want to take the blame, only now the police say you were fine, so you want to put the blame on Mr. McKenna. What about me? I run lousy in a meet, and everyone says, ‘Oh, poor thing, she’s had a rough week.’ I fail a French test, and the teacher says, ‘Oh, poor thing, she had a rough day.’ She erased the F from her book. She doesn’t do that for everyone. Why’s everyone sorry for me?”

  Deborah hadn’t known about the French test. More upsetting was the fact that Grace hadn’t told her. Her daughter used to confide in her.

  “Know what I’m doing now?” Grace asked with a nod at the laptop. “This is an English paper I handed in this morning. It was so bad that Mr. Jones caught up with me before I left school and asked for a rewrite—and that was after Ms. Walsh caught up with me and asked if I wanted to talk, which I do not, so please do not ask her to approach me again. And Mr. Jones? He says computers allow for as many drafts as we want, and that if students choose not to do more than one, they’re making a statement.”

  Deborah pressed a hand to her chest. “What was your statement?”

  “That grades are meaningless. They’re scribbles on a page. They have nothing to do with real life.”

  “They do,” Jill said, an unlikely supporter of high school. “They measure attitude. Bad attitude limits choices.”

  Which is what I don’t want for my daughter, Deborah thought, which is precisely why I did what I did after the accident.

  But Grace was eyeing her aunt. “You’ve done well. This place is a huge success.”

  “But it’s hard work, and it’s lots of worry, and maybe if I had a business partner to split the weight, I would do better. This may have nothing to do with my getting lousy grades in high school, but it’s something to think about, isn’t it?” She turned back to Deborah. “Obstruction of justice. Perjury. Filing a false report.”

  “Jill,” Deborah protested. “This is not what I want to hear right now. I want Grace to learn about limited choices.”

  “So do I,” Grace said. “I mean, why do I have to be a doctor?”

  Deborah felt a hitch in her chest. “Don’t you want to be one?”

  “I don’t know. But what happens if I want to be something else?”

  “I thought you loved biology.”

  “No, Mom. Bio isn’t even my best course, and I have to take the AP exam next month, which I will probably not do well on. But you said your dream was you and me practicing together.”

  “It is my dream,” Deborah conceded, “but I thought you wanted it, too.”

  “Well, it may be impossible now. No one wants a doctor who commits vehicular homicide. I may not even get into medical school.”

  Deborah darted Jill a glance before saying, “That’s why I filled out the form the way I did.”

  “But it’ll get out, Mom,” Grace wailed, “like with Pinocchio, it always gets out, just shows up right there on your face, whether you like it or not. You’re the one who taught me that, and look what just happened. Now Aunt Jill knows.”

  “Aunt Jill won’t tell,” Jill said.

  “You may not plan to,” Grace accused, “but you are totally unable to lie. You say what you think, just blurt it right out. You’re the most honest person I know.”

  Jill leaned forward, hands on the desk. “Well, I have been keeping one secret. I’m pregnant.”

  Grace gasped. “You are?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Do we know the guy?”

  Jill shook her head.

  Grace’s eyes opened wider. “Does Poppy know you’re pregnant?”

  “Not yet. And don’t tell him. He’ll be furious.”

  “But it’s a baby,” Grace said and turned to Deborah. “You knew? And you didn’t tell me?”

  Deborah was guilty of lots of things, but she wasn’t taking the fall for this. “Jill asked me not to. I do know how to keep secrets.”

  Grace wasn’t impressed. “And you think that was smart? I mean, I’m sitting here doing homework every afternoon, while she lifts and pulls things, and you didn’t think I should know?”

  “Put that way, you should have,” Deborah said and turned to her sister. “Jill, why didn’t you tell her?”

  “She couldn’t,” Grace argued, “because it’s obvious she’s still in her first trimester, because she’s still so thin, and no one announces they’re pregnant so soon, because it’s bad luck.”

  “Who told you that?”

  Grace made a face. “Do you think no one in my school is pregnant? It happens to rich people, too, Mom.”

  Deborah didn’t reply. She wasn’t as surprised by what her daughter said as by the fact that Grace had never said it before. They had discussed pregnancy many times in biological terms, never in terms of who was and who wasn’t. Deborah had always prided herself on having an open relationship with Grace. Could be she’d been deluding herself about that.

  Grace made a sound and looked away.

  Deborah turned to Jill, but her sister had a strange look on her face. “Are you okay?”

  Jill seemed to consider it, then gave a small smile. “I feel pangs every so often.”

  “Any spotting?”

  “No.”

  “Think you should call your doctor?”

  Jill sighed. “If I thought that, Deborah, I’d have already done it. I’m not taking chances with this baby.”

  “What baby?” Dylan asked from the door.

  Deborah looked from Jill to Grace and back. It was Jill’s secret. Deborah kept her own mouth shut, watching now as Dylan made his way into the room. He was touching everything he passed—doorknob, coat rack, the back of Jill’s chair—with such nonchalance that only someone looking would notice. Being his mother, Deborah worried.

  It took a minute for Jill to speak. Then she told Dylan, “No baby you can even imagine. Did you finish your homework?”

  Dylan nodded—so easily satisfied? Deborah reflected. He pushed his glasses up on his nose. “I’m hungry, Mom. Are we going home soon?”

  Deborah was ready to leave. She’d had enough of revelations and confrontation. Even reheating Lívia’s dinner was good for regaining a sense of control. “I think we can.”

  “I want to stay here with Aunt Jill,” Grace said.

  Jill’s apartment over the bakery was bright, spacious, and delightfully open, and had more square footage than that of many a town house, but Michael had found fault with the apartment and had been particularly annoyed when Jill used the bequest she’d received from her mother to buy the whole building. But Jill was Jill.

  “Stay for dinner?” Deborah asked Grace.

  “Overnight. Aunt Jill’ll drive me home for clean clothes. Won’t you, Aunt Jill?”

  “Sure,” Jill shot a hesitant look at Deborah, “but it’s a school night. You don’t usually stay over on a school night.”

  “Can I stay, too?” asked Dylan.

  “No,” Grace stated. “I want a girls’ night.”

  Dylan’s face fell.

  Eager to lift his spirits, Deborah said, “Tell you what. How about you and I let them have their girls’ night, and we’ll have a mother-son night. Maybe Pepper’s Pies?” Pepper McCoy made the best pizza. Her shop was only a ten-minute drive from Leyland.

  Dylan brightened. “Can I stay over here another time—not this weekend, ’cause I’m going to Dad’s, but another one?”

  Deborah’s own spirits rose at Dylan’s sense of hope. “You can. I’ll hold your aunt to it.”

  Chapter
14

  Deborah was on the family room sofa with Dylan. He was reading Where the Red Fern Grows and appeared to be engrossed in it. She was reading a study on the overprescription of antibiotics, but her mind barely took in the words. It kept returning to the issue of a non-runner who was running in a place runners didn’t run.

  “I want a dog,” Dylan said, looking up from his book.

  “You’re just saying that because you’re reading a book about dogs.”

  “Dad has a dog,” the boy reasoned.

  “It came with Rebecca, and Dad has acres of land and oodles of time.”

  “I have oodles of time,” Dylan said. He was looking up at her with a beseechfulness that was magnified right along with his eyes. “And we have acres of land, too. I could take care of a dog.”

  Deborah knew he could. She worried that she couldn’t.

  “I could, Mom, and it doesn’t matter how bad my eyes are, I’d see a dog. Rebecca’s dog had eight pups.”

  “Uh-huh.” She humored him. “You’ve told me that.”

  “Why can’t I have just one itty-bitty little one?”

  “Because it won’t stay an itty-bitty little one.”

  “Please, Mom?” Dylan begged, sliding an arm around her neck. “I would be really good with a dog.”

  “I’m sure you would be,” she said and kissed his cheek.

  “Tom?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s Deborah.” She kept her voice low, not so much because Dylan was asleep with his bedroom door open, but because she felt duplicitous making the call. “I, uh, got your number from my phone, from when you called earlier,” she explained. “Were you still up?”

  He made a sound that might have been a chuckle. “It’s only ten.”

  “You’ve obviously never had kids.”

  “Wear you out, huh?”

  “Some days more than others.” She pushed a pillow between the headboard and her back. “Tonight, I’m tired.”

  “Have you talked with John?” he asked.

  “Yes. That’s why I’m calling.”

  “It’s pretty disturbing. The part about Cal running out from the woods.”

  “Do you think it was deliberate?”

  “I don’t know. But if he was only making a pit stop in the woods, they’d have seen his footprints going from the road, into the woods, and back.”

  “Wouldn’t the rain have washed the road clean?” she asked.

  “Not with someone Cal’s size. It would’ve taken a while for them to be totally erased. Besides, you’d be amazed at what cameras can catch with specialized filters.”

  “You sound like a camera buff.”

  “I’m not. But I know people who are. And I read. And I ask questions.”

  “About cameras?”

  “Other things, too.” He paused. “That’s actually what I do for a living.” He paused again, and for a minute she feared he would end it there. Then he explained, “I write position papers for large organizations. Say a government wants to make an argument for a particular health care delivery system. I’m hired to put together a document they can use to make their case. The only way I can do a good job is by interviewing people on both sides of the issue.”

  “What if what you hear isn’t what the government wants?”

  “I compromise myself.”

  “Excuse me?”

  He chuckled. “It isn’t really that bad. If you look hard enough, you can find what your client wants. Sometimes I’m part of a propaganda campaign, but I try to keep those jobs few and far between.”

  “Do you work from home?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ever tire of it?”

  “No chance of that. I’m out on the road half the time interviewing people and gathering data.”

  Deborah was intrigued. She knew that talking with Tom was dangerous, but it had started to rain, and, with the steady patter on the roof, she didn’t want to let him hang up. Tucking her bare feet under the top of the sheet, she asked, “How’d you get started doing this?”

  “I was halfway through college and needed money. A professor connected me with a friend of his who needed work done.”

  “So do you consider yourself a writer?”

  “More an investigative journalist.”

  She hesitated. “Do you have any theories about your brother?”

  “Based on his prints, I’d say he was in the woods before the accident.”

  “Do you have any idea what he was doing?”

  “Hell, no. I never did.” He took a quick breath. “I blame myself for that. I was older.”

  “Why blame you and not your parents?”

  He was silent for a time. Finally, he said sadly, “I’m not sure they were capable. They were preoccupied with their own lives. When it came to us, they saw only what they wanted to see.”

  “They must have had reports from teachers.”

  “They sure did. Cal was the best student in the class.”

  “How was he socially?”

  “Weird, but that was my own observation. If the teachers ever mentioned it, my parents ignored them.”

  “He never had professional help?”

  “Not back then.”

  “Has he since?”

  “Hey, if I didn’t know he was on Coumadin, would I know if he was seeing a shrink?”

  Deborah didn’t reply.

  “Sorry,” he said more gently. “You hit a nerve. But you’re wondering.”

  Deborah couldn’t pretend not to know what he meant. When a smart man ran through the woods in the driving rain and came out right into the path of an oncoming car, though its headlights couldn’t have been missed, when he then refused to tell the ER doctors that he was on a drug that could cause serious bleeding—anyone would wonder. When the same man was obsessive about segregating every little part of his life, to the extent that his wife didn’t know he’d had a series of strokes and his brother had no idea he’d moved east, someone like Deborah had to think that Cal McKenna might have wanted to die.

  “It takes a lot of pain to throw oneself in front of a car,” she said. “Was Cal depressed?”

  “Selena says no.”

  “I take it he didn’t leave a note?”

  “We haven’t found one. Is your lawyer wondering if it was suicide?” Tom asked. It was an unwelcome reminder to Deborah that they could be adversaries in court.

  “No,” she replied. “I don’t tell him what you tell me.”

  “But he’s friends with Colby, isn’t he?”

  Another reminder. “They play poker together.”

  “Is that why Colby pushed for an early report?”

  “No. That was my doing. I begged.”

  He made a sound that might have been a laugh. “Is he a friend, or just a patient?”

  “Both. In a town like this, patients are friends, too.”

  “Does John know we talk?”

  “Absolutely not. And my lawyer would have a fit if he knew.”

  Tom was silent.

  “Does your sister-in-law know we talk?” Deborah asked.

  “No. It would upset her. She’s determined to prove that Cal’s death was in no way his fault. She wants a scapegoat. She’ll be upset when she gets the report.”

  “Would she ever wonder whether Cal was responsible for his own death?”

  “I doubt it. She wouldn’t have seen anything pathological in what Cal did. She’d say that everyone has idiosyncracies.”

  “What’re yours?” Deborah asked.

  “I already told you. I’m a slob. What’re yours?”

  “I hate rain. Bad things happen when it rains.”

  “Like the accident?”

  “Yes, but long before that. It was raining the night my mom died. It was raining the day my husband left.”

  “Do you get edgy every time it rains?”

  “No. It’s raining now, and it just feels like noise.”

  “But when you were out in it last week. Were you
upset then?”

  Deborah sensed she shouldn’t have begun this conversation. But she answered anyway. “I had to pick up Grace, which isn’t to say I wouldn’t have rathered stay home.”

  “She’ll be driving herself around soon.”

  “Uh-huh. She’ll have her license in four months. That could be good or bad.”

  “Bad when it rains. You’ll worry.”

  “I will.”

  “Well, then you should be grateful. If she’d had her license now, she might have been the one driving last week.”

  “Aunt Jill?” Grace whispered. “Are you asleep?”

  “With my eyes open?”

  “I can’t see that they’re open. It’s too dark.” Grace sat up, turning to face the half of the big bed where Jill lay. The only light came from the street and was blurred by rain. Not that Grace minded the dark. She didn’t want to see her aunt’s face. “I have to tell you something. Last week? At Megan’s? We were drinking.”

  “Last week?”

  “The night of the accident. The night I was driving the car that hit Mr. McKenna.”

  Jill moaned. “Ohhh, Gracie. I’m not sure I want to hear this.”

  “We were drinking beer,” Grace said, knowing she could be getting into trouble by naming her friends, but needing to tell someone, and Jill had secrets of her own. “Megan’s parents were out. And when Mom came to get me, I didn’t even think not to drive. I wasn’t drunk. Not even a buzz—well, maybe a little.”

  “How much did you have?”

  “Two cans. But one of those was when I first got there, and the other was, like, almost three hours later. Mom’s gonna hate me when she finds out.”

  “She doesn’t know?”

  “How could I tell her?” Grace cried. “She wouldn’t do anything like that. I mean, drinking and driving is the worst thing you can do.”

  “You didn’t tell her, even after you hit the guy? Didn’t she smell it on your breath?”

  “No,” Grace cried. “I was chewing gum, but she wouldn’t have ever thought to smell my breath. She thinks I’ve never had a drink in my life.”