Suddenly

by Barbara Delinsky

  He says it’s art. I say it’s trouble. He says I’m a fine one to talk after giving my husband the pills that killed him, but that wasn’t what happened at all. The problem is that if he tells, I can kiss my career goodbye. So it’s a draw—I don’t tell on him and he doesn’t tell on me.

  Paige folded the letter with unsteady hands. She didn’t want to read more, not that night, at least. She was feeling sick.

  That morning Peter had learned about the existence of Mara’s letters. He had suddenly had an allergy meeting that hadn’t been on the books, and while he had been out of the office, someone had searched Paige’s house.

  It was too coincidental for comfort.

  fourteen

  PAIGE PHONED PETER EARLY THE NEXT MORNING and arranged to meet him at the coffee shop around the corner from the hospital. His house would have offered them more privacy, but she wasn’t feeling sure enough of him for that. If the worst-case senario were true and he was guilty of everything she’d imagined in the course of the long night just past, he was a far different person from the one she had thought she knew.

  Oh, she knew he was insecure. During their weekly group meetings, he jumped to his own defense more often than the others. Moreover, she had always suspected that his feelings for Mara ran deeper than he let on. Angie had called it a love-hate relationship; Paige agreed.

  But the rest—it was hard to accept.

  “Hey, Paige,” he called in greeting, looking dapper as always in a tweed blazer and slacks. He winked at the cashier as he strolled past to the table Paige had taken. “What’s up?” He pulled out the chair and sat down.

  “Coffee?”

  “Sure.” He turned the mug at his place right side up.

  Paige poured from the pot the waitress had brought but left her own mug facedown. She was jittery enough without the caffeine.

  He added cream and two sugars and took a drink. Satisfied, he took another, then set the mug down. “Problems?”

  “I don’t know.” She was trying to gauge his mood, without luck. He was the same nonchalant Vermonter he had been the very first time they had met. Whether the nonchalance was natural or deliberate was the question. “You’re the only one who can tell me that.”

  He put his elbows on the table. “Shoot.”

  “Mara’s letters? The ones I told you about yesterday?”

  “Mmmm?” He took another drink of coffee.

  “I was reading more of them last night. There were a bunch that talked about you.”

  He set down the mug with a thud. “Does that surprise you? I told you she was hung up on me.”

  “These were very specific,” Paige said in a lower voice. “They talked about a love affair. They talked about accusations each of you made against the other, and a stand-off whereby neither of you would tell if the other didn’t”.

  He was visibly shaken. “Mara was nuts.”

  “She didn’t sound it in the letters,” Paige argued. “They made perfect sense. They implicated you as much as they did her.”

  “Implicated me in what? A love-starved woman’s dreams?”

  Paige felt suddenly less sympathetic. Mara might indeed have been love-starved, but Peter, in his way, was no less so. “Don’t put her down so quickly,” she cautioned. “She wrote some upsetting things. I can’t just put the letters away and forget about them.”

  Peter looked disgusted. “You’re talking about the pictures. She made a goddamned big deal about those. They freaked her out—mostly because they were artistically superior to anything she could produce herself. They were beautiful pictures.”

  “She said that.”

  “They weren’t pornographic.”

  Paige leaned forward. “But she said that your model was underage, and if that’s true, we have a problem.”

  “She was eighteen.”

  “At the time the pictures were taken?”

  “She told me she was eighteen.”

  Paige pressed her fingertips to her temple. “The problem,” she said, trying to remain perfectly calm when she wanted to shriek at Peter for being a fool, “is that she might have lied. I haven’t seen these pictures, so I don’t know how they’d be regarded by a jury—”

  “A jury! Christ, Paige, this isn’t a legal case. It never was. It’s over and done.”

  She raised a hand. “Hear me out. I don’t know where the line lies between art and pornography, but I do know that you’re a pediatrician. You earn your living working with children. You’re in a group practice that devotes itself to them. Do you have any idea what would happen—to you, to us—if someone, anyone, were to see those pictures?”

  “You’re assuming they’re obscene,” he accused, and started to get up. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  She grabbed his arm. “Please, Peter. This involves all of us. I don’t want to assume anything. That’s why I’m talking with you now. I haven’t said a word to Angie. This is between you and me. Sit.”

  He gave her a disdainful look but did as she asked.

  “Thank you,” she breathed in relief. “This is very difficult for me. It’s one more hit in a whole string of them. All I’m doing is trying to hold things together.”

  He cracked his knuckles. “At my expense.”

  “No. You’re part of what I want to hold together. I like you, Peter. I always have, and I respect your medical ability. If not, I never would have hung my shingle beside yours in Tucker, much less dragged two of my friends up here.” The responsibility was hers, and an awesome one at that. “Maybe it would have been better for Mara if I hadn’t.”

  Peter’s features tightened. “I wasn’t responsible for her death.”

  “I didn’t say you were, but apparently she needed something that none of us could give her. The feeling of despair, of total and utter failure, that permeates her letters is heartrending. When her father came for the funeral, he said that this wouldn’t’ve happened if she’d stayed home in Eugene.”

  “But then she wouldn’t have been a doctor. That was her greatest source of reward.”

  “I told him that. Still, there are times when I wonder—” She broke off and chided herself, “Pointless. It’s over and done.” To Peter she said, “But we aren’t. We’re still here, and I want it to stay that way. I like what we have, which is why this is all so upsetting for me.”

  Peter pushed his mug around. “There’s no cause for upset. The pictures don’t exist anymore. I destroyed them, negatives and all.”

  “But why, if you thought they were art?”

  “Because I’m not dumb, Paige. You’re right. We don’t know how a jury would judge them. If they had fallen into the wrong hands, I could have been in deep shit. They weren’t worth it.” He paused. “Aren’t you happy? The condemning evidence is gone. The practice is saved. No one can ever accuse one of the pediatricians of diddling with his patients.”

  She studied her hands, not quite sure how to say what needed to be said. Peter could be volatile when threatened, and he was definitely threatened. Gently she said, “The evidence may be gone, but if there’s a problem, it still exists.” She clutched his arm before he could rise. “Don’t blow up. Just answer me. Is this a problem? Was Mara more upset about the photographs or about the fact that you made them? I have to know, Peter. We deal with children. I can’t risk the chance of one of them being hurt.”

  “This is an insult,” he said very quietly.

  She squeezed his arm. “I’m simply asking.”

  “If you knew me, or trusted me, you wouldn’t have to ask.”

  “This has nothing to do with trust. It has to do with what turns people on, and that can’t always be controlled.”

  Peter drew his arm free. He gripped his mug with both hands, looked her in the eye, and in a low, angry voice said, “I’ll say this once, and once only. I love children because they’re innocent and trusting and inherently good human beings, but I don’t desire them sexually. I desire women. It’s a healthy drive, shared by any
healthy males, and while I’m on the subject, let me say one other thing. Legally, I have every right to screw a willing eighteen-year-old female.”

  “I know you do, but that’s a technical matter. I can guarantee you—guarantee you—that if it came out that you were having an affair with an eighteen-year-old, you’d lose half your practice.”

  “You’re right. That’s why I’d never do it.”

  “How about breaking into my home,” Paige threw in, thinking that being a thief was more reputable than being a child pornographer and that since he’d defended himself against the last without going bonkers, he could handle the first. “If you thought Mara’s letters would be incriminating, would you try to steal them?”

  When he rose from the table, this time she didn’t reach out. “You really don’t trust me, do you?” he asked.

  “I want to. But I’ve been racking my brain about who else might have done it, and I can’t think of anyone with motive but you.”

  He turned and, slipping a hand in the pocket of his slacks, left the coffee shop without another word.

  He didn’t talk with her that day or the next. On the instances when their paths crossed, he was either studying a file or otherwise preoccupied. When Angie commented on his distance, Paige shrugged it off, but she felt like a hypocrite. Communicate, she told Angie. Communicate, she told the girls at Mount Court. Communicate, she told her patient families every day of the week.

  So she tried. After several days of silence, she cornered Peter in his office. “I know you’re furious, but if we don’t talk, we can’t resolve anything.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about,” he said, regarding her coldly. “You made it clear what you thought. I don’t need a repeat.”

  “I didn’t say that you did it. I simply asked.”

  “That was enough.”

  “But I had to ask,” she argued in her own defense. “Look at it from my point of view. Circumstantially speaking, you had opportunity and motive. If it wasn’t you, I need to know who it was. Someone broke into my house. It’s not only my safety that’s at stake, it’s Sami’s and Jill’s, too.”

  “Sorry. I can’t help you out.” He jotted some notes on the report he’d been writing.

  “Peter.” She sighed. “We can’t practice together if we can’t talk.”

  “Oh, we can talk.” He tossed his pen aside and sat back. “We can talk about any patient you want. Go ahead. Ask away.”

  “Did you love Mara?”

  “Mara wasn’t a patient.”

  “Did you tell her that she killed Daniel?”

  “Daniel,” he said, growing angry again, “was a drug addict. She fell in love with him because he was needy, and married him because she thought that the strength of her love alone would haul him out of the pit he was in. When that didn’t work, she tried pharmaceutical treatment. I can’t say if she killed him. I wasn’t there. But by her own admission, she did give him drugs.”

  “She was trying to wean him off them gradually.”

  “The guy died of an overdose. That’s a fact. Whether Mara was the one who supplied the pills that did it, or whether the local pusher did is something that a medical board would spend months trying to determine.”

  “Did you actually threaten that?” Paige asked. She didn’t believe for a minute that Mara had been responsible for Daniel’s death, but if the suggestion was made, if it came before the medical board, if Mara was found at fault such that she lost her license to practice, it would have killed her as surely as the fumes from her car. Her career meant everything to her.

  But Peter wasn’t thinking that way. “You bet I threatened it. She was on her high horse telling me what a medical board would do with my prints, so I turned it right around. Mara could be one hell of a bitch.” He pushed a hand through his hair. “Still can. We can’t get rid of her. She keeps hanging on.”

  Did she ever, Paige thought. Nothing had been the same since Mara had died. She wondered if things would ever be the same again.

  Discouraged, she leaned more heavily against the door. “So. Where do we go from here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We can’t continue this way. The tension is awful.”

  “Then we’ll split. You take your patients; Angie will take hers; I’ll take mine.”

  “But I don’t want that,” Paige cried. Splitting up was her solution of last resort. “I like your patients as much as I like mine, and I like working in a group. I want things to be like they were before. It was such a comfortable life.”

  Peter didn’t respond. Nor did he look at her. When he picked up his pen and returned to work, she resignedly let herself out of the office, and when the last of her patients had been seen, she set off for Mount Court.

  Practice went well. Paige ran from the demons of the day, pushing herself and the girls farther, faster, than usual. She was therefore more tired than usual when she returned to the car and drove home. She was also more distracted, which was why, in hindsight, she didn’t sense anything amiss until she pulled into her driveway, climbed from the car, and reached across to the passenger’s seat to get the clothes she had worn to work. She cried out in alarm when a face rose from the backseat.

  “Sara!”

  Sara eyed her somberly.

  With a hand to her chest, Paige calmed her breathing. “You scared me half to death. I had no idea you were there. Why didn’t you speak up?”

  “If I’d spoken up, you’d have turned around and taken me back.”

  “I can still do that,” Paige threatened, but Sara climbed out of the car, crossed the front lawn, and planted herself on the steps.

  Paige came to sit beside her. As anxious as she was to see Sami, instinct told her Sara was in greater need at that moment. The girl needed a friend. Paige liked the idea of being one. “Just visiting?”

  Sara nodded.

  “Does anyone know you’re here?”

  “I signed out.”

  “For how long?”

  “Until ten.”

  “Ahhhh.” The evening. Once a sacred time for Paige, now a time for visiting with Sami. And Jill and Sara. Family time, in a make-believe way that was rather nice, as novelties went. “Then you’ll stay for dinner?”

  Sara shrugged. “If you want me to.”

  “Sure I do. But I have to warn you, I’m on call. If the phone rings, I’m off to the hospital. Did you bring any work to do?”

  Sara shook her head.

  “No homework?”

  “I finished it before practice.”

  “Ah. That’s good. I took chicken from the freezer this morning. Sound okay?”

  Sara shrugged.

  Paige gave her shoulder a squeeze as she went on into the house. She reached out for Sami, who was playing with Jill on the living room rug. “Hello, sweetie. How’s my girl?”

  “Gaaaaaaaaaa.”

  “What a nice greeting! You’ll be talking up a storm in no time. Jill, this is Sara. She’s from Mount Court.” To Sara she said, “Jill is living in to help me with Sami. She was with friends the other night when you all came.”

  Sara looked suddenly uneasy. “I thought it was just you and Sami.”

  “One more’s no trouble.” She put Sami in Sara’s arms before Sara could say that she had never held a small child before. “Want a break, Jill?”

  Jill ran upstairs to phone her friends. Paige lifted kitty. “Hello to you, too. How’s my second girl?”

  Kitty meowed.

  Sara, who was awkwardly trying to shift her arms around Sami, murmured, “I don’t think I’m doing this right. Maybe you’d better take her.”

  “Let her straddle your hip…. That’s right. There you go.”

  Sara and Sami were exchanging wary stares.

  “Are you adopting her?” Sara asked.

  “No. I’m just keeping her until a permanent placement is found.”

  “Do you think she knows that?”

  Still cradling kitty, Paige came close. �
�I think she’s too young to understand. She knows if she’s clean and dry, and if her stomach’s filled, and if her world is peaceful. She certainly knows if there’s noise and upset, and she knows if she’s with people who care. Yes, she’s aware if those people change. She knows new people from old, but does she understand that she’s come thousands of miles and has more to go before she finally settles? I doubt it.”

  Sara continued to stare at the child. “It’s awful to be bounced around.”

  “Were you?” Paige asked in response to the suggestiveness of the statement. She wanted Sara to know that she could discuss anything with her.

  “Not really. A little, maybe. My father would come to town and take me for the day. I hated it.”

  “Why?”

  “He was strange.”

  “Strange?”

  “A stranger. I didn’t know him. I didn’t know why he was coming.”

  “He wanted to see you. He loved you.”

  “No. It was in his mind. I was his daughter, therefore he loved me. It wasn’t an emotional thing.”

  “You underestimate him.”

  “If it was real, why didn’t he visit more?”

  “Maybe he felt awkward, what with your mom and her husband.”

  “But he was my father.”

  “He may have thought you wanted to forget that. You didn’t have his name.”

  “That was my mom’s idea, and he didn’t fight it.”

  Paige wished she knew more of Noah’s side of the story. “Did you ever ask why he didn’t?”

  Sara scrunched up her nose and shook her head.

  “Maybe you should.”

  “We don’t talk about things like that.”

  “Maybe you should. If it’s bothering you—”

  “I didn’t say that it was,” Sara said quickly. “I don’t care why he did what he did. He lives his life, and I live mine.”

  “Seems to me the two are overlapping now.”

  “Not much. I don’t see him often. He avoids me.”

  Paige let kitty down and gestured Sara toward the kitchen. “I was under the impression that he avoided you because the two of you agreed to keep your relationship a secret.” She took a package of chicken from the refrigerator and unwrapped it.