It was a night for bad dreams, that was for sure. Rain sheeted down in torrents, and the wind drove the drops into the windowpanes like hailstones.
"I knew my sister was selfish," Cait admitted with a heavy sigh. "Even vindictive at times, but I was sure she wouldn't use her own child as a weapon."
Hazel poked at the congealing pizza before giving her head a slight shake. "I'm not certain Kelsey truly understands what happened to her father, but it sounds as though she knows it's her fault, whatever happened."
"In a way it is," Cait murmured in a dispirited tone. "She did lie. To me, to the social worker and to the police. To the jury."
"True. No doubt that's part of what's tearing her apart. After all, she's an unusually bright child with a vivid imagination and a strong conscience. Right now she's punishing herself because she knows she did wrong. In fact, it's highly probable that in a child's convoluted way, she also blames herself for her mother's death."
Cait nodded. Such things were common among troubled children. "She wasn't very talkative this morning, but from the few things she did say, it looks like she's absolutely convinced that Tyler hates her."
"A logical assumption for a child to make, especially since she seems to hate herself so much for lying."
Cait stared at the silver picture frame proudly displaying Kelsey's latest school photograph in a place of honor on her desk. "I was so certain she was mourning Crystal. Fourteen years of experience, and I didn't even suspect anything like this."
Hazel smiled slightly, as though she'd been expecting such a comment sooner or later. "You're Kelsey's mother in every way that counts, Cait. Your objectivity is shot."
Cait stared at the raindrops bleeding down the windowpane. Outside, the wind tore at a newly planted sapling that bent but refused to break. Would that be Kelsey? she wondered. Or would the force of the guilt she was feeling destroy her?
"I keep thinking what it must have been like for Tyler all these years, knowing he's innocent and that no one believed him. Years and years locked in a cage." She turned to face her friend. "God help me, Hazel, I helped put him there. I'm as much to blame as Kelsey. More. I'm supposed to be a professional, an expert in behavior problems and childhood trauma. I did my thesis on the symptoms and lingering effects of sexual abuse on children, for heaven's sake. I should have seen through her story. I should have believed Tyler."
Cait crossed her arms over her breasts and tried to rub some warmth into her body. She hadn't felt warm since she'd walked out of Kelsey's room at a quarter past two last night.
"You did what you did out of love," Hazel said with quiet conviction. "No one can blame you for that."
"I can. I do!"
Hazel didn't answer. When Cait glanced up to see why not, she discovered a look of genuine anger on her friend's face. "What about the DA? The judge? The jury? Do you really think you're smarter than all of them combined?'
Hurt, Cait opened her mouth to reply, but Hazel didn't give her a chance. "You were just one of a considerable number of intelligent, caring people who had to weigh any doubts they might have against the consequences to countless other little girls if Dr. Tyler McClane just happened to be guilty."
"Only he wasn't!"
"But he could have been! Think what you'd be feeling if you'd somehow managed to get him off and then found out that he was guilty. Then what?"
Cait sank back in her chair and picked at a scratch on the edge of the desk with a slender finger. "I knew their marriage was in trouble. Tyler was working day and night to build up his practice, and Crys was bored. I think she asked him for a divorce to shake him up. Instead, he seemed almost relieved."
Cait's mind summoned an image of Tyler's increasingly tense features. Every time she had visited, he had seemed preoccupied, even curt.
"He told her he would give her everything," she continued in a flat tone. "The house, the cars, the membership in the tennis club. But he wanted joint custody. I thought it was a reasonable request. I was trying to convince Crys when all this just … blew up. I should have seen through Crys's lies then."
"Stop beating on yourself," Hazel chided. "You know that in cases like this it's always better to err on the side of the child. Always. You're not responsible for what happened."
"Perhaps not, but I am responsible for what I do about it now."
"True."
Cait glanced impatiently around her familiar, comfortable office, as though the answers were somehow written on the walls. "I have to do something, talk to the authorities, something, anything to help him."
"Yes, and as soon as possible." Hazel took a sip of soda and narrowed her eyes in concentration. "What did you say the prosecutor's name was? Lamar?"
"Lamont. Jackson Lamont. You must have seen him on TV. He's been on all the local talk shows, preaching his get-tough-on-criminals philosophy."
Hazel grimaced. "I've seen him. An up-and-coming politician if I've ever seen one. Contradictory as it sounds, though, he seems sincere."
Cait sighed. "Let's hope he's fair. Even if he isn't, no matter what Jack Lamont wants or thinks, we have to help Tyler get a new trial, or whatever the procedure is in cases like this."
"We will," Hazel assured her. "But first we have to decide what to do about Kelsey."
Cait was grateful to have something concrete to occupy her thoughts. All day, between patients, at lunch, on her coffee break, she had found herself alternately thinking about Tyler and grieving over her mistake. At odd moments she'd even found herself struggling to formulate the words of apology she owed him.
She pulled a yellow tablet toward her and began making a list. It was an old habit that helped focus her mind.
"Initiate intensive therapy, of course." She glanced up and said with a tense half smile, "By the way, I'm officially asking you to take her on as a patient."
Both noticed that her tone was brisk and professional now. So was Hazel's as she answered, "I'm officially accepting."
Cait relaxed slightly as Hazel went on, "My initial plan would be to address the issue of her father's feelings toward her. Do you know where he is?"
Cait drew a sharp breath. "The last I heard he was in Vacaville, working as an orderly at the prison hospital." Emptying bedpans, cleaning up vomit, taking orders when he had been used to giving them, she thought. That had to be unutterably humiliating for a man as proud of Tyler.
"The judge forbade him from ever seeing or contacting Crystal or Kelsey again," she added softly. "And, of course, he lost his license to practice medicine. After Crystal's death, he signed the paper relinquishing custody to me. That was the last time I heard from him."
Hazel shoved her soda can aside and rested her forearms on the desk. Cait gathered up the uneaten pizza and stuffed it, box and all, into the trash basket. Outside, the storm beat relentlessly on the tile roof.
Hugging herself, she stood up and went to the window. Instead of the storm, however, she saw Tyler's haggard face when the marshal had slipped the cold steel shackles over his wrists.
He had turned to look at her then. Only her. Stunned, she had seen a terrible, bitter anguish burning in his gray eyes. And then the pain had been replaced with icy hatred before he had allowed himself to be led away.
"I wonder what he's like after so many years behind bars," she mused aloud. Muted by the cold glass only inches from her mouth, her voice sounded hollow.
"Is he a fighter?"
Cait glanced up. Hazel was watching her calmly, but there was a sharp glint of curiosity between her lashes.
"If you mean physically, I don't know, although I do know he was pretty tough when I knew him. And … and he's tall and built like a wrestler, which helps."
"And emotionally? What kind of a man is he?"
"Self-contained. A loner. The kind of man who has to know you for a long time before he's willing to risk his friendship."
"Were you friends?"
"Yes, we were friends." For five wonderful months.
"Were you
lovers?" The question was quiet, nonthreatening, but Cait's heart began to race and her mouth went dry.
"No. We never even kissed," she said with a defensive edge to her voice. No one had believed that ten years ago. Why should Hazel believe it now?
"You were also terribly in love with him," Hazel said with a sympathetic smile.
Beneath the silk of her tailored blouse, Cait's shoulders drooped. She was too tired and too upset to try to fool her friend. "Yes, I was in love with him." Such an inadequate word for the maelstrom of emotions she had felt when she'd been twenty-six, she thought. And yet, the only one that would do.
"Did he love you?"
"No. At least, he never said so, but…" She shrugged and fell silent. Talking about that time was painful, even now.
"But what?"
Cait's gaze shifted to the wall where her diplomas were arranged alongside a carefully framed display of former patients' artwork. Studying them one by one helped ground her in the here and now.
"Tyler was different from the other residents, quieter, more intense, really focused on what he was doing." She brought her gaze back to Hazel's, but her eyes were fixated on images of the past.
"Sometimes the others acted more like, oh, I don't know, mischievous little boys, I guess. Ragging each other, flirting with the candy stripers, things like that. But not Tyler. As soon as he put on that starched white coat, he was a doctor, as though nothing else mattered. I respected that." She blinked, and Hazel's face came into focus again. "Am I making any sense?"
Hazel nodded. "Sounds like he took himself and his responsibilities very seriously."
"Tyler was a very serious man. Maybe that's why I found him so interesting."
"And did he find you interesting?"
"He seemed to." Cait's smile was crooked and just a bit self-conscious. "At least, he laughed at my jokes."
Hazel snorted. "I've heard your jokes, Cait. If he laughed, he must have been interested in you."
Cait's smile faded. "He trusted me, that much I do know," she said softly. "With his hopes, with his dreams, things he'd never told anyone else. Do you know how special that made me feel?"
Hazel nodded but wisely remained silent.
"I had this very active fantasy going, you know. How he would suddenly come to me and confess that he, too, was harboring thoughts of, well, undying love, I guess. He would kiss me breathless and then ask me to marry him." Cait felt her face flood with heat.
"What happened?"
"I introduced him to my little sister." Cait stared down at her hands. She wore no rings. Never had. "Crys took one look and had to have him."
"Just like that?"
"That's the way she was. All of her life, she'd gotten everything she'd ever wanted just by looking adorable and batting her big blue eyes."
Cait's eyes were a plain sparrow brown, and her hair was almost the same color, with a mind of its own when it came to style. Crystal's, on the other hand, had been a shimmering thick platinum that had been the envy of all her friends—and Cait, too.
It had taken Cait years and some hard work in therapy to conquer the jealousy her sister had aroused in her almost from the cradle. But she knew now that Crystal's surface appeal would have faded in time, leaving her only a pale shadow, without personality or wit.
Hazel's expression turned thoughtful. "She was beautiful, Cait. And, from what I remember from the one time we met, dripping sex appeal, in a classy sort of way."
A fleeting smile erased some of the tension from Cait's face. "Oh, Crys was classy, all right. Mother insisted that we both grow up to be perfect ladies."
Hazel grinned. "I guess your mom would have had a fit if she'd lived long enough to see you climbing trees with Kelsey."
"Lord, would she!" Cait explained softly.
Hazel's expression sobered. "I take it Crystal got Tyler."
"Yes, she got him," Cait said with a humorless chuckle. "She told me she would. I didn't believe her—until the day she asked me to be maid of honor at their wedding."
"You didn't!"
Cait waved a hand in a dramatic gesture. "Sure I did. A Fielding faces life with her chin up and a smile on her face. I was charming and pleasant and oh so polite—until they left the reception to begin their honeymoon. And then I went into the ladies' room and threw up."
Hazel looked amused and sympathetic at the same time. "An understandable reaction."
"I threw up every day for a month, and then I decided to stop loving the man and get on with my life. Eight months later, after I'd finished my internship, I moved here and began building my practice. By that time Kelsey had been born."
Sudden understanding flashed in Hazel's eyes. "I see."
"Yes, so did I. My little sister had used the oldest trick in the book."
"Perhaps, but it takes two to conceive a child."
"You're right," Cait declared flatly. "It takes two. I think that's what hurt the most."
She drew a shaky breath. She'd made a mistake, taking this trip down memory lane. If Hazel hadn't needed to know Kelsey's background, she would have left the memories sealed up tight, the way they'd been for so long.
"So," she said to her friend, "you're the therapist, and I'll leave the therapy to you. But I want to help in any way I can."
"I expect you to. Even so, this isn't going to be easy. Sounds like there's a lot of hurting going on in your little girl."
"Whatever you want me to do, I'll do. Anything."
"Of course, Tyler McClane is the key to relieving Kelsey's guilt," Hazel said, as tough continuing a conversation wit herself. "If she can be made to believe he doesn't hate her or blame her for lying, she'll gradually stop blaming herself. For that, we absolutely have to have the father's help."
"I agree."
"I realize he can't contact her directly, but perhaps we could get permission from the court to read her a letter that he's written."
"A letter saying what?"
Hazel rubbed her temple. "First of all, that he doesn't hate her. And that he doesn't blame her for what happened to him. Something along those lines, anyway." She glanced toward the storm. "The question is, where is he?"
In hell, Cait thought with a rush of guilt. "First thing tomorrow, I'll start making calls," she promised. "I'll start with his attorney. Dante's his name, I think. I seem to remember that the guy's right here in the city."
"Who, McClane's attorney?"
Cait nodded. "They were old friends, I think. Crys said they grew up together."
Hazel leaned forward, her expression intense. "As soon as we find out where he is, one of us has to go to see him. Under the circumstances, I think it should be me."
Yes, Cait cried silently. You go. You face him. I can't. Dear God, I can't. Not after so many years. Not after so much pain.
"No," she said, slowly getting to her feet. "I'll go. I don't think I could live with myself if I didn't."
* * *
Chapter 2
« ^ »
California Route 49 stretched like an angry sidewinder through the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. Dangerously narrow in places, the old road linked the historic mother lode communities founded during the gold rush of 1849.
Cait had always loved traveling the picturesque highway, especially in the fall, when the leaves were changing color. Now, however, in late afternoon on the Saturday before Thanksgiving, the trees were bare.
The small town of Sutter Creek was her destination. According to Jess Dante, Tyler had been paroled there in March. Eight months ago, she thought. And living only sixty miles away.
Denied the reinstatement of his medical license and forced to register as a sex offender, he was working as a bartender in a place called the Lucky Horseshoe Saloon. According to Dante, it was the only job he had been able to find.
"It's a bikers' bar, mostly," the kid at the town's only service station told her. "Three blocks east, on the left. Just look for the hogs parked outside."
Cait's startled look had el
icited a grin before the teenager had added, "Bikes, you know, like in Harleys."
Sutter Creek was too small to have a wrong side, but the street Cait was driving along was shabbier than most. The pavement was badly patched. Sidewalks were nonexistent.
In Sacramento this neighborhood would be listed on real estate maps as "in transition." From neglected to downright seedy, Cait decided as she downshifted to navigate a particularly nasty pothole in front of an abandoned auto body shop.
She found the Lucky Horseshoe at the end of the block. The building was a two-story cement boxlike structure that had once been painted white. The roof was corrugated steel in sad need of repair. Long streaks of rust ran down the facade like tears. A large sheet-metal horseshoe hung over the door. Once bright red, the block letters were so sun faded that she had to squint to make them out.
Lined up in the parking lot next to the building were the motorcycles she had been warned to expect. There were at least a dozen, perhaps more—huge, mean-looking contraptions overloaded with chrome. Saturday evening must be a busy time at the Lucky Horseshoe, she thought as she pulled into the first available parking space.
She killed the engine but made no move to get out. In spite of the outward calm that had become second nature to her after so many years as a therapist, she was quaking badly inside. Too many years had passed. Too many words had been said. Or perhaps left unsaid.
Tyler had never been an easygoing man. He'd been too intense, too focused, too driven. His stride, his quick, masculine gestures, his economy with words, had signaled an underlying impatience that had often flared into temper.
Not that he was a prima donna, she was forced to admit. Far from it. Of all the residents she'd known, he had worked the longest hours, devoted the most energy, cared the most.
A lump rose in her throat. She swallowed, and it eased. But the sick taste of regret remained. If things had been different…
But they aren't, she reminded herself as she jerked open the car door. The time for Tyler and her was past. They had both seen to that, she thought as she stepped from the car.
PAROLED! Page 2