by Nancy Rue
“I can wait for you—”
“No! I can cope, okay? I’m not falling apart!”
“I know you aren’t—but it’s okay if you do.”
“Oh, uh-huh. And then who’s going to deal with all this? Take the Broadway Exit—it’s over in Westend.”
Hale stopped trying to console me and merely followed the directions I barked out at him. Once again, I doubt whether I said good-bye to him, although I do recall his saying, “I’m praying, Toni. Believe me, I’m praying.” I had the door swinging open before he brought the Jeep to a halt in front of Faustman, and I was inside the building, I’m sure, before he could even get it into first gear.
I was already talking as I charged into the reception area. “Reggie, see if you can get me a flight out of here tonight—to Richmond.”
“Richmond?”
“That—that thing touched my child, and I am going to go up there and rip him a new—”
“Toni—honey, let me work on that flight for you while you attend to Mr.—”
I followed her eyes behind me. A guy of about thirty with a thick neck and a magenta face stood with his arms folded across his chest like a high school dean of boys.
“Charles R. Marshall,” Reggie said faintly.
There was no need to tell me that, really. The man was alternating between glaring at me and pointedly looking at his watch. The grandfather clock behind him was just finishing its third chime. I sucked in about a liter of air. If I could just get out one civil sentence…
“I’m sorry, Mr. Marshall,” I said. “Something has come up. When can we reschedule our meeting?”
“We can’t,” he said.
I pressed my fingers to my temples, and I could feel myself wincing. “What?” I said.
“It’s either right now, or I take my business someplace else.”
“Then do it. Go someplace else. I really don’t have the time.”
I waited for him to stomp out the door. I needed for him to, before he morphed into Sid Vyne before my eyes and I went after the poor man with my fingernails.
But he only narrowed his eyes at me, his face growing redder and his neck growing thicker.
“Excuse me?” he said.
“I said—”
“I heard what you said—and your boss is going to hear what you said!” He turned to Reggie, who was uncharacteristically silent behind me. “Get your manager out here.”
“Mr. Faustman is in a meeting—”
“Get him out here or I’m gonna bust his door down! I’m not gonna stand here and be treated like—”
“So don’t stand there!” I said. “Take your business someplace else—go!”
“Not before I register a complaint.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, grow up! You think you have problems, my friend? Then take them to somebody who gives a hang, okay, because I so do not. I just found out my five-year-old son has very probably been molested by my own brother-in-law—after being pornographically photographed by that same sick, twisted animal—and I’m looking at a lawsuit, therapy, and a child who may never be the same. So I do not have time for you or your whining or your bloated ego. So take it—”
“Mr. Marshall,” said a voice behind me. “Jeffrey Faustman. How are you, sir?”
Jeffrey skirted me smoothly, his hand extended to Charles R., who did not extend his in return.
“I’m a little upset at the moment,” Marshall said, shoulders shifting.
“I can certainly understand that, sir. It looks as if we have a situation here that has nothing to do with you. Unfortunately, you’ve borne the brunt of it. Would you like to step into my office and we’ll see if we can’t take care of you?”
Marshall barely looked at him. He was still drilling his beady little eyes into me, reminding me more of a boar by the second. I was breathing hard and drilling back, ready to go after him again if he or Jeffrey gave me the slightest provocation. I felt Reggie’s hand on my arm, but I shook it away.
“I want an apology first,” Marshall said.
“I’m sure Ms. Wells will be forthcoming with one.” Jeffrey’s voice was as thick as peanut butter.
“So let’s hear it,” Marshall said to me. “I’m a busy man. I don’t have time to be jerked around.”
“Then go someplace where they’ll put up with you,” I said.
I yanked myself away from Reggie’s second attempt to restrain me and stormed past both men and into my outer office. Ginny was poised inside the door, and she jumped back like a startled cat as I threw it open and crossed to my own office, where I slammed the door so hard that my MBA diploma fell off the wall and landed on the carpet with a thud. I kicked it across the room and stood staring at the shards of glass that dropped in slow motion from the frame.
I don’t know how long I stood there, or when Ginny inched the door open and said, “Mr. Faustman would like to see you in his office.”
“Get out,” I said.
“I’m just telling you—”
“And I’m just telling you. Get out.”
It could only have been a few moments later when Reggie came in. I realized then I still had my purse over my shoulder and my jacket on, which was fine, because I was on the way out.
“Did you get me a flight?” I said.
“I did not.”
“Fine. I’ll get one myself.”
I started for the door but she didn’t budge from in front of it. Though her face was pale, even under the makeup, the eyes weren’t moving and neither was the body.
“What do you think you’re going to do up in Richmond, honey?” she said.
“I can’t let him get away with this!” My voice cracked, taken over finally by tears. “I have to let him know he’s not going to get away with this!”
“You can do that. But first you have to take care of Ben. Where is he?”
“He’s at soccer practice. What time is it?”
“Almost four.”
“I have to go get him.”
“In this condition, honey? Have you looked at yourself in the mirror?”
“I don’t care what I look like!”
“Ben will when he sees you lookin like the Boston Strangler. One glance at you and that poor little angel’s liable to have a breakdown. He can’t see you like this.”
I shook my head. I could feel my face crumpling.
“What am I going to do, Reggie?”
“You’re going to make arrangements for Ben, and then we’re going over to your house and we’re gonna sort this out. Who’s with Wyndham?”
“Bunny—I think.” I smacked at the tears on my face and drew back with fingertips soaked in mascara. “She can’t see me like this, either.”
“And the last person you want to see is Jeffrey, so let’s get out of here and we’ll figure it out on the way. You got your cell phone?”
I nodded as I followed her out of the office. “I can call Yancy from the car.”
“Mr. Faustman is waiting for you,” Ginny said as I passed her.
I stopped, despite Reggie’s pressure on my arm. “Why don’t you go in there and take my place this time, too?” I said to Ginny. “Since you do it so well.”
Her contempt was palpable. I couldn’t have cared less.
Yancy agreed to keep Ben for the evening. She said he and Troy were becoming like Siamese twins so she would have had a hard time separating them anyway.
“You all right?” she said, just before I hung up.
“I don’t know what I am. What was that child psychologist’s name again?”
“Parkins,” she said. “Dr. Michael Parkins. Let me give you the number.”
Reggie and I decided to go on to my house after all. She pointed out that as big as it was, we could still talk and never be heard by Wyndham. “Two people could live in that place for weeks and never see each other,” she said.
“That’s the way it is with Ben and me,” I said. My hands went up to my face again. “I have been so hard on him, Regg
ie. And I’ve neglected him. What was I thinking? Why didn’t I get this? Why didn’t I figure it out? I’m such an idiot.”
“Let’s go back to you being mad at Sid,” she said. “I think that was a little healthier.”
“Chris.”
“You can be mad at him, too.”
“No—I have to call him. We have to do something about Ben before he completely goes off the deep end.”
“Or before you do.” Reggie stopped at a red light and looked at me. “I’ve never seen you like that.”
“I’ve never felt like that. I wanted to kill Sid—with my bare hands. I still do.”
“You want some help?” Reggie gave me a sad smile, and then she shook her head. The ponytail lurched as we moved through the intersection. “We’ve got to focus on Ben. And you. Now, when we get there, I’m going to fix you something and you are going to eat it. While I’m doing that, you do what you have to do to get yourself calmed down enough to face Ben when he comes home. And Wyndham.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
As soon as she was busy in the kitchen and I had checked in on Wyndham and Bunny—who was sitting by the door like Rin Tin Tin while Wyndham dozed—I shut myself up in the study and paced until I could breathe without hyperventilating. If I didn’t have it all together before I dialed, I wasn’t going to be able to deal with him.
Chris was, miraculously, in his office when I called, and even more amazingly, he had a minute to talk.
“You don’t have some important client about to walk in?” I said.
“What’s the deal, Toni?” he said. “Since when does one of our conversations take more than five minutes?”
“Since right now.”
There was a silence. When he spoke, his voice had lost its edge. “What’s going on?”
“I didn’t call you before because I didn’t know—okay, look—Wyndham has disclosed some things. It’s about Ben.”
“What about Ben?”
He was already showing signs of unraveling and I hadn’t even said anything yet. I was careful as I laid it all out for him, including Wyndham’s suicide attempt, Trinity House, and what Dominica had told me.
There was another silence.
“Chris?” I said. “You okay? I know it’s a lot to swallow at once.”
“And I’m only swallowing about half of it.” His voice was dead even.
“What are you saying?”
“I think it’s patently ridiculous to think that Sid would risk taking pictures of our kid.”
I stopped padding up and down in the study and pressed my hand to my forehead. “What?” I said. “What about this isn’t ridiculous? They found pictures of his own children, for Pete’s sake!”
“That’s exactly my point. They have evidence that he photographed them. Has anybody given you any hard proof about Ben? Has the FBI recovered photographs of him?”
His voice sounded dry, as if he were questioning a hostile witness on the stand.
“You think Wyndham is making this up?” I said.
“The girl is freaked out—you said yourself she’s suicidal, which I can understand. I don’t think she knows what she’s saying.”
“Why on earth would she put this on me? It means me sending her away from here, and she doesn’t want that!”
“What she wants is a connection with you so you won’t abandon her, too.”
“That’s absurd,” I said. “If she doesn’t know what she’s saying, then how could she figure out something that sophisticated? Good grief, Chris, stop being an attorney for seven seconds. She’s a victim, not the defendant.”
“Look, I’m just not in a rush to believe that Ben was involved in this, whether it was just pictures or whatever else it is this shrink told you happened to him.”
You’re in worse denial than I am, I thought. I felt myself sinking. I’d been prepared for him to blow up. I hadn’t expected him to blow me off. I wanted to smack him, but I wasn’t sure whether it was out of anger or the need to wake him up.
“I know you don’t want to believe it,” I said, with all the control I could muster. “I didn’t either at first. But we can’t afford to be in denial, not if we’re going to help Ben.” I groped back through my memory of my meeting with Dominica. “We can’t let him go through this alone.”
“What kind of help are you talking about?”
“He needs professional help, or this could really mess him up. He’s already—”
“He’s not messed up.”
“Chris, for crying out loud! He screams over nothing, he’s afraid of the dark, he wets his bed, he doesn’t want me out of his sight and when I’m there he hates the sight of me.”
“He’s behaving that way because he isn’t with both of his parents in his own home.”
“He wasn’t with both of his parents when he was in his own home. You were never there—I was never there.” I closed my eyes. As hard as it was to stop, I couldn’t go down this path, not right now. “It isn’t about that. He’s responding to abuse. He was molested, Chris.”
“You don’t know that.”
“If he was photographed by Sidney, he was molested, whether he touched him or not—and there’s a good chance he did. This doesn’t make you want to rip Sid’s scalp off? And Bobbi’s?”
“Let’s say he did…touch Ben.”
I took a long, controlled breath. “Okay.”
“How much can that affect him? He’s five years old. He’ll forget about it in six months.”
“You’re not listening to me! He needs us to help him!”
“Then let’s help him. You and me. You come up here, and we’ll sit down with him and we’ll talk about it.”
“You don’t think I’ve tried that?” I was talking between clenched teeth. “We don’t know how to help him, Chris.”
“Why not? We’re his parents. Let’s handle this thing within the family. We can protect him.”
“Oh, yeah. Let’s circle up the wagons—now that the damage is already done!”
“If he was photographed and if he was touched, whatever, he’s too young to know what that means. He just needs time, and he needs us—together.”
“How dare you?” I said.
“What?”
“How dare you use this to try to manipulate me!”
“You think that’s what I’m doing?”
“If I came up there with Ben, would you agree to let him see a therapist? Would you work with the person? Would you take your turn making sure he gets there? Would you cut down your work hours so you could spend time with him when he needs you?”
“You’re making it sound like this is suddenly going to run our lives.”
“It’s already running mine. And unless you’re willing to do this with me, I’m staying right here—where I have some support.”
He let only a crack of silence split the conversation.
“If you’re going to go ahead and get professional therapy for Ben, why do you need my approval?” he said.
“I don’t need your ‘approval.’ I just wanted you to know. I thought you’d want him to have the best help possible.”
“How much is this going to cost?”
“I don’t know. Insurance will cover some of it, I’m sure. Does it matter?”
“No, of course it doesn’t matter. You’re making it sound like I’m some kind of cold fish. Just the fact that you’re so worked up has got to be affecting him.”
“I did not do this to him, Chris. And if you want to hear me get worked up, say something like that to me again.”
“All right—all right—look, just do what you have to do, but don’t make a bigger thing out of it than it really is.”
“How much bigger does it have to get?”
I was close to tears, and I wasn’t doing much to hide them. I didn’t care what Chris thought.
“You crying?” His voice went soft. “Toni Wells doesn’t cry.”
“She does now. She also screams obscenities at client
s, so watch it.”
“This woman—this shrink—”
“Dominica. She’s a Christian therapist.”
“She’s got you thinking the worst. Why don’t we just see what the psychologist says about Ben before you jump to any more conclusions? I’d like a second opinion.”
“If I can get a meeting with him in the next few days, is that too short notice for you to get down here?”
Another silence—a longer one.
“You think I need to be there?” he said.
I didn’t answer him.
“Let’s do this,” he said. “You see what he has to say and then we’ll decide if I really need to make a trip to Nashville. Fair enough?”
I waited for another surge of rage to come up and rip a string of profanities out of my mouth, but it didn’t materialize. Instead, I sat there, stunned, because what I heard in my husband’s voice was fear—pure fear.
When we hung up, I looked up Dr. Parkins’s number and dialed it.
Eleven
MY TALK WITH DR. MICHAEL PARKINS was brief. After I told him about Ben’s situation, he said we needed to talk right away and would tomorrow afternoon be too soon? Was he kidding? I was ready to go over to his office right then.
But I still asked Reggie to check into his background for me, find out if he had a specialization in sexual abuse and post-traumatic stress syndrome, which she said she’d do first thing in the morning. Then I steeled myself for going into the office and facing Jeffrey.
It wasn’t what I wanted to do, but once I got somewhat calmed down—which I had to for Wyndham and Ben—I realized that no matter how much of a jerk Charles R. Marshall was, I’d still been irrational with him. I did have to face the music on that, and find out if I still had a job. At the rate I was hiring therapists, I was going to need the money.
The next morning, once I’d promised to have lunch with Wyndham and had dropped Ben off at school—with the promise that I personally would pick him up for soccer—I made my way reluctantly into the office and went straight to Jeffrey. Ginny was just coming out his door when I got there, hair now a raven black, pulled up tightly into a bun. Was it my imagination or was she going for a more professional look? Oddly, I was more amused than threatened.
“Do you have a minute?” I said to Jeffrey from the doorway. Light glinting off of his bald head, Jeffrey nodded to a chair. I shut the door soundlessly behind me and all but tiptoed into place.