The short drive to her grandfather’s didn’t help. It felt strange to Diane that she couldn’t pinpoint the exact reasons for her emotions. Since so much had been invested with Rick in the past—time, energy and emotion—those resulting feelings could be intruding, clouding her thinking. Yet that alone could not explain the prickly apprehension which continued relentlessly, unsettling her, growing stronger and stronger as she trudged the ill-repaired, thin walkway to her grandfather’s tiny home. As she always did, she mentally took note of several tasks she could do to clean up her grandfather’s cluttered, unkempt yard, but even those mundane thoughts didn’t free her from the cloud of uncertainty which engulfed her as she walked up the old porch steps and opened the door. “Grandpa?”
The quiet stillness which echoed in response seemed unusual, causing her to pause quizzically in the doorway. She decidedly stepped cross the thin, threadbare carpet toward his small bedroom but he was not there. “Grandpa? Are you here?”
Diane walked into the kitchen, the only place her grandfather took extra pains to keep spotless and neat, breathing in the old-home smell which invariably clung to his furniture and belongings. She became more than a little surprised to notice an unusual array of disorganized clutter—unwashed pots and pans, scattered dishes, leftover breakfast remnants, unopened letters. Her eyes went immediately over to the old, gray form of her grandfather in the corner of the room as he sat in a chair bent over the kitchen table, his head resting in his gnarly, upturned hands. He held so breathlessly still that for a second, Diane panicked. “Grandpa? Are you all right?”
Her grandfather slowly lifted his head, his weather-worn face looking more ragged and aged than she had ever seen it. The wrinkles were lined and distinct, making his usually bright, clear-blue eyes seem sunken and opaque.
“What happened?” Diane said as she approached him, troubled. “What’s wrong? Are you sick?”
The sad eyes raised to hers carried such an oppressed look of distress that it stopped her in her tracks. The only other time Diane had seen that expression had been after the death of her grandmother when her grandmother had first slipped away. She had caught it from his half-turned profile and the memory of it had haunted her, causing her stomach to churn painfully whenever she remembered its oppressive intensity. To see it again startled her to the point of speechlessness. “Why did you do it?” her grandfather slowly said, his rich, deep voice cracked by a tone of humiliation and defeat. “I don’t understand why you did it. I don’t understand.”
Diane felt completely taken aback. Her grandfather had never shown any signs of senility before but she did not know what else to attribute his statements to. She remained silent as she carefully watched him.
“Don’t you know what this is going to do to us?” he continued, his hands curling in supplication. “Do you realize what’s going to happen?”
“What are you talking about, Grandpa? What are you saying? I have no idea what you’re trying to tell me.”
“Rick showed me,” her grandfather said, turning his eyes away from her face, as if he could not bear to see it. “He showed me what you did—all the papers, everything. He came over this afternoon to show me.”
“All what papers, Grandpa? What do you mean? The articles I wrote?”
The spark of anger across his features at her innocent question astounded her. Her grandfather had seldom even raised his voice at her and his look of fury shocked her. “Those papers, the ones from his office—the ones which prove you took all of that money.” He shook his head, rubbing his brows with one hand in a hopeless gesture. “Why, Diane, why?”
Diane could not discern if her grandfather’s farfetched accusations stemmed from an unstable mind or if they sprang from an ugly encounter with Rick. She took a tentative, hesitant step toward him, but his raised hand immediately stopped her. “I always taught you to work hard and trust that God would provide. How could you go against everything the Benson’s stand for—honor, integrity, hard work? How could you dishonor our family name?”
Diane’s amazement increased with each passing word. Her grandfather was not acting senile but spoke from a mind overwrought with pain and anguish. “Grandpa? Please. I don’t understand what you’re trying to say to me.”
“It was your grandmother’s time to go. You offended her, you offended me, you offended the very heavens when you took money to help her, money that was not even yours to take.”
Diane prodded herself out of stunned inaction by this intense speech. She walked over to the table, yanked out a chair and sat across from her grandfather, forcing him to meet her penetrating gaze. “You know me, Grandpa. You know me. Whatever Rick told you today, or showed you, or implied—whatever he said—is wrong. I would never hurt you or dishonor you or betray you or Grandma. Nor have I. Rick is angry and offended, frustrated about what I wrote about him and his company. He threatened me with something if I persisted in doing this. This is his way of paying me back and following through with his threats.”
Her grandfather’s features only hardened. “His way of paying you back? Don’t you understand? He showed me. He let me see everything—the accounts you set up, the withdrawals, the phony names, the phony claims—and your name again and again on each one of the checks.” He shook his gray head in disbelief. “You wondered why Rick left you, why he went away. You kept telling me about it, wondering and asking why. He loved you. He loved you enough not to press charges and let it pass, hoping you’d come forth on your own volition and tell him the truth. He gave you that chance before he left but you never took it. You never mentioned your actions to him or me—ever.” Her grandfather was shaking, trembling from anxious emotion. He sank his head into his hands. “Why?”
“Are you saying you believe this?” Diane questioned, her voice sounding strange and distant even to her own ears. “You believe that when I worked for Rick’s company I swindled money to help Grandma? You’re saying there are records that show I did?”
The pained look of betrayal across her grandfather’s features shook her to the very core. He did believe it. She felt almost sickened by the unfair accusations. “Do you realize,” her grandfather said in a gruff whisper, his hands still trembling, “that Rick would have never brought this out—he would have never pressed charges—if you had decided to keep quiet?”
“Pressed charges?” Diane repeated in disbelief.
“What else could he do? What other choice have you given him? I love you but I can’t stop you from paying the demands of justice.” Tears sprang suddenly to her grandfather’s eyes as he spoke, his weary gaze lifting to her now-frozen features. “You’ve tainted Rick’s respectability. He can’t go on with a shaded reputation, one he doesn’t deserve.”
Diane sat stiffly in her chair, her eyes never once leaving her grandfather’s face. “Do you honestly believe I could do something like stealing money? After living with me, raising me and loving me, can you honestly believe I would steal money from Rick and his family? You believe me capable of that?”
Her grandfather’s tear-stained features never softened. “You don’t think I protested Rick’s accusations? You don’t think I negated every offensive insinuation he made against you? Not until Rick showed me every single paper, every single check, every piece of information did my disbelief give way before the truth. I could hardly fathom my granddaughter,” here he gulped as he choked on his words, “my own beloved granddaughter being responsible for something like this. Only the knowledge that your object was the life of your grandmother could soften the horror of it.”
Diane’s feelings and emotions were in such a whir she could scarcely think straight as she stared at her grandfather. To have Rick accuse her of swindling money in the past seemed incredulous, almost unfathomable. But to have her grandfather believe his accusations seemed even more unbelievable still. “Grandpa, have you considered the possibility that Rick produced these records to hurt me and get me out of the way because I intend to bring out the truth about his l
atest business exploits?”
Her grandfather looked at her with a deeply pained expression. “When are you going to stop this? When? Every document he showed me had been dated—bank statements, everything. How can you disavow that testimony? How can you refute that evidence? Please stop trying to escape the blame. Accept the repercussions. Come clean. For once, come clean. It’s the only way we’ll have a chance to be together again.” After that, her grandfather burst into silent sobs, his thin, stooped shoulders racking with the heavy burdens he bore. Diane gazed in silent agony at his pain, realizing she could not comfort him and scarcely able to squelch her own intense bewilderment over the situation.
Rick. She had to contact Rick and set the matter straight before any more damage occurred. Diane stood slowly, hardly able to lift her eyes from her grandfather as she made her way out of the kitchen, through the front room and back to her car. She opened the car door and sat numbly in the front seat before turning the key and driving toward the road that led toward her small apartment.
Diane still felt dazed and confused as she turned the last corner before her place. She would call Rick and arrange a private meeting with him. She had to clear up this mess even if it meant seeing him again. She had to do it—for herself and her grandfather. It probably meant retracting her story but she would do it. Carl would be furious but she had no other choice. Her grandfather’s welfare was at stake.
Diane lifted her eyes from the road as she was about to turn into her driveway when she suddenly froze, her brows lifting in stupefied reaction. She could scarcely fathom what she saw. A sheriff’s car loomed, lone and foreboding, before her. She felt an abrupt, sickening wave of panic erupt within her as her whole frame trembled from icy, disbelieving shock. Her foot had lifted in reaction off the accelerator but after only a momentary pause, Diane pressed it down once more. Hardly realizing what she did, she slowly drove past her place, her hands shaking, her head pounding from fearful reaction. She scarcely turned her neck as she continued rolling down the street, hardly daring to see if any policemen had been in the car or if she’d been spotted. After traveling a short distance, she riveted her eyes on her rearview mirror. She could not see anyone following her.
By the time she reached the end of the street, Diane felt almost faint, her palms sweating profusely against the wheel. What was happening? Rick had already called the authorities to take her in? Talking to him would be fruitless now if he’d made an irrevocable step like that. Then Rick truly believed, as her grandfather did, that she had stolen money from him in the past? Diane swallowed dryly, trying to repress the bitter nausea that arose in her throat. That’s what he’d meant? That’s what he felt he held over? That’s why he’d warned her not to expose him?
Diane stared blindly in front of her, dazed. What could she do to begin to stop the events that had suddenly catapulted her life completely out of control? Where could she turn? She couldn’t speak to Rick and she definitely could not return to her grandfather. He didn’t believe in her innocence nor could he be persuaded by her assertions alone. Where did that leave her?
Almost instinctively, Diane turned toward the road that led out of town. She stopped by her bank, draining a few thousand dollars from her savings account, scarcely able to meet the teller’s eyes as she made her withdrawal. With that done, she continued on her way out of town, unable to squelch the terrifying fear that welled up inside her. As the distance from town increased, Diane could only focus on the blur of pavement beneath her. She finally succumbed to the pent-up emotion inside her, trying unsuccessfully to wipe away the blinding tears which soon spilled with unchecked rapidity down her face.
Not until hours later, as Diane lay alone on her hard hotel bed, could she make any sense of the overwhelming events of the day. She had driven to a nearby resort, only a short distance away but a place where she could fade into anonymity among the crowds and tourists visiting the lake. Time alone had not helped. In fact, the more Diane had thought and the clearer her understanding of the events became, the more distraught she felt. From everything she could fathom—from her conversation with her grandfather, from her earlier encounter with Rick and from the sighting of the Sheriff’s car in her driveway—Rick’s accusations against her had been built on solid evidence, evidence she had no idea had existed before that day. Her earlier foreboding of trouble had been correct. She was being accused of a very serious crime—swindling money, whatever amount it was—from Rick’s company. The idea that Rick had set her up, though at first plausible, now seemed impossible. His innuendoes when he had first seen her, his threats, his remark that he would “uncover the truth, the past” if she pursued the story seemed evidence enough that whatever he held against her had existed before the weekend. His apologetic tone that morning, his trip to inform her grandfather of the situation—they were other factors clearing him. As much as she wanted to believe he had been the one at fault and that he had set her up, she could not.
That left her where? With only her word to verify her innocence. Obviously, both Rick and her grandfather believed her to be guilty. The “papers” her grandfather had described were damaging enough to leave the only two men she had truly loved and trusted, and who had known her completely, thoroughly convinced of her guilt.
That knowledge opened up an even more searing wound in Diane’s vulnerable heart. Rick’s leaving three and a half years ago—had that occurred because of this whole affair? Did he truly believe her relationship with him had been a sleazy cover-up, a ploy, an act, to get what she wanted—his father’s money? “You’ve come a long way, Diane. Only a very few know the price you’ve paid to get there,” she recalled his words. The price? Stealing money? That’s what he’d meant?
The sadness and despair that accompanied these thoughts settled over her in an oppressive blanket. What hours of misery and heartache she had trudged through during the past three and a half years all because of unfounded, bitter untruths. And Rick had believed—did still believe—her capable of the crimes attributed to her. Their relationship had ended because of that, because of lies?
Now she had no one to turn to. With the only ally she’d every had—her grandfather—convinced of her betrayal and overwhelmed with grief because of it, she had no one else to trust. She was now left alone, completely alone—the only one who knew her innocence and the only one left to clear her name. But how? How could she do it? Where could she turn? She couldn’t go back to Rick or her grandfather. Returning to either of them would put her into the hands of the law—those who would easily convict her and those who were already ready to do so. Her leaving, her running from town, could be construed as verification of her guilt. Was she trapped? Would she become an innocent pawn, sooner or later getting the blame for a crime she did not commit? Would she have to go back and face...prison? She trembled at the thought.
J. D. Keaton. How did he fit into all this? Why now, when Rick had just returned to Page, did J. D. Keaton get terminated from the company? Was he somehow a part of this? Those questions consumed her, gnawing at her insides. How could she get the answers with no help, being penned up in a small hotel room, afraid to go out, afraid of being discovered?
Diane got up off her bed and paced nervously about the room. It seemed late, probably after midnight, and she felt desperately alone. Her orderly, well-established lifestyle had drizzled down to nothing—nothing—in the course of a day. She felt like a caged animal, incapable of action yet yearning to do something—anything—to get relief from the turmoil inside her. Diane paced back and forth in her small room, puzzling, stewing, planning, remembering, stewing again, growing even more agitated and more and more desperate. As the hours deepened, so did her pain and anguish. She had never felt so bitterly alone in her whole life—including the time when she’d heard the heart-shattering disclosure that both her parents had been killed. Even then she had the consolation of her grandfather’s love and his protective arm of reassurance and comfort around her. Now she had no one.
In
desperation, Diane gave into the tears that threatened to engulf her. She fell onto her bed and buried her head into a pillow, muffling her sobs, crying uncontrollably until the draining hours of tension and frustration caught up with her and she fell into a restless, fitful sleep.
The following morning, Diane frantically searched the internet on her laptop for anything that would throw light on her situation. About mid-morning, she found on their paper’s website an article screaming “Reporter Accused of Ingenious Embezzlement.” She stared at it in defeat, mentally picturing her haggard co-workers at work late into the night, gathering information, typing and editing a story they would have never, before that evening, believed possible. Diane pictured Liz’s face and sank from the irony of it all, once again feeling overpowering desperation immobilize her. She shook it off, forcing herself to read the words spread out in mocking array before her.
“A Herald reporter, Diane Benson, 25, has been accused of embezzlement and fraud, crimes committed two years ago at the locally-owned R & J Enterprises,” Diane read. “Police are still looking for Benson in an effort to question her regarding large amounts of money taken from the R & J during her employment there. Benson has been missing since yesterday when charges were initially brought against her.”
Diane read on, anxiously scanning the article, sometimes consuming the sentences so quickly the meaning entirely escaped her. She forced herself to read the words again and again until they became clear, the situation slowly, piece by piece, fitting together in her mind. She, Diane Benson, was indeed being accused of embezzlement, embezzlement which occurred during the last quarter of the year she had worked for the R & J. Although an “ingenious system of deception” had been attributed to her, its specifics were not delineated since “the matter was still under investigation.” Through this process, however, an undisclosed amount of money—amounting to “hundreds of thousands of dollars”—had allegedly been taken from the company. Diane’s heart plummeted.
Where Lies End Page 3