by Tiana Cole
“Yes, I mean, of course. That’s a natural question. I’m here for the interview. For the position to nanny your daughter? I rang the bell a couple of times but nobody came so I, well, I just sort of came in.”
“Well, that’s awfully tenacious of you. But you’re here and Sophie seems to like you so far, so let’s conduct the interview as planned. If you’ll follow me to the office? And you can stop cleaning now.”
I felt my face flush as I followed Dr. Wyatt down a long hallway, a mess of Sophie’s things still in my hands. I set them down in the first bin I saw along the way, making a note of how I might better organize the storage in this place. If I got the job, that was, which seemed like a pretty big if.
“This is it, just in here.”
It looked like something from a movie. A large mahogany desk sat in front of floor to ceiling windows and the walls appeared to be made entirely of built-in bookshelves. Those shelves were full of the medical journals I would have expected of a man like him, but also a wealth of fiction that surprised me for some reason.
All of my favorite novels were on those shelves, everything from Austin to Vonnegut to Fitzgerald. I wondered if he really read those books or if he just had them there to impress people who wandered into his office. Still, it was impressive. I had to give him that, however grudgingly.
“Please, take a seat.”
I hesitated, suddenly overcome by an urge to just turn and run. I didn’t want to sit across from this man. I didn’t know if I was actually strong enough to take on everything I had planned, and I knew that if I sat down and had this interview, I would be committing to it. I didn’t have any time to think about it further, though, because Dr. Wyatt was looking up at me with a mixture of expectancy and impatience.
I sat. I was all in, whether I was sure I wanted to be or not. I could see that he was ready to ask his questions and I had to be able to give him the answers he needed in order for him to hire me.
“Well, first thing’s first, Miss…?”
“Kayla. Kayla Evans.”
“Alright, first thing’s first, Kayla. Do I know you from somewhere?”
I took a deep breath and shut my eyes briefly before answering him. This was it. It was time for everything to start, for better or for worse.
Chapter Two
Kayla
“Hey, girl.”
“Hey.”
“Wait. Why are you whispering? What’s wrong, you in some kind of trouble?”
Yvonne, always the skeptic and very much a mamma bear with her friends, sounded like she was on red alert. She was such a good friend to me and I felt terrible that something I was doing was making things harder on her. I just didn’t see any other way. Especially not when I had already gotten the ball rolling.
“No, no, nothing like that. I just don’t want to be overheard.”
“Who would you be overheard by? Where are you?”
Her voice was suspicious and it made me laugh. It felt good, that laughter. It was the first genuine laughter I had experienced since first seeing little Sophie and her fabulously fashion forward outfit.
“I don’t want to be overheard by one David Wyatt, M.D. I’m currently living in his guest house.”
“So you got the job.”
I wanted her to be excited for me, but instead her voice was dull, almost disappointed. I knew it was hard for her. I had quit the job where we had met and become fast friends and now my crackpot plan had led me to move into the home of the enemy. It was oddly exciting for me, made me feel like a spy in some kind of crazy suspense movie, but to Yvonne it just spelled bad news.
“Yes, Yvonne, I got the job. Try not to worry about me so much. I really will be okay. I’m a big girl. I know how to take care of myself.”
God, I hoped that was true. I had a history of being stubborn when I got an idea in my head and sometimes it clouded my judgement. I sincerely hoped that this was not one of those times.
“Well, just make sure he keeps his hands off of you.”
“What? Come on, girl, now you’re just being crazy.”
“Am I? Does he have a wife in that big old house of his?”
“No, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to go after me. I don’t think I’m his type anyway.”
“Oh, what?” Yvonne said with a scoff of disbelief. “Beautiful isn’t his type? Come on, Kayla. I don’t think there is a man alive who wouldn’t be attracted to you.”
I didn’t know what to say and so I laughed, just like I always did when I was uncomfortable. It wasn’t that I didn’t appreciate the compliment, because I did. I just didn’t know how to take it. I had always struggled a little bit with how to handle my looks.
Objectively speaking, I guess she was right. I had never had a problem getting the attention of men. I was five foot eight inches by the time I was fourteen, and the rest of my body quickly caught up to my height. I was always lucky with my figure. I had natural curves but never had to worry about my weight. I guess you could say I was blessed in that way.
My skin was exactly the color Sophie had described, a light milky brown. My dad had been dark but my mom had been fair skinned with green eyes, eyes I had inherited from her. I think that’s what got people. It was the color of my eyes combined with the color of my skin. I guess it stood out or something. It didn’t really matter all that much to me. I never felt like I had much of anything to do with the way I looked.
“Well, that’s very sweet of you to say, but I really don’t think I need to worry about things here. Besides, I’m not even living in his house. I’m living in his guest house. He has an entire apartment over his garage. It’s like, fifty times nicer than where I live.”
“Ugh. Of course he does. But that’s better than living under the same roof as him. I guess. Just be careful, okay? I mean, what if he recognizes you? Do you think he does? Do you think he will?”
I felt my pulse speed up and the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. I felt shaky and the saliva started to build up in the back of my throat. That was a difficult question to answer. Difficult for many, many reasons.
It wasn’t natural for a girl to have to watch her younger sister die. I felt like it was almost as difficult as a parent having to see their own child perish. Nikki was only five years younger than me, but she had always felt like she was somehow my child as well as my mother’s.
She felt like she belonged to me and I would have been happy to give her my entire life. I really would have, would have laid down my life for her own without ever having given it a second thought.
Nikki had always been so much more delicate than me, so frail. She was sickly from almost the moment she was born and my parents struggled for years to understand why. We hadn’t grown up with whole heaps of money and that made it a lot harder to get the answers they needed. Having money just made everything easier, as far as I could tell.
Finally, finally, when she was eighteen years old they told us that it was her heart. Her heart wasn’t working the way it should and it never had. That’s when my parents took out a second mortgage on their home so that they could go and get her a real, reputable doctor. That doctor just happened to be one David Wyatt.
Dr. Wyatt had been the next big “it” thing, the hotshot up and comer everyone said they would stake their life on. The problem was, my sister actually did, but instead of getting better she just got worse. It got to where I pretty much lived in that hospital with her. I made my own little version of home right there beside that hospital bed. And we talked.
We talked about the things she most wanted in life, the things she wanted to do once she was all fixed up and able to finally live a normal life. She wanted to go camping because she loved the outdoors but she had never been able to because her health wasn’t up to it.
I had never known that about her. I brought in a little tent and electric hurricane lamps with as many wildflowers as I thought they would let me carry in just so that she could have a preview of what our camping trip would be lik
e once she finally got the cure she needed.
When Dr. Wyatt told my parents that he had a new medication that he expected to be just that, we were all so happy. Our family was going to be really and truly home, for the first time. I kissed her on the forehead that last night with a head full of all of the things we were going to do, all of the things we were going to be able to show each other.
It never occurred to me that it would be the last time. It never even crossed my mind that my twenty-one-year-old sister would have a heart attack and die in one of the best cardiac wings in the country. I still had that little tent sitting in my living room. I couldn’t quite bring myself to put it away. I swallowed with some difficulty, my throat feeling just a little too tight for comfort.
“No. He doesn’t recognize me at all.”
I had thought he might, right there at the beginning. I almost hoped that he would. It would have made it seem like my family had mattered to him, like my sister wasn’t someone he could just file away and forget about the moment she passed away. He didn’t, though. I told him we hadn’t ever met and he believed me without a second thought. He believed me with the arrogance of a man who only valued himself.
“Well, be careful anyway. Promise?”
“Promise. I’ll call you later.”
I hung up the phone, suddenly feeling very, very tired. I just wanted to sleep for once. I hadn’t slept well since Nikki died. First it was due solely to grief, then to my confusion over what should be done about it. Now that I had finally begun the process of making that happen I just wanted to get one good night’s rest. I couldn’t, though. Not yet. I had one more thing I had to do before my job for the day was technically done and it had nothing at all to do with the little girl I had been hired to take care of.
I looked at my phone and sighed, dialing the number that always filled me with a strange dread. I didn’t even like to talk on the phone at the best of times, let alone when it was for things like this.
“Yes?”
“It’s me.”
“Ah.”
“What do you mean, ‘ah’? Weren’t you expecting me to call?”
“Yes, yes indeed I was. Earlier. I was expecting you to call much, much earlier. What is it, Ms. Evans? Are you experiencing some doubts? Having a change of heart, perhaps?”
“No! No, nothing like that. What did you want me to do, just blow him off and go directly to my room? Don’t you think I might want to wait a little bit before I start acting like a crazy person?”
“Right. That’s fine. But what are your thoughts on matters as they stand right now?”
What was the deal with these doctors? They were so impatient, so pushy. Not for the first time I wished that I had found some way to feel the possibility of vindication without having to join forces with Dr. George Johnson.
There were several reasons for my hesitation on the matter. The first was probably unfair, and that was the simple fact that he was a doctor. When I was a little girl I looked at doctors as something between men and gods. I think most children do. I honestly believed that they could fix anything, do anything with their extreme knowledge and ability. Part of me believed that even when I grew up, right up until David Wyatt let my sister die. He was the one who had promised that medicine would make her better and instead he had just killed her. Once a person was disillusioned in that kind of a way, trusting any doctor was pretty much out of the question.
The other major reason for my hesitation about Dr. Johnson was how vehemently he seemed to hate Dr. Wyatt. I couldn’t understand it. I knew why I wanted to infiltrate the Wyatt home. I wanted some kind of proof that David’s negligence had killed my sister. I needed that proof. It felt like the only chance I had to move on and have some kind of life.
But why the hell was Dr. Johnson so dead set on bringing David Wyatt down? Sure, he insisted that it was to serve “the greater good.” His words, not mine. He wanted me to be content with that, and for all he knew I was. In reality, I wasn’t buying it. He believed that because he was a doctor and I was not, I would believe anything he said. I may not have been a doctor, but I also wasn’t an idiot. He was hell bent on getting David fired and it had nothing to do with helping me get closure. He had a vendetta, the motivation for which was all for himself.
“My thoughts are that it’s going to take more than just a couple of days to get the kind of information we’re going to need to prove anything. You’re going to have to be more patient than this. I can’t do this with you breathing down my neck all of the time. I don’t like it. It makes me nervous and that only makes everything that much harder. Okay?”
“Sure, that’s fine. That makes sense. But you will keep me informed?”
“You know I will.”
“Good. That’s good. You need to remember what we’re doing this for. That man, he’s a bad doctor. He’s hiding something and I truly believe it is an addiction. Not only that, but I would bet my life on that addiction being the reason for your sister’s death. Don’t you want him to pay?”
“Yes,” I whispered, tears of anger and sorrow springing into my eyes. It wasn’t fair for him to say this kind of thing to me. I already knew all of this. I didn’t need him throwing it all back into my face.
“And so he shall. When we’re done with him he will most certainly have his medical license revoked. That may very well be the least of his problems. When this whole thing is over and done Mr. Wyatt will be very lucky if he hasn’t landed himself in prison. Remember that. Keep your eye on the prize and your head in the game.”
“Right. I will.”
I hung up the phone quickly. The conversation was leaving a bad taste in my mouth and I didn’t want to have it anymore. I did want David to be held responsible for what he had done, but for the first time I started to think about what it would mean. If he lost his license and lost his job, if he was really thrown in prison for god’s sake, what would happen to Sophie?
I didn’t have any idea where her mother was but I had never seen her and I had never heard the vaguest mention of her. If David Wyatt was no longer in the picture, would she show up to pick up the slack? And if not, where would Sophie wind up? The last place on the planet I wanted to see that precious little thing was in the foster care system. I couldn’t think of anything that would take the light right out of her faster than that would.
I flopped back on my new bed and tried very hard not to think about that. If I could manage to keep my thought all squarely on Nikki and the life that had been taken away from her through David’s arrogance I thought I would be okay. It was time to shut off my bleeding heart and focus on the thing I needed. And I felt like I really did need it. Needed it to survive.
“Nikki would be proud.”
Dr. Johnson had said that to me when I first agreed to help him take David down. He had said it with a sugary sweet sincerity in his voice that I couldn’t help but read as false. I had wanted to believe it, to believe that what he was saying was true, and part of me still believed it. If I didn’t I wouldn’t have gone so far. I quit my job for Christ’s sake. That was dedication. But now that everything had slowed down for a moment and I had time to rest, to think, I started to think about Nikki and what she would actually think if she knew what I was doing.
Could she see me? Was she up there somewhere looking down on every move I made? And if she was, was she proud or was she appalled? Nikki had always been wholly good, much sweeter than I could ever help to be. I had this tiny little voice in the back of my head telling me now that this was not what she would have wanted. It made me feel a little bit crazy, to tell the truth. It split my head in two so that I could not determine which version of things was most likely to be true. It was important to know the truth. It would mean everything for what my course of action should really be.
“I’m going to have to get to know him.”
Looking with blind eyes at the ceiling above me, I whispered those words to myself. I knew it was just a whisper, but it felt a lot more like a
scream. I didn’t want to get to know him. I wanted him to stay the asshole guy whose impatience and hubris had gotten my sister killed. My little Nikki. But the thing was, he was already more than that asshole guy. Now he had a house and a little girl who liked The Wizard of Oz just like I did when I was small. I couldn’t set out to destroy him without a second thought because, even if I had already lost so much, he was a man who also had a lot to lose. How do you just destroy a family without making sure the patriarch deserves it?
So yes, I would get to know him, even if it hurt. I would get to know him but I would also keep my eyes and ears open for anything out of the ordinary. I was a pretty observant girl and if there was anything off about David, I would find it.
A person couldn’t hide what they were all of the time, even a person as intelligent as David Wyatt. If he really was responsible for Nikki’s passing the way that Dr. Johnson and I believed he might be, I would find the proof. God help me, I would find the proof and I would expose him and let the chips fall where they may.