Open Secret

by Janice Kay Johnson

  She took a ragged breath and realized her fingernails were biting into her palms. When she uncurled her hands, she saw dents nearly deep enough to be cuts across her palm, defacing the landscape of her lifelines.

  A whimper escaped her. She looked frantically around to be sure no one had heard.

  Pretend. She had to pretend. She could stare at the computer screen, mimic complete absorption. She could do this. She could get through four more hours.

  Then she could go home and try to figure out how she really felt about everyone in her life.

  And about herself.

  CARRIE THANKED her co-worker for the lift and went straight to the apartment manager’s door. She’d called earlier in the day and asked for another key to be made.

  The manager, a gruff woman in her fifties, came to the door. “Carrie, hold on.” She left her standing in the hall and returned in a moment, holding out a key. “I’ll have to tack a couple of dollars onto your July rent.”

  “No problem. I really appreciate this. Now if I can just find a car…” She’d told an abbreviated story about returning the car to the person who’d helped finance it, handing over all her keys by mistake.

  The manager looked surprised. “Isn’t that your car in your slot?”

  “What?”

  “There’s a note under the windshield.”

  Her car? How could it possibly be here?

  “I’d better go take a look.” She held up the key as she backed away. “Thanks again.”

  “If someone else’s car is in your spot, let me know. We’ve got rules.”

  She knew they did, and that those rules were strictly enforced. Careless residents had had cars towed away during the night because they’d parked in the wrong places.

  Carrie walked to her end of the complex. Long before she got there, she could see the bright blue Miata parked in its assigned space. Her heart was pounding by the time she was able to touch the fender. As if in a dream, she circled the car and took the envelope from under the wiper blade. Her name was scrawled in her father’s distinctive hand on the front.

  She tore it open and read the brief note.

  Carrie, I said things I didn’t mean. Your mother gave me hell and she was right. No matter what, you’re our daughter, and this car was a gift we bestowed with pleasure. Please call us.

  At the bottom, he signed it, Dad, followed by a P.S.

  Left your keys with the neighbor in 205.

  Pressing the note to her breast, Carrie closed her eyes against the sting of tears.

  TONIGHT, Mark’s subject wandered down University Avenue—locally known as The Ave—and window-shopped. He finally turned into the University Bookstore and browsed for a good hour. Mark stayed a couple of aisles away, waiting for a woman to approach the balding, middle-aged bank loan officer. Why the hell else would he linger first in the travel section, then psychology, and finally gardening, all without picking a single book off the shelf?

  But when a couple of women did pass, apparently by happenstance, he didn’t even glance toward them. Not the behavior of a man waiting for someone to join him.

  Without so much as touching a book, he left the store at last and turned north on University. He’d been killing time, was Mark’s best guess. Had to do something, didn’t care what that something was.

  The sidewalks were crowded with the usual mix of university students, beggars, upscale shoppers and local residents just trying to do an errand or catch a bus, making it easy for Mark to hang back unnoticed.

  When the target turned into a Starbucks, he thought, Okay, now we’re talking.

  Mark loitered outside and watched as the guy stood in line and actually did order, then went to sit at a tiny table toward the back.

  Where he sipped his tall latte or whatever the hell it was with excruciating slowness, skimming a newspaper that had been lying on the table, and never once even looked up to see who was walking by his table or coming in the front.

  Half an hour later, he came out and ambled down The Ave, ending up at his car. Mark got in his own and followed the guy home.

  He’d now trailed the potentially straying husband for three long, tedious evenings and seen no sign whatsoever that the guy was looking to connect with a woman. What he was doing was anybody’s guess.

  Mark headed home himself. After thanking Heidi and paying her, he ate reheated burgundy beef on brown rice, spent some time with Michael, supervised his bath and tucked him in.

  Finally he was free to call Carrie.

  “Hey,” he said when she answered. “You got into your apartment.”

  “Yes, the manager made me a new key, but, Mark… My dad brought my car back today! When I got home, it was parked in my usual slot and he’d left the keys with a neighbor.”

  Mark settled into his chair in the living room. “Did he call you or leave a note?”

  “He left a note. It’s right here.” The phone crackled, and then she came back. Her voice, steady when she started reading the note to him, was wavering by the end. “I’ve almost called them tonight about a thousand times, but I keep chickening out.”

  “Do it,” he advised. “If you delay too long, it’ll make for more awkwardness.”

  “I know. But it’s probably too late tonight. Isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know. What time do your parents usually go to bed?”

  “They’d probably still be up.” She sounded uncertain, more, he suspected, about whether she was ready to call than about her parents’ sleeping habits.

  “Do you want to do it right now?”

  “I should, shouldn’t I? But, oh, Mark, I said awful things to Suzanne today! I was as bad as my dad!”

  He listened to this whole sad story, too, and made what he hoped were appropriate responses. The whole time, chest tight, he wondered if she’d given him even a passing thought today. He’d spent the entire day fighting his desire to call her. He had barely dropped her off when he started wishing he could hear her voice even if he couldn’t see her, hold her, kiss her. He’d been like a teenager madly in love for the first time, unable to concentrate on anything else.

  Meantime, she had been engaged in new dramas concerning her parents and her sister. He had evidently been relegated in her mind to his role as confidante and advisor.

  The fact that he’d also become her lover was apparently incidental.

  He gritted his teeth and tried to concentrate on what she was saying, something about her being the rope in a tug-of-war between Suzanne and her adoptive parents.

  He was being petty. He’d known from the get-go that she was in the midst of a major identity crisis, and the scene yesterday with her father undoubtedly had been traumatic. It was bad timing—though maybe not surprising—that suppressed tension between Carrie and Suzanne had blown up today, too.

  Maybe she felt secure about him, thought their relationship would hold while she figured out the other parts of her life.

  And maybe, Mark thought, last night hadn’t meant the same thing to her that it had to him. She’d been upset, she couldn’t go home, he was there. Sex could be handy when you wanted to block something out. It had been impulse. She’d gone with the moment, they’d had a great night, but her emotional storms involved other people.

  He despised himself for feeling sullen and wounded. Maybe he was the one who wasn’t ready for a relationship, not if his ego was so fragile it needed constant stroking.

  Not constant, the hurt part of him argued. But couldn’t she once have said, I missed you today? I thought about you? Last night was special?

  His patience suddenly evaporated. “Carrie,” he interrupted, “it will be too late if you don’t call your parents pretty quick. Why don’t we hang up, and you do it right now?”

  In a small voice, she asked, “Can I call you afterward?”

  “You know, I really need to hit the sack,” he lied. “I got home not very long ago, and I have to be in to the office early.”

  “And you didn’t get much slee
p last night.”

  Not that he’d minded, but—no, sleep had occupied only a small part of the previous night.

  “We’ll talk tomorrow, okay?”

  “Sure.” She sounded both brave and desolate, piercing him with guilt and a renewed sense of his own idiocy. But before he could retract and say, Call me anyway, she agreed, wished him good-night, and hung up.

  The connection severed, he set down the phone, frowned at the blank screen of the TV and thought, Yep, now you’re better off. Sure you are. She won’t call back, but you’ve got your pride.

  And a house that felt damned empty despite his sleeping son upstairs.

  WOW, THIS WAS HARD! As she dialed, Carrie felt as if she had the flu—shaky, hot and cold, dizzy.

  “Hello?” her mother answered, sounding wary. Afraid a telemarketer was calling. That, or her daughter.

  “Mom?” Carrie said in a small voice.

  “Oh, sweetheart! Are you okay? I’m so glad you called!”

  “I’m okay. Mom, I’m so sorry! I’ve had a hard time dealing with all this, and…”

  “No, we’re the ones who are sorry. You should never have had to find out like this that you were adopted.”

  “You must have had your reasons.”

  “Yes, but all selfish ones. Oh, Carrie! I was so afraid, after your father said the things he did… He cried after you left.”

  “He cried? Daddy?” Her father was such a remote man. Pleasant was his version of giddy.

  “He loves you, you know.”

  “I thought I did know. But he was so angry.” Now she was the one crying.

  “He knew how upset I was, and I think that shook him. He’s never quite known what to do when I get emotional.”

  Her mother was warm and affectionate, but not given to big mood swings. Carrie didn’t remember ever seeing her cry, either. She invariably carried herself with dignity and grace.

  Off balance, Carrie wondered if Mom hadn’t always been that way. Had she schooled herself for her husband’s sake?

  “When I got home from work today and the car was there, I broke down in sobs.” Carrie gave a watery laugh. “What else is new? I seem to be crying all the time lately!”

  “Me, too.” Her mom blew her nose. “Oh, dear. We’re a pair, aren’t we?”

  “Is…is Daddy home?”

  “Yes, I’ll get him.”

  He came on a minute later. “Carrie?” He cleared his throat. “Did you get your keys okay?”

  “Yes, thank you. Daddy, I’m so sorry I hurt you both.”

  Sounding more shaken than she’d ever heard him, he said, “I’m sorry, too. I hope you know I don’t regret a minute since we brought you home. Or—” he tried to sound as if he were kidding “—a dollar.”

  “I guess I should explain why I took it the way I did.”

  “No. You don’t have to explain anything. Just…come home, Carrie. Talk to us.”

  “Okay,” she said meekly. “Can I come to dinner?”

  “Tomorrow? We’ll expect you. Here’s your mother.”

  Her mom came back on, and they talked for another minute.

  When Carrie hung up the phone, she wished desperately that she could call Mark and tell him everything, including her unsettling realization that, in order to build a new relationship with her parents, she was going to have to get to know them in a new way.

  To think she hadn’t known him that long, and now it was always Mark she wanted to call, wanted to see. In the midst of all her confusion, she’d become sure about only one thing: she couldn’t imagine her life without him.

  BY THE TIME he got into the office the next morning, Mark felt surly, and his head still throbbed despite two cups of coffee and more ibuprofen than was good for his liver.

  His partner Gwen was talking to their secretary, but her head turned when he came in and she trailed him to his office.

  “Haven’t seen much of you.”

  “I’ve been busy.” He dropped into his chair and then winced when his brain bounced inside his skull.

  She smiled. “Not your best morning, eh?”

  “You could say that.” He scowled at her. “Do you have something to say, or are you just in the mood to chat?”

  A couple of years younger than him, a lean, athletic redhead he’d met during criminal profiling training at Quantico, Gwendolyn Mayer settled into the chair he kept for clients, her sunny smile never faltering. “Oh, I just felt like chatting.”

  “If my head explodes, Kincaid Investigations is yours.”

  “That bad, huh?” She rose again, to her leggy height of nearly six feet, and strolled around behind him. With her strong, capable hands, she began to knead his shoulders and neck.

  He groaned and leaned into her hands.

  “How’s that surveillance going?”

  “If I were a CIA agent, I might find the guy’s activities intriguing. As it is…he’s sure as hell not trawling for a woman.”

  “What is he doing?”

  He told her. She made interested noises and kept kneading, finding knots and working them out.

  “I’ll call the wife, end this.” He was embarrassed that his speech had slurred.

  “Good idea.” She patted his back. “Better?”

  His headache had dissipated. “Yeah,” he said with surprise. “Some. Thanks.”

  “How’s it going with Carrie?”

  He tensed, then made a deliberate effort to relax. “Too soon to say. How was your date last night?”

  When he’d complained about having to shadow the most boring man in America, Gwen had given him a wicked smile and offered that she had a hot date.

  Now she grimaced and said, “He talked about his ex-wife all evening. I sent him home early.”

  “You and I should have fallen in love,” Mark said gloomily.

  “Yeah. Would have been convenient, wouldn’t it? Might have been messy, though, if it hadn’t worked.”

  “Yeah, it would have been.” He rotated his shoulders experimentally. “Your date was an idiot.”

  “You know, if I were that big a prize, I’d have been snapped up years ago.” She flipped a hand at him and strolled out.

  He was left wondering, despite his own preoccupations, whether Gwen’s usual breezy talk about not wanting to settle for one man was a smoke screen. Could his partner be lonely?

  The suspicion was jarring. Maybe he wasn’t as observant as he liked to believe he was.

  His headache seemed to be returning full-force. Rubbing his fingers against his temple, he picked up the phone.

  “Mrs. Anderson,” he said, after identifying himself. “I think it’s time I quit wasting your money and you have a talk with your husband.”

  “What do you mean? Oh!” she whimpered. “You discovered something horrible? Something you know will upset me? He’s not…he’s not a transvestite or…or…”

  “Have you caught him trying on your clothes?”

  “Of course not!”

  He switched the phone to the other ear and began to work on his right temple. “No, Mrs. Anderson, I haven’t discovered something horrible. In fact, I haven’t discovered anything at all except that your husband is spending his evenings away from home doing absolutely nothing except killing time.”

  She sounded shocked. “Killing time?”

  “It’s as if…” Big mouth, he thought, closing it in the nick of time.

  Or not.

  “As if he doesn’t want to come home,” she said slowly. “Is that what you meant?”

  “If you two are having marital difficulties…”

  “We’re not! We’ve only been married a year. This is a second marriage for me, but Ronald’s first. We’ve been inseparable! Until he started making excuses and going out several nights a week.”

  They sat in silence for a moment.

  “Do you suppose,” she said tentatively, “he doesn’t like being with me all the time?”

  He cleared his throat. “From what you tell me, your hu
sband’s job involves constant dealing with other people.”

  “Yes.”

  “If he was used to living alone, perhaps he’s feeling the need for some solitude. That doesn’t necessarily reflect on his feelings for you.”

  “Oh.” She was quiet for a minute. “Well, to tell you the truth, I’ve been missing my bridge night with the girls—Ronald doesn’t like to play bridge, you see, and I told him I didn’t mind. And I was enjoying a quilting class until I became too busy dating him.”

  “Please talk to your husband,” Mark said again. “All I can tell you is that he seemed to have no interest in other women and wasn’t meeting anyone else, male or female. He really just, uh, wandered.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Kincaid.” Her voice was lighter, free of the misery that had weighted it during their previous conversations. “I will.”

  “Goodbye, Mrs. Anderson,” Mark said. Hanging up, he thought, Talk to each other. Uh-huh. Easy advice to give, harder to do than it sounded.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  MARK CALLED Carrie the next day at work to ask her out to dinner. She had to tell him that she was going to her parents’.

  “So you did talk to them.”

  “Did you think I’d chicken out?”

  “Hey! Don’t put words in my mouth. I thought you might decide to wait a day or two. Or they might have already gone to bed, or been out for the evening.”

  She decided to forgive him. “I called, we all cried a little, and tonight I’m going to see them.” She hesitated. “You know, I could let them know I’m bringing someone.”

  “Bringing someone? You mean me?” He sounded horrified.

  “Chicken?” she mocked.

  “This is a case where discretion is the better part of valor. Right this minute, they are not interested in meeting a guy their daughter is dating. They want to gather their daughter back into the fold. And, oh, yeah, said guy is the one who’s to blame for the current tumult. No, I think this is a little too early to meet your parents.”