by Karen Young
A door with intricately worked leaded panes enhanced the entrance to the house. He’d barely touched the old-fashioned doorbell when he saw movement deep inside. Someone approached, but with the distortion of the glass, it was hard to tell whether it was Cara or not until the door opened.
It was. A very pregnant Cara.
“Hello, Cam.”
“Cara. You’re looking—”
She smiled. “Fat?”
Happy. She looked awkward and bloated and very happy. He managed to keep the shock off his face and glanced at her enormous belly. “Do we have time for this or are you on your way to the hospital?”
“I’m late—a week, according to the doctor,” she said, cradling herself with both hands. “And no such luck that it’ll be today, but don’t I wish.” She hesitated, showing some unease as her smile slipped a bit. “Come in, Cam. Please.”
“Thanks.” He stepped over the threshold, and while she closed the door behind him, took a look about. Like the outside of the house, inside was very appealing in a homey, eclectic mixture kind of way. He was having trouble fitting the woman he’d been married to into this house and, above all, this situation.
“Let’s have coffee in the breakfast room,” Cara said. “It’s made just the way you like it. I’m betting you haven’t changed in that. Dark roast, black and straight, right?”
“Right.” From the hall, they went through a dining room and entered a light and airy kitchen, fully modernized. True to its origins, a breakfast nook was nestled in a bay window area looking out on to a stunningly landscaped backyard. She led him there and he took the chair she indicated. Coffee mugs were already in place on two flowery place mats. She took a decanter from a Williams-Sonoma machine and poured coffee into Cam’s mug. It was hot and fragrant and—she was right—just the way he liked it.
“Herbal tea for me,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “I’m counting the days until I can once again enjoy a decent cup of coffee.” With the mug of tea cupped in her hands, she slipped into the chair opposite him. “Coffee okay?”
“It’s fine. Perfect.”
She smiled. “Good.”
Cam was still trying to get his bearings. He didn’t know what he’d expected from Cara, but it wasn’t this. He’d spent the last five years infuriated with her, bitterly resenting her preoccupation with Rosetti while Jack’s mental state deteriorated unnoticed. Now she was remarried, living a normal life in a cute little neighborhood—not quite suburbia—and having another baby to replace Jack.
“Interesting place you’ve got here,” he said, adding, “especially the landscaping.”
“Thanks.” She beamed. That was the only word to describe her expression when she looked out at yellow, red and orange flowers framing a bubbling fountain in a riot of color. “One of the disadvantages of being at this stage of my pregnancy is that I can’t play in the dirt.” She paused, patting her stomach. “I suppose I could try, but once on my hands and knees, how would I get upright again?”
“I never knew you were interested in gardening.” Or that you had a sense of humor.
“I live for gardening, Cam,” she said, still smiling. “But don’t look so surprised. I didn’t know it myself until I married Anthony. He’s a horticulturist, and once he introduced me to the joys of gardening, we began to fight over who gets which part of the property to tend.”
We began to fight. That he could understand, as he and Cara had spent most of their marriage in a tug-of-war. Who was this happily contented woman? “A horticulturist,” he said, playing for time to climb out of the rabbit hole.
“He teaches. He’s a college professor.”
“I guess I didn’t know that,” Cam said.
“How are things with you?” she said, her tone and expression gentling.
“Okay, I guess.” He studied the coffee in his mug before looking up at her. “I’m living in my parents’ house in Rose Hill.”
“I know. And it’s a lovely place. I always thought it needed someone who’d love it and restore it.”
He managed a laugh. “Well, I guess that’s me. It was in sad shape at first, but I’ve been doing some of the repairs myself.”
“You?” Her eyebrows rose at his nod. “Well, now you’ve surprised me.”
“Then we’re even.”
“I know. I must seem almost like a stranger,” she said, and impulsively touched the back of his hand. “The person I am now is nothing like the person you knew, Cam. I know I hurt you. I wish I could go back, do things differently.”
“Was it losing Jack that changed you?”
She nodded, again tasting her tea with quiet contentment. “And finding Anthony.”
He leaned back, nursing his coffee and studying her almost as he would a puzzling element in one of the criminal cases he researched. It was difficult to find a hint of the sleek and sophisticated woman he’d met and married in New York in this earthy Cara who contemplated petunias and drank herbal tea. Even when pregnant with Jack, she’d watched her diet so rigidly that by the time she’d given birth, she’d gained only about sixteen pounds.
“What did you want to talk to me about, Cam?”
He hesitated, finding it difficult, in the face of such obvious joy, to broach a subject that was sure to be painful. Somehow, Cara had managed to put together a new life, complete with husband, home and plans for a new baby. He hitched his chin toward the enormous mound of her abdomen. “What’s the baby, boy or girl?”
Her expression grew tender. “We don’t know,” she said, again spreading both hands over her precious cargo, then added, “Our choice. But whatever it is will be just fine since I never expected to be a mother again. After Jack died, I thought that part of me had died, too.” Her gaze drifted to the flowers around the fountain. “You should never say never.”
“Anthony again?” he guessed.
She gave him a sideways look softened with a smile. “Who else?”
Cameron studied her thoughtfully for a moment, wondering whether or not at this stage of her pregnancy it would be risky to ask her to think back to a time that had to be the darkest in her life. “I came over to ask you some questions about Jack, Cara. But I don’t want to do anything that might cause harm at this stage in your pregnancy.”
“What kind of questions?”
“I haven’t wanted to think about how Jack died or what might have been going on to push him to do what he did. When it happened, I was looking to hang the blame somewhere. I didn’t leave any stone unturned trying to get a fix on why.” He got up and went to the window, keeping his back to her. His next words were spoken not so much to Cara as to himself. “Why would a kid with everything going for him do something like…he did without giving a hint that he was so close to the edge?”
“Oh, Lord, you don’t know how many times I’ve asked myself that question,” Cara replied. “There is no answer.”
He turned to look at her. “There has to be an answer. I didn’t find anything five years ago, but I can’t accept that now. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. He must have given some indication that something was bothering him.”
“Only the usual. He was fifteen. He was moody and irritable. I didn’t dream his behavior meant anything more than the teenage ups and downs all kids feel.” Her hands spread wide over her abdomen as if protecting this child. “Believe me, I’ve racked my brain trying to find a clue I might have overlooked. I’ve agonized over being blind to what was going on with Jack because I was distracted by what was going on with Anthony and me. Still—I swear to God, Cam—I can think of nothing out of the ordinary.”
“What was he talking about at the time? That should give us a clue.”
“What else? Sports in general. Baseball in particular. He’d poured his heart and soul into making the team, even though I don’t think it was as wonderful as he thought it would be after he was in.”
“Why do you say that?”
She shrugged. “Just a feeling. When I tried to get him to talk a
bout it, he was evasive and I put it down to a boy’s reluctance to talk male stuff with his mom. It was frustrating, but I consoled myself by knowing he had a straight line to you and anything he was hesitant about saying to me, he could say to you. As for admitting to me that anything was wrong, no, he never did.” Her brows knitted as she thought back. “I remember thinking that if he was having trouble adjusting, why was it after he’d made it through the hard part. We’d moved from New York, he’d entered a new school, a new world, realistically speaking. Then in a relatively short time, he’d been accepted. Which was not an easy thing, coming to Texas from New York.”
“It’s never easy being the new kid on the block, even if you move from one part of town to another,” Cam said.
She nodded, agreeing. “At the time, I was convinced that getting involved in sports made the transition somewhat easier.”
Cam remembered how impressed Jack had been with the school’s reputation in sports even before he enrolled. It had made the bitter pill of separation a little easier to swallow for both of them, or so Cam had believed at the time. Now he wondered if he’d seen just what he wanted to see to keep from having to disrupt his own life and career.
“It took all of that first year and the entire fall semester of the second before he knew for sure that he was in,” Cara said. “We rocked along for a while with him living and breathing baseball. But next thing I knew, he began to talk about quitting. He—”
“Quitting the team?” Cam said sharply. Jack had never mentioned anything of the kind to him. “He talked about giving up baseball?”
“Yes, but it was hard for me to take him seriously, considering how much he’d wanted to play. I thought it was more likely that he was getting static from other players, perhaps someone whose position was affected when the coach put him on varsity. Some of those kids had been playing together since they were six years old.” Still thoughtful, she brought the mug of tea to her lips and took a little sip. “He was such a super athlete, Cam, and the coach had the good sense to recognize it.”
“That was another question I wanted to ask,” he told her, grimacing at the taste of cold coffee. “What did he think of Coach Tyson?”
“Here, let me heat that up for you.” She started to struggle to her feet, but Cam was already helping himself.
Leaning against the counter, he asked again, “Was he tight with Tyson?”
“He certainly was at first. All he could talk about was the man’s fabulous success rate and the possibility of breaking into the pro ranks if he could just get on the team. And of course, Monk Tyson had all the power there.”
“You said ‘at first.’ Did he change?”
She frowned. “I’m not sure. Tyson pushed the kids, made them work hard, and if Jack stopped gushing about how great he was, I suppose I assumed that he was reacting to the coach’s truly demanding regimen. Sort of like army recruits react to their drill instructors. They ‘hate’ them—” she used her fingers as quotation marks “—but not really.”
“What did you think about Tyson?”
“I only met him once briefly at a ball game. As you know, he was at the funeral, he and a whole cadre of athletes from Rose Hill High. Not that I remember much about that…or about the next few months, to tell the truth. In looking at the register a few months later, I saw their names, which is how I know they came.”
“What about—”
“On the other hand—”
They both spoke at once and Cam held back what he was going to say. “On the other hand…what?”
“Now that you mention Monk Tyson, it reminds me of something Anthony said.”
“What?”
“Well, being a teacher himself, he has some insight about these things, as you can imagine. I mean, maybe he’s a bit more sensitive about the student-teacher relationship—or athletes in this case—than we parents are, so he looks a little deeper, you know?” Her face lit with enthusiasm. “He’s such a good teacher, Cam. You should be here some night when his students show up for these impromptu sessions. It’s just the most—”
“Cara.” He stopped her. “I’m sure Anthony’s a sterling fellow and a gifted teacher. I’m also delighted that you seem so happy now, but what did he say about Monk Tyson?”
“Oh. Of course. Sorry.” She smiled, then when he blew out an impatient breath, rushed on. “He said that he’d known teachers like Tyson who wielded power and control with a ruthless disregard for any long-term damage that might result. He said that Tyson struck him as a bully and a tyrant. Then he said that Tyson probably needed the adulation of those young athletes as much as some men needed sex.”
Rachel was studying Jason Pate’s file and wondering what tactic she could use to persuade the boy to come in and have another talk with her when, with a brief knock and no hesitation, Marta opened the door and stepped into her office.
“Is the doctor in?” she asked, leaning against the door, a can of cola in one hand and a fistful of mail in the other.
“What you see is what you get.” Rachel closed the file as Marta moved away from the door and perched gingerly on the edge of a chair. “What’s up?”
Marta shuffled through her mail, pretending to look at it. “Pete followed me back to my house Saturday night.”
Rachel smiled. “I’m shocked.”
“I refused to let him come inside.”
“Why?”
“What kind of question is that? Have you forgotten? I broke off our engagement when I caught him having sex with that rookie sexpot, Tammy What’s-her-name.”
“Tanya was her name.”
“Whatever.” Marta rolled her eyes and tossed the mail on Rachel’s desk. “We had set the date for our wedding. If he was getting cold feet, he should have told me before hopping in the sack with Tootsie.”
“Tanya.”
“So I told him to buzz off last night.” She glared at the label on the cola can. “Maybe not in those exact words.”
Rachel could imagine the exact words Marta had used. She had never dealt with her anger over Pete’s betrayal, and even now, it took little provocation to flare up. Nor had she ever given him an opportunity to try to explain himself. Deny it, she might, but she was still emotionally vulnerable where Pete was concerned.
“I guess that’s that, then,” Rachel said, tapping her pen on Jason’s file. “So you’re rid of him now for another six years. Isn’t that about how long it’s been since you’ve seen him?”
“Five and a half. Remember, we bumped into him at the state fair that time.”
“Ah…” Rachel nodded. It had been only a few months after the breakup and not a moment to remember. Marta’s sense of betrayal at the time was still too new and her pride and heart were still wounded. She’d refused Pete’s plea for a second chance outright. Rachel doodled a little with her pen. “He phoned several times after that, as I recall. A less-determined man would have given up, it seems to me.”
“Yeah, you’d think so.” She toyed with the can and dropped her gaze to her feet, where it remained until Rachel spoke again.
“Are you having second thoughts about closing the door in his face last night?”
“We never got as far as the door. He pulled up behind me in my driveway and that’s where we talked.”
“Well, at least you talked, which is more than you did when it happened.”
“Uh-huh.”
Rachel waited and, when Marta still sat thinking, slipped her pen into a cup holding various other things, then took a tube of hand cream from her top drawer and squirted some into her palm. “I don’t know about you,” she said, working the cream into her skin, “but my hands have been so dry. I must use this stuff half a dozen times a day.”
“Yeah.” Marta’s gaze strayed to the window.
“It’s the humidity,” Rachel said, recapping the tube. “Or lack thereof, I can never decide which.”
“Uh-huh.” Marta’s gaze was still fixed thoughtfully somewhere else.
“
When it’s high, my hair won’t do a thing, and when it’s low, it turns my skin into alligator hide, just like that TV commercial.” Closing the drawer, she stole a glance at Marta’s face. “And speaking of pets, I’m considering getting Kendall an alligator. Don’t you think she’ll love that?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Marta, hello-o…”
“What?” Marta blinked, looking at Rachel. “I’m sorry. I missed that.”
“And that’s because…” Rachel paused, waiting.
“Because I was awake until 4:00 a.m. last night,” Marta said, “can you believe it? After I swore I’d never again waste one minute thinking about Pete Singletary. I worked like hell to kill every particle of emotion I ever felt for that man, Rachel, and it took three hours in your garage to stir it all up again.” She got up, dodging the corner of the sofa that crowded the small office, then turned back to say, “But here’s the craziest part of all. He didn’t just get back in his truck and leave when I told him to. No, not Pete. Uh-uh. He’s so damn…arrogant. He had the nerve to…to scold me, can you believe that?”
“It seems risky, considering.”
“He said if I hadn’t been so damn set against hearing him out…” She thumped her chest. “Me, stubborn! As if I was supposed to just let it slide that he’d got the hots for that…that rookie cop and brought her to his apartment and screwed her in the same bed where we—” Pacing now, words failing her, she dashed at the start of tears in her eyes. “Anyway, he said we should have talked it over. I should have let him try to explain. He said if I’d done that, maybe we could have worked it out. Maybe I could have f-forgiven him.” Sniffing in disgust, she tossed the can in the trash. “As if all it took were a few sweet words and I’d say, oh, it’s okay what you did, Pete, honey. I know men have needs.” With a pained sound, she pressed both eyes with a thumb and forefinger. “As if any explanation could excuse what he did.”