An Honorable Man

by Darlene Gardner

  While Ben’s subconscious might conjure up Sierra in his hotel room, no way would it add his father.

  Unfortunately, that meant he wasn’t dreaming.

  “Do either of you want to tell me what you’re doing here?” Ben wasn’t sure which of the two he’d been more surprised to find at his hotel-room door. Probably his father. He hadn’t seen or talked to him in months.

  “I ran into this young lady in the lobby.” His father had always been an expert at avoiding the direct question, leaving Ben to draw his own conclusions. He guessed Connor had told their father where to find Ben, but couldn’t fathom why his old man had felt compelled to make the two-hour drive from Philadelphia.

  “I overheard him tell the desk clerk he was your father.” Sierra’s response wasn’t any more enlightening. When her chest expanded, as though she was fortifying herself with oxygen, he realized she wasn’t through talking. “I’m here to apologize.”

  Ben said nothing. Her refusal to be straight with him last night had hurt, and he was unwilling to make things easier for her.

  “You were right. I do know where my mother is.” Her words were slow and measured. “She’s in Atlantic City with a group from her retirement community. She’s bad about answering her cell phone so it wouldn’t do any good to call her. But she’ll be in town for the festival.”

  “Last night you were determined to keep me away from your mother,” Ben said. “Why the change of heart?”

  “You were right. Why should I lie when there’s nothing to hide?” Her eyes touched on his, the look in them contrite. “I’m sorry, Ben. I never should have lied to you in the first place.”

  As easily as that, he forgave her.

  “I’m missing something.” Deep furrows appeared in his father’s brow. “I don’t get why you need to talk to the doctor’s wife, Ben. It’s not about that e-mail, is it?”

  “In a way.” Ben avoided looking at Sierra. “I haven’t been able to rule out Dr. Whitmore’s involvement in Mom’s death.”

  “I don’t care what that e-mail said,” his father stated forcefully. “That doctor had nothing to do with it.”

  In the past whenever Ben had asked for details about his mother’s death, he’d received a neutral response before his father changed the subject. Ben had never pressed the issue, figuring his father had no more information to share.

  “How can you be sure of that?” Ben asked. “You were across the state when she died.”

  “There are things about your mom you don’t know.” His father’s head sagged, as though he was having trouble holding it up. “Things I should have told you a long time ago.”

  “What things?”

  His father looked pointedly at Sierra, then back at him. “This isn’t something you’ll be wanting an audience to hear.”

  Sierra instantly got to her feet. “You’re right. I’ll leave you two alone.”

  It made sense for her to go. If his father revealed anything Sierra needed to know, Ben could fill her in later. She touched him on the arm, silently conveying with a look that she was on his side.

  Before he realized he was going to reach for it, he caught her hand. It felt like an anchor. She gazed at him questioningly with the same expression that had softened him earlier. “I’d like for you to stay,” he said.

  “You sure?” The question came from his father, whose eyes darted between them. If he were trying to figure out the nature of their relationship, it was an impossible task. “This is gonna be hard for you to hear, Ben. That’s why I drove up here to tell you in person.”

  “I’m sure,” Ben said. “But it’s up to Sierra.”

  He let go of her hand so she wouldn’t feel pressured to stay if she was disinclined. Sierra sat down on the bed beside him without another word.

  His father closed his eyes and kneaded the space above his nose for a good five seconds before he started to talk. “Your mom didn’t come to Indigo Springs to visit her parents, son. She came to live with them. She wanted a divorce.”

  Ben’s stomach churned and beads of sweat popped up on his forehead. The possibility of trouble in his parents’ marriage had occurred to him when he heard about her trip to the bank, but he’d discounted it.

  “Me and your mother, we had problems. Right from the start,” his father continued. “She wasn’t even eighteen when you were born. Way too young to be a mom.”

  “She was a good mother.” Ben could hear the defensiveness in his voice, even as he recognized the rocky beginning could explain why his mother had kept her maiden name.

  “Yeah, she was,” his father said. “Should have said she was too young to be married. She tried to make it work, but it was hard. I was on the road, driving my truck, working my butt off to make a living. She was at home by herself, watching all three of you kids. I didn’t even notice her getting depressed.”

  “Depressed?” Ben repeated. “That doesn’t sound like Mom.”

  “She did a good job hiding it. Don’t think you ever saw her crying.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t understand what was wrong with her. When I got off the road, I needed downtime. But she said caring for you boys was too much for her. She kept taking off, leaving me with you kids. Then I’d find out somebody had seen her in the neighborhood, just sitting in her car.”

  The information was coming so fast Ben could hardly process it. He’d been twelve when his mother died, but surely that was old enough to figure out something was wrong. He hadn’t sensed a thing.

  “Did she see a doctor about her condition?” Sierra interjected.

  “Not then,” his father answered. “That was mostly my fault. I told her to snap out of it. But things just kept getting worse. She wasn’t eating. Some days she could hardly get out of bed.”

  His father paused, and Ben was struck with a dim memory of himself banging through the door and calling for his mother after coming home to a silent house. An image crystallized of her in bed with the covers pulled up to her chin. She’d said she was sick, that a neighbor was watching his brothers.

  “Then one day she told me…” His father stopped and cleared his throat before starting again. “She told me she’d thought about killing herself.”

  Ben shook his head despite the memory of his mother in bed in the middle of the day. His father seemed to be talking about a stranger. “No,” he said. “Mom loved us. She wouldn’t have done that.”

  “You didn’t let me finish, son. It scared her bad. Scared me, too. That’s when I wised up about her seeing a doctor.”

  “Dr. Whitmore?” Ben asked.

  “No. A doctor back home. He put her on something. An antidepressant.” He named the brand. “Then she was like her old self. But things didn’t go back to normal.”

  “What do you mean?” Ben asked.

  “She started nagging me to find another job so I could be home more.” His father massaged the back of his neck, as though the story was causing him pain. “I couldn’t do that. Not with a mortgage, a wife and three kids to feed. I never thought she’d up and leave me.”

  It was a sad story, but hardly a tragic one. If that was all there was to it, his parents would have divorced and Ben and his brothers would have spent the rest of their childhood in Indigo Springs.

  His father drew a deep breath. “At some point, she must have stopped taking her antidepressants. After she died, her blood sample came back clean. No trace of drugs in her system at all.”

  Ben wanted to tell his father to shut up, but he couldn’t find his voice. Sierra put her hand on his thigh and lightly squeezed, as though bracing him for his father’s next words.

  “Son, I’m pretty sure your mother didn’t fall from that cliff,” he said. “I think she jumped.”

  BEN SAT WITH SIERRA in a quiet corner of Jimmy’s Diner, where they’d gone after his father headed back to Philadelphia. He wasn’t hungry, but she’d insisted he needed to fortify himself with breakfast.

  Food wouldn’t help him deal with the feelings roiling insid
e him. At this point, he didn’t think anything would. Except, possibly, Sierra. She was the sole bright point in what was turning out to be a dismal morning.

  “Your apology meant a lot to me,” Ben said after he placed his order with Ellie Marson, their waitress. “It’s ironic that now I owe you one.”

  “You owe me nothing,” Sierra said. “Everything you did was because you loved your mother, the same way I loved my father.”

  “Yeah, I loved her.” He couldn’t keep bitterness from spilling over into his words. “Turns out it was a hell of a lot more than she loved me and my brothers.”

  Sierra’s eyes widened. “Why would you say something like that?”

  “You heard my father. She got off her antidepressants. If she loved us so much, why did she do that? Why just give up?”

  “You don’t know that she gave up.” Sierra anchored her forearms on the table and leaned forward. “She might have gotten off the medication because she was suffering from side effects. The right antidepressant can work miracles. The wrong one can be a disaster.”

  He stared down at the table.

  “Nausea, weight gain, insomnia.” She ticked off the points. “They’re all common side effects. Sometimes they’re worse than the disease.”

  Ben appreciated her intent, but he wasn’t buying her rationale. “My father said her antidepressant worked great.”

  “Then maybe she thought she didn’t need them anymore. It could be something as simple as that.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” Ben said.

  “Or maybe your father is wrong,” Sierra said.

  His head jerked up. “Excuse me?”

  “He doesn’t know for sure what happened at the overlook. Nobody does. She could have slipped and fallen, the same way the newspaper reported.”

  “I wish there was a way to know for sure.” He’d investigated dozens of stories since getting the job at the Tribune and couldn’t remember the truth eluding him on a single one. “The not knowing, that’s the hardest part.”

  She reached across the table and covered his hand instead of pointing out he’d have to live with the uncertainty. She was special, he thought.

  “I wish—” he began.

  “Here you go.” Ellie Marson arrived with his plate of scrambled eggs and bacon, setting the food in front of him. “Can I get anything else for you, hon?”

  “No, thanks,” he said.

  Ellie left them to check on a slender redhead dining alone a few tables from them. Ben had noticed her earlier because she was watching them over the pages of her book.

  “What do you wish?” Sierra asked, reclaiming his attention.

  He wished they could explore what was developing between them, that Indigo Springs wasn’t such a long drive from Pittsburgh, that their time together wasn’t reaching an end.

  “I wish we’d met under different circumstances.” He turned his hand over, pressing their palms together, feeling the warmth of her skin, seeing it reflected in her eyes.

  “Me, too.” She sounded as though she really meant it. “I also wish I could stay while you finish breakfast, but I’m already late. If I don’t get to the office soon, Missy will not be happy.”

  “Missy?”

  “Missy Cromartie, our receptionist. She’s gets the backlash when we run behind schedule.”

  “You should go, then.” He tried a smile, didn’t quite manage to pull one off. “You don’t need to be treating your receptionist for high blood pressure.”

  She scooted partway across the booth, then stopped. “I’ll probably have to work through lunch.” She hesitated. “Will you still be in town when I’m done for the day?”

  Everything inside him rebelled at the thought of leaving Indigo Springs today. Despite all that had happened, he wasn’t ready to tell Sierra goodbye.

  “I’ll be here,” he said. “You can call me on my cell when you’re through. Give me your phone and I’ll enter the number.”

  She waited while he punched his information into her cell. Their fingers brushed when he handed the phone back to her.

  “Thanks.” He locked eyes with her. “For everything.”

  He stared down at his plate of food when she was gone, his appetite nonexistent. Despite the crash course Sierra had given him on antidepressants, he had to face the very real possibility his mother jumped from that cliff.

  The redhead who’d been watching them got up from her table and smoothed the skirt of her long, summer dress. She glanced over, then looked quickly away.

  Wonder what that’s about, he thought and decided to find out. Following his instincts had paid off more than once.

  “Excuse me.” He caught up to her between two vacant tables. “I couldn’t help noticing you looking at me. Do we know each other?”

  She gazed down at her feet, then snuck another glance at him. “I saw you at the library,” she said in a whisper more commonly heard inside a library than a restaurant.

  It was unlike him not to notice the people around him, yet she was unfamiliar. “When was that?”

  “I was shelving books near the reference desk when you asked Mrs. Wiesneski about that computer log.”

  The log that didn’t exist. He’d timed his return to the library to coincide with Mrs. Wiesneski’s day off, hoping to find a more forthcoming source. Her coworker had verified no records were kept of the people who used the public-access computers.

  “I’m not sure how I missed you,” Ben said. “I tried to talk to everyone who works there.”

  “Oh, I don’t work at the library,” she said in the same quiet voice. “I’m just there all the time since my computer started acting up. Sometimes I help out, kind of like a thank-you.”

  “Were you at the library last Friday?” he asked.

  “I’m there every day,” she said.

  His optimism waned. If she visited the library all the time, the days probably blurred one into another.

  “I don’t suppose you remember who else was using the public-access computers last Friday?” Ben asked, fully expecting to slam into another wall.

  “On the contrary,” she said in a confident, steady voice, “I remember perfectly.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  SIERRA GLANCED DOWN at the patient’s name on the file folder she plucked from the holder affixed to the exam room door. After leaving Ben, she’d feared it would be difficult to focus on work.

  She suspected that Laurie Grieb, however, would present a stimulating challenge.

  “Hi, Laurie.” She shut the door behind her after entering the room and focused on the young woman who sat on the exam table, her long legs dangling in space. “What brings you into the office today?”

  “As if you didn’t know,” Laurie grumbled.

  “Excuse me?” Sierra wasn’t well enough acquainted with Laurie to pick up on her moods.

  “Sara said you told her to make an appointment and let me know when it was,” Laurie said.

  Sierra set Laurie’s chart down on the flat surface of the desk while she considered how to deal with her reluctant patient. Honesty seemed the best approach. “Sara says you haven’t been feeling well. She’s worried about you.”

  “I love her, but she should mind her own business,” Laurie snapped. Despite the strength in her words, her face appeared overly pale beneath her long, curly hair. Smudges shadowed the area under her brown eyes. “I can take care of myself.”

  Sierra had witnessed Ben valiantly hiding his pain so recently it wasn’t difficult to recognize Laurie doing the same thing. Ben’s pain hadn’t been physical. Her guess was that Laurie’s wasn’t, either.

  “If you can take care of yourself,” Sierra asked evenly, “what are you doing here?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “In my experience, people who aren’t worried about their health don’t come to the doctor. No matter who makes the appointment.”

  Laurie’s brave face crumbled. Her lips trembled and she blinked a few times to keep the tears shimmering in her eyes
from falling.

  “What’s going on, Laurie?” Sierra prompted.

  “I’ll be thirty next year. When my aunt was thirty, she was diagnosed with leukemia. She died two years later.” Now that Laurie had started to talk, her words came fast and furious. “I’m nauseous and tired all the time. I looked it up on the Web, and those are some of the early symptoms of leukemia.”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” Sierra made herself speak calmly. “Those could be the symptoms of a lot of other things, too. Has your period been late?”

  “Well, yeah, but I’m irregular.”

  “Is it possible you’re pregnant?”

  Laurie’s long hair swung when she shook her head. “Me and Kenny—that’s my ex-husband who’ll be my husband again once we get around to remarrying—use birth control.”

  “Birth control isn’t one hundred percent effective.”

  “You don’t understand. We’ve been really careful. I was pregnant the first time we got married and everything fell apart when I miscarried. This time we’re waiting to have kids until we’re sure we’re ready.”

  Sierra mentally filed away that information and approached the exam table, unwilling to jump to conclusions before she had all the facts. “I’m going to listen to your heart and check out a couple of other things.”

  When she was through with the examination, she stood back and said, “Everything checks out so far. I’m going to need a urine sample from you. Then I’ll have a nurse come in and draw blood.”

  Fear shone out of Laurie’s eyes.

  Sierra touched her on the arm. “Try not to worry, Laurie. Drawing blood is standard procedure when a patient complains of fatigue. We’ll send the sample to the lab for processing and get the results in a few days.”

  “That long?” Laurie moaned. “I’m not sure I can be that patient.”

  It turned out she didn’t need to be, because the urine test solved the medical mystery. She was pregnant.

  Laurie’s eyes bugged and her mouth popped open at the news. “I can’t be pregnant. Kenny and I use protection.”

  “Whatever you’re using, it’s not one hundred percent effective because you’re definitely expecting,” Sierra said. “I rechecked the results myself.”