Just Destiny

by Theresa Rizzo

  “He didn’t need to know,” she repeated. “Mr. Turner, did you ever have Dr. Harrison tested to find out if he had inherited Huntington’s disease from his mother?”

  George shifted in his seat then glared at Helen for forcing the truth. “I did.”

  “And what were the results?”

  George frowned and tightened his lips. His head jerked a little from side to side.

  “Mr. Turner? Did Dr. Harrison test positive for Huntington’s Disease?”

  George scanned the courtroom until his gaze landed on Judith. Looking away from her censorious expression, his Adam’s apple bobbed under his jowls. He slumped and blinked several times, then stared at his folded hands.

  Helen looked at the judge.

  Jenny’s heart sank in sadness. Sadness for George, but she was infinitely more distressed by the truth. Ted and Alex were at risk—as her baby would have been if they hadn’t uncovered the truth. Thank God Helen hired the private eye.

  Judge Delaney leaned down to George. “Mr. Turner, you must answer the question.”

  George’s frown deepened. He looked up and scowled at Helen. “He had it, okay? Are you satisfied?”

  Satisfied? Hardly. They all would have given a great deal for a “no.”

  “When did you have the testing done?” Helen asked.

  “The year after his mother died.”

  “And you never told him the results?”

  George’s eyes bulged. “Are you kidding? He was fourteen. Why would I tell a kid somethin’ like that?”

  “That’s understandable, but what about when he became an adult? Had you told him by the time he graduated medical school?”

  “No.”

  “Before he married Dr. Sterling?”

  George shook his head. “No.”

  “Before they had children?”

  Jenny could understand George’s silence up to that point, but once Gabe married Judith, he had a moral obligation to tell Gabe the truth. That should have been the time. At that point George’s continued silence morphed from protective parent to coward.

  “No.”

  “No?” Helen raised surprised eyebrows. “When did you tell Dr. Harrison that he had Huntington’s disease?”

  George raised his chin. “I didn’t. I kept up with all the research. They hadn’t found a cure in forty years, so what was the point?”

  “The point was that Dr. Harrison was a grown adult; he had the right to know. As a doctor he was in a better position than most—than you—to understand the complexities of his disease. The point was that as an adult who knew he had a terminal illness, he might have chosen to have a vasectomy and not risk passing the disease along to his children—or to have embryos genetically tested for Huntington’s and avoid the risk of perpetuating the disease. The point was that knowing that his life span would be greatly limited he might have chosen to live his adult life differently.

  “The point was, as a surgeon, Dr. Harrison’s livelihood and people’s lives, depended upon the steadiness of his hands. You could have jeopardized his patients and made him vulnerable to lawsuits, simply because he didn’t know that the tremor in his hands was more than an excess of caffeine.”

  George’s chin thrust out, belligerent. “I was watching for signs. Gabe was just starting to get the shakies. He’s a smart man, he would have found out for himself soon enough.”

  “But perhaps there was medication he could have taken or treatments to delay the onset of the symptoms. Now we’ll never know, because you took that choice away from him. Gabe Harrison was an adult and a doctor, and he died at age forty-three never knowing that he had a deadly hereditary disease and possibly passed it on to his children.”

  “See? He lived his life happy never knowing. Do you know how many people with Huntington’s Disease commit suicide?” George asked. “Plenty. About half the people with the disease die never having been tested. They don’t want to know. Gabe lived a full, happy life ’cause he didn’t know. I still say it was the right thing to do.”

  “I’ve never doubted that you had your nephew’s best interest at heart, Mr. Turner. But when Dr. Harrison became an adult, he had a right to know he had Huntington’s disease.”

  “Objection, Your Honor,” Ms. Blair called out. “Mr. Turner is not on trial here. Besides, this testimony has no relevancy—”

  “It is completely relevant,” Helen shot back. “By withholding that information, he took away Dr. Harrison’s right to decide for himself if he wanted to know if he had inherited the disease.” She swung around to face George. “You took that choice from him in a violation far greater than his wife taking his sperm.”

  “Objection sustained. Move on, counselor,” the judge said.

  “Are you kidding me? Look, you can judge me all you want, but I was protecting Gabe—and even her.” George jerked his head toward Jenny. “It’d break her heart to find out she had a baby with Huntington’s Disease. Now that you brought it out, Alex and Ted are going to find out and have to deal with it too. I was protecting them. All of them.” He glanced at her, then back at Helen. “Sometimes ignorance is bliss.”

  “You could have done a better job protecting your family had you told Dr. Harrison about the Huntington’s.”

  “Who are you to judge me?” George pulled himself up tall in his seat. “And when should I have told him? One minute Gabe was a teenager, the next, Judith was pregnant. Should I have told them then so she could abort the baby?”

  Yes—if that’s what they would have chosen. The decision should have been Gabe and Judith’s—not George’s. But Jenny could sympathize. Time seemed fly, like a freight train gathering momentum. Not long ago Michael had been a crying infant and now he was a teenager. It seemed like just yesterday she married Gabe: now he was gone. Their time together had been far too brief.

  “Perhaps they would have chosen to abort the baby. It wasn’t your decision to make, it was theirs—or should have been theirs.” Helen stated. “As for Jenny, once she gets her husband’s sperm, she can have the embryos genetically tested and implant only those free of Huntington’s. If you’d only been honest with them all from the start, there’d been no need for any of this.” She waved her arm at the courtroom.

  “Yes, there is. What she’s trying to do is still wrong and none of this has anything to do with her having his baby.”

  “Of course it does. It’s all about choice and rights—your nephew and Jenny’s husband’s rights. And her rights as Gabe’s wife and next of kin. Moving on.” Helen consulted her notes.

  Jenny was already worn out. Gabe had had Huntington’s. His trembling hands hadn’t been the result of excess caffeine but the beginnings of a terrible debilitating disease. She tucked that reality away to examine later, as she focused on Helen’s continued questioning.

  “Your wife died when Gabe was fifteen, leaving him your only living relative?”

  “Yes.”

  “Life must have been difficult for you after your wife died.” She watched him, expectant.

  “Me and Gabe were fine,” he said in a gruff voice, as if not wanting anybody to pity him. “We had each other.”

  “You had each other. You and Gabe must have grown quite close?”

  George’s generous lips lifted in a smile as he nodded with pride. “Very close. I was best man at his first wedding.”

  “Best man? Wonderful.” Helen appeared to be impressed, then crossed her arms and paced in front of the witness box. “Please bear with me a moment as I digress,” Helen said in a thoughtful voice. “Mr. Turner, was Adele Williams your wife?”

  “Yes.”

  “She was the daughter of renowned chef Joseph Williams, yet had acquired some eminence in her own right as a chef?”

  “Yes. Desserts were her specialty.” He smiled fondly. “Nobody made chocolate mousse like my Adele.”

  “Mr. Turner, how did your wife die?”

  His smile evaporated. “She died from a broken heart. That scumbag reporter killed he
r.”

  Helen’s eyebrows rose in a look of surprise. “A reporter killed her?”

  He nodded. “Adele was a good woman. She never hurt anybody. And that restaurant meant the world to her. Her and her pa used to argue about how to run it. When he retired, ’cause he had a heart attack and couldn’t stay on his feet that long anymore, Adele took over.

  “She wanted to prove she was as good as the old man, when she was really better. Hands down," he said with pride. "But she worked so hard. I tried to get her to slow down so she wouldn’t end up like her pa, but she wouldn’t listen.

  “Anyhow, there was an outbreak of Salmonella, and this reporter put it in the newspaper that these sick people had been poisoned at Adele’s restaurant. It wasn’t true, but people believe what they read. Nobody would eat there anymore, and my poor Adele was heartbroken. She fretted herself right into that stroke. Thinking people blamed her for all those sick people, she lost her will to live.” He paused, his eyes turning cold. “All because of that lyin’ reporter.”

  “Did the salmonella come from her restaurant?”

  He scoffed. “Of course not. But by the time they figured that out, the damage had been done. Nobody would eat there and Adele was dead.”

  “And you blame the reporter for her death?” Helen asked.

  “Of course.” His eyes narrowed and his lips curled in contempt. “If he hadn’t printed those lies about her, she’d be alive today.”

  “You must not have a very high opinion of the press?”

  He snorted. “No, I do not.”

  “Then you must not have liked the fact that your nephew married a journalist, did you?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “Is it true that, without your nephew’s knowledge, you coerced Jenny into having an attorney draw up a prenuptial agreement?”

  “I didn’t force her to do anything.”

  “But you did try to persuade her to obtain the document?”

  “It was my idea,” he conceded. “But it was for her own good.”

  “Her own good?” Helen raised her eyebrows. “Jenny didn’t have any assets to protect. The prenuptial agreement would have benefited only your nephew.”

  “Okay,” he shrugged. “So I was mostly looking out after Gabe. However, it would have proved to those mean-spirited people that she wasn’t marrying him for his money. Nobody could have called her a gold-digger—if she’d have signed.”

  And she would have signed it if Gabe had wanted it. Jenny hadn’t cared about his money. It was Gabe who had been outraged by the prenup—not her.

  “The prenup was never drawn up. Why?”

  He stared hard at Jenny, suspicion deep in his eyes. “’Cause she went running to Gabe, acting all confused, tellin’ him it was my idea, usin’ it to try and turn him against me.”

  Liar. It had been all Gabe objecting—rather ripping up the sample document. She’d never tried to interfere in Gabe’s relationship with his uncle. Even though George had never been one of her favorite people, he was her husband’s family and she’d always respected that. He’d been welcome in their home.

  “And did Jenny turn Gabe against you?”

  “Naw.” Bushy gray eyebrows drew together as George pursed his lips. “Gabe was sore with me at first, but he got over it. It’d take more than a woman to come between us.”

  “Mr. Turner, were you in favor of donating Gabe’s organs?”

  George visibly stiffened in his seat. “Definitely not. Which was why she did it behind my back.”

  “Did Jenny know your feelings about organ donation before the accident?”

  “I don’t know, but she sure as hell knew that day.”

  “What happened when you learned that it was Jenny’s decision and that you had no say in it?”

  “I told her not to.”

  “You ordered her not to,” Helen clarified.

  He scowled. “Told, ordered. Whatever. I told her to stop it.”

  “And what did you do when she refused?”

  “I got on the horn to my attorney.”

  “Isn’t it true that Jenny’s donating your nephew’s organs enraged you?”

  “Of course,” he snapped. “They carved him up. It’s inhuman.”

  “Isn’t it true that you could care less about your nephew’s wishes regarding his organ donation and this baby? That you filed this lawsuit to try to keep Jenny from having his baby out of revenge?”

  “No. Gabe had two kids already, he was against single parenthood, and he would never want a kid of his brought into the world that way. He just wouldn’t.” He frowned. “In fact, he only married Judith ’cause she was pregnant. He didn’t want his son being raised by a single parent.”

  Jenny gasped and resisted the urge to turn around and look at Judith. That was more than anybody needed to know. She was glad Ted wasn’t here to be hurt by his great uncle’s insensitivity.

  Helen looked thoughtful. “Mr. Turner, you sued the reporter that ruined your wife’s professional reputation for defamation of character and wrongful death, correct?”

  Crossing his ankles and tucking his legs under the chair, George scooted back and sat up straight. “I did.”

  “Did you prevail in the suit?”

  “No. The mor—” he glanced at Judge Delaney, apparently choosing his words carefully, not wanting to alienate him—“the judge didn’t see things my way.”

  “In fact, the lawsuit was dismissed before ever getting to trial?”

  George clenched and unclenched his jaw before forcing the answer through taught lips. “Yes.”

  “No more questions.” Helen turned to Ms. Blair. “Your witness.”

  Ms. Blair rose. “Mr. Turner, when your nephew was orphaned, you didn’t have to take him in; he could have gone to foster care. Why did you bring him into your home and raise him like a son?”

  George pulled back, frowning, clearly affronted at her question. “Well, that’s a stupid question. He’s family. He was my responsibility.”

  Ms. Blair’s cheeks reddened at George’s insult. Her tone became a bit harder. “And did you have feelings for your young nephew even before he lived with you?”

  “Of course.”

  Ms. Blair did a good job of hiding her impatience with her client. He had to be frustrating her; he certainly wasn’t making her job any easier by making her drag every little bit of information out of him. George’s rudeness, even to his attorney—his only ally—was incomprehensible to Jenny, but Ms. Blair remained calm and moved on.

  “And what exactly were those feelings you had for your orphaned nephew?”

  “I loved him, of course. Adele did too.”

  “You loved him.” She nodded. “Mr. Turner, was it out of love that you lied about how your sister died?”

  “Of course.”

  “Mr. Turner, why did you conceal Gabe’s mother’s disease?”

  George swallowed hard before answering. “Our Dad had Huntington’s, and we didn’t have money to put him in a nursing home, so me and Jan had a front row seat in seeing how bad it gets.” He shook his head and blew out a deep breath. “It was brutal.”

  “Brutal? How so?”

  “He was bossy and controlling and his paranoia got so bad Mother couldn’t go to the grocery store ’cause he was sure someone was gonna kill him when she left.” Frowning, he bit his lower lip and stared at his hands before raising his head and continuing. “He got depressed. Couldn’t hold a job. He’d shout and hit us when we’d try to help him.

  “In the end he couldn’t walk, couldn’t feed himself, messed his bed. He wouldn’t—or couldn’t—talk. He just lay in bed like a lump, waiting to die.” He looked up at Ms. Blair with tears in his eyes. “It was hell to live through. Jan, she didn’t want to scare Gabe like that, so…so…” His throat muscles worked as he tried to continue.

  “So her husband took her away and you concocted the story about them serving in the Peace Corps?”

  George nodded. “Yeah.”
r />   “Before they left, did your nephew ever notice his mother’s illness?”

  George shook his head. “He didn’t say anything. In the early days you get good at making up excuses for the clumsiness and shakies. It’s only later that it’s impossible to hide. But it’s the in between…” He raised his head and looked at directly at Jenny. “The in between is bad.”

  Jenny wondered what George was thinking at that moment. Was he thinking that she was lucky to have been spared watching Gabe go through that hell? Perhaps dying young had spared Gabe the indignities and suffering Huntington’s promised, but that didn’t mean she shouldn’t have his child. They could test the embryos. The devastating legacy could stop with their child.

  “Mr. Turner, did you sue that reporter out of petty spite?”

  “No.”

  “Did you sue him in hopes of retaining a hefty monetary settlement?”

  “No.”

  “Did you sue him to get revenge?”

  Another swift denial was what Jenny—and apparently Ms. Blair had been expecting, because she closed her eyes, to maybe count to ten, while George considered her question.

  George looked away. A hardness in his eyes belied the weariness wrinkling his face.

  “Partly,” he admitted. “I sued him because he destroyed the woman I loved more than anything on this earth. I didn’t want his money. I wanted to teach him a lesson. He didn’t take his job seriously enough.

  “You can’t just prance around writin’ things about people that aren’t true. He had a responsibility to print the truth, and maybe not print the truth if it’d really hurt somebody. He had a responsibility to do his job keeping in mind human decency. This was people’s lives he’s screwing with. Some things the public does not have a right to know—does not need to know.”

  Wow, Jenny could almost respect George just then. She glimpsed the decent side of him that he kept well hidden behind a thick wall of abrasive rudeness. And she had to agree with him; reporters should be sensitive and respectful of the people they write about. It was a thin line they walked sometimes.

  She felt sorry that one reporter’s poor judgment had such a disastrous effect, but there were crummy people in all professions. It wasn’t sensible or healthy to hate all types of people just because one had hurt you.