Father to Be

by Marilyn Pappano

  For a moment he looked at her as if he were thinking about it. She held her breath. If he would tell the truth, then everything could go back to the way it was. She could see him practically every day. They could be friends again.

  Then he shook his head. “Even if they didn’t arrest me, he wouldn’t take me back. He’d keep the kids and send me away, and I’d never see them.”

  “Dr. J.D. wouldn’t do that.”

  “He told me so.” He looked sadder and sorrier than anyone she’d ever seen. “I wish I could just go away and everyone would forget what I said and the kids could go back and be a family the way they want to.”

  “Yeah, but then what would happen to you?”

  “It don’t matter,” he said quietly.

  Alanna left the bed and walked over to stand beside him. “It matters to me, Caleb.”

  When he looked at her, there was hope in his eyes, like he just might believe her, but too soon it was gone. He shook his head again and turned back to the window.

  “I guess I’d better go. Aunt Emilie thinks I’m over at Susan’s.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  She walked to the door, then faced him one more time. “Think about telling the truth, Caleb. If you don’t, they’re gonna make you go to court and swear to God that you’ll tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and you’re gonna have to sit in this big chair and tell those stories and …” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “You might really ruin everything then. Forever and always.”

  He shook his head slowly back and forth, then leaned his chin in both hands. “It’s too late. I just want to go away.”

  The third floor of the courthouse was eerily quiet late on a Saturday afternoon. If she had a radio, Kelsey would turn it on just to provide herself with some distraction, but she didn’t. All she had was the paperwork from the Brown/Grayson case in front of her, and it was depressing as hell.

  The phone in the outer office rang, the shrillness making her jump. The fax machine picked up before the first ring ended. By the time it started printing, she was standing in front of it.

  The fax was from Mary Therese’s friend in Chicago. The first page was a handwritten note. Found lots of professional stuff, but this was the only personal. Will follow up further on Monday. “This” was a newspaper article—grainy, enlarged to make up for the poor quality. Two Killed in Traffic Accident, the headline read. She started reading on her way back to her desk.

  Two area residents died Wednesday evening in a two-car accident in downtown Chicago, police said. Pete Jones, 52, of Crystal Lake, was driving west on Jackson Drive just after 9 p.m., when he failed to stop for a red light and struck a vehicle northbound on Michigan Avenue. Witnesses said Jones’s truck was traveling at a high rate of speed when it entered the intersection and collided with the second vehicle, driven by J. D. Grayson, 34, of Chicago. Jones died en route to Cook County Hospital. A passenger in the second vehicle—

  A rap at the hall door echoed faintly, but Kelsey didn’t look up. She couldn’t. “Come in,” she called while continuing to read.

  A passenger in the second vehicle, Carol Ann Grayson, was pronounced dead at the scene. Her husband was treated for minor injuries and released.

  “Kelsey? I thought I saw your car in the parking lot.” Mitch Walker came as far as the inner doorway. “We just got a call—are you okay?”

  She gave him a blank look.

  “Bad news?”

  Slowly she lowered her gaze to the fax, but she couldn’t focus on it. Her hands were trembling too badly. She turned it facedown on the desk, then clasped her fingers together to stop their shaking. “I, uh, no, just—” She drew a deep breath. “What can I do for you, Mitch?”

  His expression shifted from friendly concern to grim worry. “We just got a call from Alex Thomas. Caleb’s disappeared.”

  The scene at the Thomases’ house was controlled chaos. Most of the Bethlehem Police Department, including all the off-duty officers, and half the sheriff’s department, had gathered. Within minutes after arriving, Mitch was huddled with Sheriff Ingles to determine the best way to proceed with a search.

  Kelsey listened in for a few minutes, then sought out Melissa Thomas, sitting on the couch with the younger three kids. “I’m so sorry, Kelsey,” Melissa said, looking as miserable as she sounded.

  “What happened?”

  “After lunch he said he was going out in the backyard. There’s a swing out there. He sat down and … he just looked so alone. I didn’t want to disturb him, but I checked on him while I was doing dishes and when I went upstairs to make the beds. He was fine, just sitting there. Then, the next time I checked, he was gone, and I couldn’t find him anywhere. I am so sorry!”

  “It’s okay. It’s not your fault. If he wanted to leave, he would have found a way no matter what.”

  “I know where he went,” Noah piped up.

  “Where, Noah?”

  “Away. Just like Daddy. And Mama.”

  “But he’ll be back,” Kelsey said, giving him a reassuring pat on the knee. “We’ll find him.”

  “Nope.” He shook his head confidently. “When people leave, they don’t come back. It was just Caleb’s turn to go. Pretty soon it’ll be Jacob’s turn, and then mine, and then we’ll all be alone. We’ll never see each other again.”

  “It wasn’t Caleb’s turn to go,” Jacob said angrily. “He left ’cause we were mean to him. ’Cause we told him we’d rather live with Dr. J.D. than with him and we didn’t want him to be our brother anymore.”

  “I didn’t tell him that,” Noah protested. “You did, and Gracie, but not me.”

  Jacob poked his brother with an elbow, then turned a tearful gaze on Kelsey. “We didn’t mean it. We was just mad ’cause he’s causing so much trouble and we just wanna go back home and we can’t long as he’s tellin’ lies. We just wanted to make him tell the truth ’bout how he got hurt so’s we could go home.”

  “Do you know how he got hurt, Jacob?”

  He shook his head. “But Dr. J.D. didn’t do it. He’s sort of like our daddy, and daddies don’t hurt their kids.”

  That naive faith said a lot for Ezra Brown’s fathering skills, Kelsey thought with a faint smile. “Where would Caleb go if he was angry or scared?”

  “Away,” Noah replied. “Like our mama and our daddy.”

  This time Gracie poked him. “He liked to sit on the glider at Miss C’rinna’s. And on his bed at Dr. J.D.’s.”

  “What about at home—at your other home?”

  All three kids looked blank, then Jacob shrugged. “He never had time for being angry or scared. He always had things to do, like takin’ care of us.”

  Gracie’s plump lower lip began to tremble. “Who’s gonna take care of us now?”

  “Don’t worry,” Kelsey said with more confidence than she felt. “We’ll find Caleb. Until we do, Melissa’s going to take care of you, okay?”

  She waited until each of the kids nodded before getting to her feet and joining Mitch in the doorway. “Has anyone talked to J.D.?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “I’m going to see if I can track him down. Maybe Caleb went looking for him.”

  Mitch nodded, then laid his hand on her arm. “I don’t know if you’ve heard yet, but … the D.A.’s scheduled a hearing for Monday morning. Mary Therese said she would let you know.”

  A chill swept through Kelsey. So Caleb’s claim of abuse was considered founded. Of course, how could it not be? He and J.D. had argued. J.D. admitted to grabbing him, and Caleb had the bruises to prove it. How he really got those bruises was anyone’s guess, but until he decided to tell the truth, the investigating officer had been left with little choice.

  Oh, God, she wished she had stayed in New York City! She wished she’d never come to Bethlehem, never met these people, these kids, J.D. But that wasn’t true. Not for a minute.

  “You think the kid ran away because he finally realized how much trouble his lies
were going to cause?” Mitch asked.

  “I think so.”

  The police chief shook his head. “What a mess.”

  She gave him a tight, grim smile of agreement before leaving.

  J.D.’s truck wasn’t in its usual space outside his apartment. She didn’t bother checking to see if Bud was home. She didn’t want to see how he would look at her. It was Saturday, and before the kids, J.D. had spent most Saturdays working on his house. It was logical to assume that after the kids he would go back there again.

  She headed out of town, practically missing the turn off the highway. She drove slower than necessary along the narrow road, delaying the moment when she would have to face him. She’d brought enough bad news in the last few days. Couldn’t she be spared having to tell him that Caleb had disappeared? Couldn’t she be spared facing him so soon after discovering the truth about how his marriage ended?

  She hadn’t even had time to take it in, to process it and come to all the logical conclusions—like the fact that for his wife’s death to still hold such power over him nearly two and a half years later, he must have loved her dearly. Or the fact that he’d come to Bethlehem to deal with his grief over losing her, not to replace her. Or the fact that he’d kept her life and death such a secret because it was the most precious, most private part of himself, too precious to share with anyone else.

  Even her.

  Apparently she wasn’t going to be spared anything. The clearing came into view ahead, and his truck was parked right in the middle. She pulled in beside it, shut off the engine, and climbed out. The place was quiet, with only the standard forest noises. There was no whine of a drill to interrupt the birds’ song, no hammering steady and strong enough to make a woodpecker envious. Just quiet.

  But not peace.

  She climbed the steps to the porch, tried the front door, and found it locked. Circling the house, she paused before the last corner, breathing deeply, trying to prepare herself for the next few minutes. But she could stand there and breathe until she keeled over from hyperventilating, and she would never be prepared, and so she simply forced herself to turn the corner.

  J.D. sat at the table at the far end of the deck. He wore shorts and a T-shirt—work clothes—and his jaw was unshaven. From this angle, at this distance, he looked slightly disreputable and entirely handsome. But then he looked at her, and she saw the haunted, helpless look in his eyes. Even rocks crumble, Bud had told her two nights before. She’d patted his arm patronizingly and dismissed his warning, but she knew from that look that Bud had been right. Rocks did crumble, and J.D. was on the verge.

  Just as slowly as he’d looked at her, he turned away, redirecting his gaze to the tabletop. Two empty beer cartons had been cast aside, and twelve bottles were neatly lined up in an arc in front of him, their caps all intact. Something about the bottles’ placement bothered her—too much attention paid to it, she supposed, as if each bottle were of utmost importance.

  Finally she left the safety of the distant corner and approached him. She wanted nothing more than to sit down beside him, to wrap her arms around him and hold him close, comfort him, tell him that everything would be all right, that together they could make it all right. But she did none of that. Too cowardly, too afraid that nothing would be all right, she slid onto the bench opposite him.

  “Does Mary Therese know you’re here?” His voice sounded raw, weary, undone. She wondered how he was sleeping, then silently chastised herself Hadn’t she found him on her porch at five o’clock that morning? And hadn’t she foolishly turned him away?

  “No, I don’t suppose she does.”

  “Then you’d better run back home before she finds out that you’re fraternizing with the enemy.” He picked up one of the bottles, cradling it in both hands. “I suppose you’ve heard the news. On Monday morning, at eleven o’clock I have to appear in court to be formally accused in front of my friends and neighbors of physically abusing a child in my care.”

  “I’m sorry, J.D.”

  He pointed the neck of the bottle at her. “Tell that to the people who will believe I’m guilty. Tell it to the kids who have come to think of me as their friend. Tell it to everyone whose faith in me is tarnished or weakened or destroyed altogether by this.”

  “No one will believe you’re guilty.”

  His laugh was cold and bitter. “Well, hell, honey, somebody believes it, or they wouldn’t be hauling me into court to try to prove it.” Just as quickly as the black humor appeared, it disappeared. “All my life I’ve tried to be the best man I could be, a man my father and mother would be proud of. Sometimes I’ve failed. In Chicago I failed miserably, but here … I had begun to believe that this was the person I was meant to be. But is this what those failures were leading up to? This? A man accused of hitting a little boy?”

  He continued to toy with the bottle—twisting the cap, breaking its seal, taking it off, then immediately screwing it back on tight. She watched him caress the glass, watched him swallow hard, as if the longing were almost too much to resist. He put the bottle down, returned it to its place in the arc, and his hand trembled as he drew back.

  Why don’t you drink? she had asked him at the carnival, and he had given her several reasons—he was on call all the time, he couldn’t attend to patients with his senses impaired, he cared too much for his health.

  But he hadn’t told her the biggest reason of all.

  He looked up at her, and the bitter smile returned. “You look appalled. I guess my secret’s out—one of ’em, at least. Did you guess? Or did you snoop around under the guise of doing your job and find out that way?”

  She could hardly breathe. Her lungs were tight, and her heart felt as if it just might shatter. “You’re an—”

  “You can say the word. It won’t taint you.” His movements jerky and angry, he stood up as if at a podium in front of a crowd and intoned in a strong voice, “My name is J.D., and I’m an alcoholic.” Then he slumped onto the bench again. “God, I thought I’d said that for the last time.”

  She was stunned. She didn’t know what to do, what to say. She couldn’t even think, couldn’t wrap her mind around the fact that J. D. Grayson, the steadiest, calmest, most stable person she knew, was an alcoholic. J.D., who was strong for everyone else, who healed everyone else, had a weakness of the most vicious kind.

  “And that’s not even the worst of it,” he went on.

  “I know about Carol Ann.”

  Abruptly he turned cold. “You know nothing about Carol Ann.”

  “I know that she was your wife. I know that she died in a car crash over two years ago.”

  “Do you know that she had dark hair and dark eyes and looked as innocent as Gracie? That she studied ballet for nineteen years and gave up her chance at a career to marry me? That she loved children and old movies and romance novels and dogs? Do you know that she was ticklish and spoke fluent French and was self-conscious about the way she laughed, because she was so delicate and graceful and her laugh was so big and full-bodied? That she talked in her sleep and never met a stranger and was fascinated by archaeology and astronomy and movie special effects?” He broke off for a breath, a deep, ragged sob that made Kelsey ache. “Do you know that she was the worst cook in the entire world and that she always believed the absolute best of everyone, including me?”

  He closed his eyes, covered his face with his hands, muffling his next words. “Do you know that it’s my fault she’s dead?”

  “That’s not true,” she protested, her voice unsteady, her throat tight. “The other driver was speeding. He ran a red light.”

  So slowly, as if the action hurt, he removed his hands from his face, then shook his head from side to side. “It’s my fault. She loved me more than anyone has ever loved me. She had faith in me. She trusted me. And she paid for that trust with her life. And I get to live with that knowledge. That’s my punishment.”

  Once more he gave her a heartrending look. “And that’s not all. Carol Ann a
nd I had a son. He lives in Chicago with her parents and wants nothing to do with me. I’ve been judged an unfit parent. I can’t have custody of my own child. And that—” He looked longingly at the beer. “That’s also my punishment.”

  The wind that blew across the deck was gentle, not even enough to stir the curls that hung loose down Kelsey’s back, certainly not enough to blow that stunned look off her face. Though he’d thought he was fresh out of courage, J.D. watched her. This would make or break them. Either she would stand by him, or she would damn him the way he’d damned himself for so long. It wasn’t fair to hope for a better reaction from her than he was capable of himself—after all, they were his own sins—but he was hoping.

  Right now hope was about all he had left.

  “Trey,” she whispered softly. “Trey wasn’t your patient. He’s your son.”

  He nodded.

  “You were named after your father. And your—your son—” She frowned, shook her head, then repeated the words to herself. “Your son is named after you. Senior, junior, the third. Trey.” She raised a hand to rub her forehead, then let it drop limply to her lap. “My God, J.D.”

  He wondered what that meant. My God, I’m sorry. My God, what you’ve been through. My God, what you’ve done. Was she pitying him or damning him? He wasn’t sure he could bear either one.

  “Tell me …”

  His throat was dry, and he wished for something to make the words easier. The beer would do the job, but he knew too well that if he started drinking now, he would never stop. His two years, four months, and three days of sobriety would be lost. He would be lost, and not even Kelsey would be able to save him.

  He wasn’t sure exactly what she wanted to know, and so he told her everything. He began at the beginning, and he would end at the end. The end for him and Carol Ann, the end for him and Trey. Would it also be the end for him and Kelsey?

  “Carol Ann and I got married in college, and Trey was born while I was in med school. It was her idea to name him after me. She thought it would please my dad, even though neither of us had ever used our given name, and she was right. It did please him.”